Scottie Pippen says Michael Jordan once gave him a compliment that stuck with him for years - even though Jordan never said it to his face.
In his memoir, Unguarded, Pippen wrote about the respect he felt from Jordan after their summer with the 1992 Olympic Dream Team. The moment, he said, came as the United States rolled toward the gold medal in Barcelona.
“Something else happened on the way toward the United States capturing the gold medal in Barcelona,” Pippen wrote. “I gained respect from a place where it had been absent for the longest time. From Michael Jordan.”
Pippen said Jordan’s view of him went beyond seeing him as a strong sidekick.
“He came to the conclusion that I was the best all-around player on the team - and on occasion even outplayed him,” Pippen wrote. “He never told me that himself.
That wouldn’t be like him. He told Phil at training in the fall of 1992, and I didn’t hear about it until many years later.”
At that point, Jordan had already collected three regular-season MVP awards, and the Bulls were coming off back-to-back championships with a third on the way. Pippen made clear that hearing Jordan thought that highly of him meant something.
“Either way, that is high praise from someone with three MVPs, and to this day, it means a lot to me,” he wrote.
Jordan was the Bulls’ top scorer and the face of the franchise, but Pippen’s value went far beyond being the player alongside No. 23. His defense, ballhandling, playmaking and scoring made him a force in his own right, and the pair’s six championships together backed that up.
Still, Pippen also drew a line between what fans saw on the court and what existed off it.
“Michael and I aren’t close and never have been,” Pippen wrote. “Whenever I call or text him, he usually gets back to me in a timely fashion, but I don’t check in just to see how he’s doing. Nor does he do the same.”
That was Pippen’s description at the time he wrote the book, not a current update. But it does capture the dynamic: two players who understood each other perfectly when the game was on, even if the relationship away from basketball was never especially warm.
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