How Scottie Pippen Transformed Into the NBA’s Biggest Troll

In his hagiography The Last Dance, Michael Jordan made a statement that’s stuck in Scottie Pippen’s craw. “‘His best teammate of all time,’ he called me,” Pippen writes in an excerpt of his new book. “He couldn’t have been more condescending if he tried. On second thought, I could believe my eyes. I spent a lot of time around the man. I knew what made him tick. How naïve I was to expect anything else.”

Best teammate rather than one of the best in the world, period.

For Pippen, the now 56-year-old former Chicago Bulls star has had it with the slights. Did he know his role behind the greatest to ever play the game on a six-time NBA champion team and play that role with more mastery and tenacity than any other? Probably. But his secondary status on the team outweighs his actual placement among the hoop firmament. And he’s about had it with MJ, who should be his biggest proponent, siphoning the glow from the rest of his Bulls teammates since the run. Lately though, Pippen, with more screen time and press attention, has gone out of his way to disrupt the narrative.

In a freewheeling GQ interview, Pippen accused former Bulls coach Phil Jackson of making “a racial move” when he drew up the final shot for Toni Kukoc in a 1994 playoff game against the Knicks; called Charles Barkley soft, and a guy who “only got arrested for throwing some little white guys out of a window”; and said that last year’s playoffs proved Kevin Durant “didn’t know how to play team basketball when it came down to it.”

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Flame-throwing is certainly a new look for Pippen, for as much as he actually did talk shit on and off the court he, as just about anyone would, was always perceived as the more stoic superstar next to MJ’s switchblade slick talk (who can forget that moment in The Last Dance when, after beating Larry Bird’s Pacers, he whispers into his ear, “You bitch. Fuck you.”) But recently, it’s Pippen who’s had his knives out, taking jabs at the G.O.A.T. and other members of the Bulls organization—namely John Paxson. Pippen says Paxson wronged him at several negotiation tables first as a player, and then as a scout/consultant for the Bulls once he retired, giving him a token role with little power over personnel. Pippen feels shortchanged by these influential figures, and the longtime Bulls playmaker and defensive engine distributes that bitterness in doses.

It started in 2011, when Pippen gave his two or three cents to the Jordan/LeBron G.O.A.T. debate that was in healthy supply at the time (and forevermore): “Michael Jordan is probably the greatest scorer to play the game,” he said on ESPN’s Mike & Mike show. “But I may go as far as to say LeBron James may be the greatest player to ever play the game because he is so potent offensively that not only can he score at will, but he keeps everybody involved.”