There never has been anyone in pro basketball like Scottie Pippen. There never will be again. Another Michael Jordan could come along, someone who thrills the world with his charisma and talent. Perhaps another Larry Bird, someone with his skills and proficiency. Maybe even a Wilt or a Shaq with their dominance, a Jerry West with his steely expression and icy nerves, or a Magic Johnson with his charm and artistry.
But the NBA is never again likely to find a player who came out of high school without a scholarship, who failed to get even walk-on basketball status at colleges near his hometown in rural Arkansas, who got into college thanks to a favor from a friend of his high school coach and then had to work as a towel boy/manager for the basketball team at Central Arkansas, an NAIA-level university that never had produced an NBA basketball player. All this on the way to top-50 all-time status in the NBA and certain election to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
“Knowing where he came from, dreams can happen, miracles, really, a miracle is what it is,” said Don Dyer, Pippen’s coach at Central Arkansas. “Here’s a kid who didn’t even play [organized] basketball until he was a junior in high school, didn’t start, was 6 feet 1 and 140 pounds, not imposing, not a great shooter, just an all-around player. He tried to walk on at colleges closer to him and they didn’t want him. I was just doing a favor for a young man [Pippen’s high school coach] who once played for me, mainly trying to help the kid get a degree. But here’s a kid who had a dream that wasn’t realistic, and it came true.”
No one can explain miracles, or even the human spirit. But for Pippen, who helped quarterback six Bulls championship teams in a 17-season NBA career, it was some rare alchemy of talent, basketball intelligence, hard work and stubborn pride that turned the most raw human mineral into the gold standard of athletes and competitors whom the Bulls will celebrate Friday.
A banner day
Surrounded and supported by friends, family members, mentors and former teammates and coaches with the Lakers here for a game, the Bulls will retire Pippen’s No. 33 with a banner to hang near the ceiling of the United Center. It is a fitting honor for a man whose grace and flair on the court eventually wore down and triumphed over the turnovers off and on the court.
That’s because no great player has been viewed with such ambivalence, mocked at times for his position Jordan’s shadow and the flaws in his play if not his personal makeup, but at the same time revered by those close to the game for his ability to unify and his ultimate basketball soul.
“Jordan always felt Pippen was something special,” longtime Bulls assistant Tex Winter said. “Michael realized how easy it was to play with him and how he helped make his teammates better. It’s often said Jordan needed Pippen and Pippen needed Jordan. I’m not sure Jordan didn’t need Pippen more than Pippen needed Jordan.”
Pippen certainly belongs among the greats of the game. He was named to the league’s all-defensive first team seven straight times, eight overall. He was an All-Star seven times and was MVP of the All-Star Game in 1994 when he led the Bulls to 55 wins the season after Jordan’s first retirement. To go with the six NBA titles, he won two Olympic gold medals, starring for the greatest team ever assembled, the 1992 Dream Team. He played in 208 playoff games, second only to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and ranks among the top four all-time playoff leaders in steals (No. 1), blocked shots and assists.
More than anything, those steals, blocked shots and assists define Scottie Pippen as a basketball player.
Played his role
He did what was needed for his team to win. Maybe he was the greatest role player in history. Maybe he was the ultimate basketball philanthropist, using his resources to give to others. Almost all his statistical categories were higher in the playoffs than in the regular season. He didn’t have a beautiful jump shot or a glorious post move. But he made the pieces fit as well as anyone ever has.
“It has been a storybook career,” Pippen conceded on a recent afternoon in his North Shore home. “I was one of those guys who kind of snuck in, wasn’t real recognized, didn’t go to a major university, play for a famous coach. I sort of worked my way up the ladder doing what I felt it takes to be good. I’m sure there are guys out there trying to follow my path to some degree. I always had confidence in myself. I never felt insecure or that it wouldn’t be my day. I believed in myself and my basketball skills. I knew my opportunity would come. I had to be ready.”
People always try to explain greatness. Jordan, for example, wasn’t the best shooter. Bird wasn’t very fast or a great leaper. Johnson didn’t shoot well. Isiah Thomas wasn’t very tall. There’s an intangible that completes the picture. Some call it competitive spirit, desire or will. With Pippen it was a sort of stubborn conviction that he could endure.
Where it came from is unclear. Pippen grew up poor, the last of 12 children living in two rooms, his father crippled from work. But though many people endure hardships, few respond as Pippen did. Perhaps that’s what guided him through the controversies, such as his infamous walkout from a playoff game in 1994 when he didn’t get the final play called for him, events that would crush less secure men. Little discussed was Toni Kukoc’s failure to run the right play previously–that’s what had Pippen upset with the decision to go to Kukoc again. As one friend liked to say, “For 363 days of the year, Scottie was a model citizen and teammate. But for two days, you didn’t want to be associated with him.”
“I’ve had controversies; everyone has controversies,” Pippen said quietly as his two small children peered around a corner giggling, waiting for him to play. “It’s part of life, a learning stage you go through. I don’t have any regrets. Everything that happened I learned from. I’ll make better decisions next time. It’s how it was for me. I’ve been very fortunate to be where I am, so I can deal with not being exactly where I want to be.
“The things people write about you or say about you become unimportant to what you really are in life. Sometimes people are jealous of who you are and what you accomplished. At the end of the day, it’s my decision and I have to live with whatever decisions I made. No one can make decisions for you. You make your decisions and the path you choose is what you have to deal with. I chose some paths a few times that were probably not the best. I had to deal with it.
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“I try to teach my kids that they have to make their own decisions, that I’m not going to be there to hold their hands and point them through the right door. I try to prepare them so when that point comes and they have to cross that path, they know what type of decision they have to make.”
What does future hold?
Pippen commutes now between Chicago and a home in Ft. Lauderdale. He does commentary for ESPN’s basketball shows. He was an assistant for Jackson in training camp and one day hopes to work for an NBA team, preferably in management. He’s a keen student of the game with a sharp eye for talent and tactics.
Surprising? Winter says Pippen was one of the brightest students he ever has had in the triangle offense–“one of the quickest learners I’ve ever coached,” he said. “Totally unselfish. He wanted to move the ball and do more for other players. The triangle was simple for him. It’s been difficult for a lot of fine players.”
First impression
Jackson was enchanted the first time he merely saw Pippen.
Jackson had left the CBA–“the Albany Spitoons,” he says now with a laugh–and was trying to get a job in the NBA. On his own he went to the Chicago predraft camp.
“I saw him and Muggsy Bogues playing together, and they should have been arrested for theft and abuse,” Jackson said. “They were winning every game by like 40 points. It was a layup line. They’d steal the ball and off they’d go. Scottie was kind of unknown. I ended up getting hired by the Bulls, and when I got to training camp [as an assistant], we worked one-on-one a lot and a friendship was established.
“Our greatest gift Scottie brought was the way he really wanted to study and learn the game from a standpoint of doing things to set the table for the other players. He’d direct the team defensively. He had the game plan well orchestrated. And he and Michael helped one another. I remember one time [in practice ] watching Scottie show Michael how to dunk from the corner using his left hand. Scottie was one who could take off on his right foot and dunk left-handed. They’d get great pleasure working out things.”
They were, of course, Chicago’s dream team, the constants in the championships.
“You couldn’t have cloned a guy to be a better complement for Michael,” said Doug Collins, Pippen’s first Bulls coach. “Especially with the triangle. And defensively, they were the two best defenders at their positions in the game. You took the two and three man out of the game right away. He was always going to be behind Michael, but he was a sensational player and the perfect complement the way they played.”
A rough road
No one’s road is easy, though Jordan’s was more predictable.
Donald Wayne, Pippen’s coach at Hamburg High School, recalls him as “not the best player I ever coached. It was amazing the way he grew and developed.”
Pippen grew about six inches one summer and finally started regularly when he was a junior in college. Still, he was only a last-minute substitute to the Portsmouth (Va.) predraft camp, which usually features second-rounders and free agents. Pippen then won the dunk contest at the Hawaii predraft camp and was stunning at the Chicago camp.
“[Jerry] Krause was raving about this kid with the long arms at Central Arkansas all year,” Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf recalled. “I had never seen him play, but I remember the feeling in the draft room that night with Scottie and Horace Grant teamed with Michael that we had something.”
There was a headache or two to endure along the way, one big, bad push into the stands by then-bad boy Dennis Rodman in the vanquishing of the Pistons.
“Coming out with that grin on his face after being run into the stands and making the free throws, knowing we were finally going to overcome the team that was giving us headaches, migraine and otherwise all those years, that’s one big thing I’ll remember with Scottie,” Jackson said.
Winter has arrived early in Chicago and Pippen leaped up from his seat to watch a deer sprint across his backyard, weaving effortlessly through the trees, fluid and powerful, Pippenesque, if you will. Pippen watched, perhaps envious of what he once was, naive, strong, sure and open to all the possibilities.
“It’s every kid’s dream to play for one team, have your jersey retired, get all the things you want. You think you can live in a perfect world,” he said. “It didn’t happen exactly that way. But it all has been very special.”
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