DID A TASMANIAN DEVIL AMBUSH PIPPEN? NOW HE SAYS JORDAN IS THE G.O.A.T.
The “No Bull Tour” in Australia involved nothing but praise for Michael as the all-time greatest and love for “The Last Dance” docuseries, which means Pippen is a father who cares about his NBA son
Don’t forget the changing priorities of his new life. Scottie Pippen is an NBA father these days, knowing his every word might be a reflection on his son, Scotty Jr. Does anyone really care about the scars on the old man’s ego when his kid is a guard with the Memphis Grizzlies, landing a two-year contract last month?
“The sky’s the limit for him, if he continues to work,” Scottie said.
Still a Hall of Fame legend, still the holder of six title rings from the 1990s, Pippen experienced a distinct character transformation this week in Australia. Basketball’s pissiest renegade went Down Under and somehow returned … upright? When it was believed he’d continue to trash Michael Jordan during a three-city engagement — called the “No Bull Tour” — he suddenly removed the b.s. from his shtick without any threat from a Tasmanian devil. He was asked on a television show if Jordan is the sport’s greatest player of all time. It was a set-up question, with everyone thinking he’d answer with LeBron James or a kangaroo or a koala.
Instead, he said yes.
He said, YESSSSSS, that Jordan is the G.O.A.T. Sometimes people travel 16 hours and are influenced genetically. Sometimes humans are struck by multiple personality disorders in strange lands. This was, in fact, the same Scottie Pippen, 58 years old and at last growing up. He said “ay,” in the country’s vernacular. Was he high? He sure looked straight to me, and I watched the video 10 times.
“Oh, for sure. I mean, you look at the MVPs that he was able to achieve,” Pippen said. “But I think it was all brought from us being successful as a team. Obviously, someone's gonna bring those accolades home. But yeah, he was the greatest player, definitely, in basketball.”
This was the antithetical answer to everything he has said lately. We know he thinks Jordan received $10 million for his role in “The Last Dance” docuseries. “My teammates and I didn’t earn a dime,” he once said, “another reminder of the pecking order from the old days. For an entire season, we allowed cameras into the sanctity of our locker rooms, our practices, our hotels, our huddles … our lives.” And we know he thinks Jordan was a “horrible player” with the Chicago Bulls when Pippen and teammates arrived, that he “was all one-on-one, shooting bad shots, and all of a sudden we became a team and we start winning and everybody forgot who he was.” We know he thinks Jordan is viewed as god and Pippen as the evil spirit.
But finally, appearing on a breakfast telecast, he handled the obvious question with great ease. Might he say LeBron, who is represented by the same agency that supports his son, Klutch Sports Group, and looked like the league’s premier player Wednesday night at 39? “He’s the greatest statistical guy to ever play the game of basketball,” Pippen said last year. Or might he say Kobe Bryant, as he did in 2020? Or that “there is no G.O.A.T., it’s a team game,” as he did last year? Or that Pippen is the G.O.A.T. himself, as he said often?
Rather, he praised Jordan and commended “The Last Dance.” Wait, the colorful spider that crawled on my back during the Summer Olympics in Sydney. Did it find Pippen and devour him? Last we heard, he might sue Jordan and ESPN. Now?
“I thought it was special. I thought it was a special moment for us to really relive some of the greatest times in basketball history,” he said of the program he used to hate. “And more so having the opportunity to see what team basketball was like. And I think during the pandemic, everyone sitting home, it was more like an education tool to let people see how great the game can be if it’s played the right way. And if they’re sharing the basketball, there’s unlimited things that you can achieve. And we were able to win six titles over a decade and that’s a pretty high accomplishment.”
All he did, apparently, was enjoy laughs with Horace Grant and the homeland’s big man, Luc Longley. Please understand: Every time he goes to Australia, where the Bulls dynasty remains topical, Pippen makes large sums — such as $1.2 million last autumn. The final show was Tuesday night. I have contacts. I looked at the web. In the end, he decided this would be a tour of dynasty love. Tweeted Mark K from a sports site: “If you were hoping the No Bull Tour would be Scottie, Horace & Luc airing their grievances, you’d be disappointed. It wasn’t a venting session. They didn’t trash Michael or The Last Dance. It was three mates having a laugh, talking their careers and bond. It was great to see.”
Back in the United States, he will watch his son. Scotty scored 19 points with six rebounds against Boston this month and, as a 6-foot-1 point guard, is averaging 10.5 points and 4.5 assists. He reached the NBA when, uh hum, Jordan’s two sons didn’t come close.
Scotty wears No. 1 for the Grizzlies.
In his father’s mind, that makes him the G.O.A.T.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.