Former NBA star Scottie Pippen has made a claim about his ex-Chicago Bulls teammate Michael Jordan following a claim about LeBron James.
Pippen and Jordan were part of the legendary Bulls team from the 1990s that won six NBA Championships, including two three-peats. The story behind the dynasty in Chicago was chronicled in the Netflix documentary The Last Dance, which was released in 2020.
Jordan was drafted by the Bulls in 1984 as the third pick in the NBA Draft, but did not win his first championship until 1991. That was the fourth season that he and Pippen had been teammates, with the forward drafted with the fifth overall pick in 1987.
Pippen was appearing as a guest on Stacey King’s “Gimme The Hot Sauce” podcast on Youtube. It was here that the former Bulls star would appear to aim a dig at Jordan, which included a “horrible” claim about the NBA legend.
“I’ve seen Michael Jordan play before I came to play with the Bulls,” said Pippen. “You guys seen him play, he was a horrible player. He was horrible to play with, he was all one-on-one, he's shooting bad shots. All of a sudden, we become a team and we start winning, everybody forgot who he was.”
Pippen also went on to talk about James and whether or not the Lakers star can be considered an all-time great in basketball. The 38-year-old has played 20 seasons in the NBA and is the record points scorer after he overtook Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in February.
However, James dropped a hint after the Lakers lost the Western Conference Finals to the Denver Nuggets that he may decide to stop playing during the off-season. Pippen says that despite the numbers being in James’ favour, he believes that no one player can be considered an all-time great of the game.
“LeBron will be the greatest statistical guy to ever play the game of basketball,” Pippen said. “And there's no comparison to him, none! So, does that make him the greatest player to ever play the game? I'll leave that out for debating. I don't believe that there's a great player because our game is a team game and one player can't do it.”
Reports emerged earlier in the week that James has been suffering with an ankle injury over the last couple of months. The Lakers star is set to undergo further assessment to determine if surgery is necessary.
Should that happen, James would miss up to two months of the off-season, but should be able to recover in time to feature at the minicamp which begins in September. The 38-year-old is still contracted to the Lakers for another two seasons, which is estimated to be worth a total of $97million.
