Chicago Bulls to Build Statue of the Greatest Bull Ever, Scottie Pippen

Ah, the sweet taste of crack cocaine in the morning. Is there anything better in this world? Screw Folgers, my crack pipe is the best part of waking up. It doesn’t rhyme as well as the old Folgers’ commercial, but it’s certainly more…what’s the word I’m looking for? Delicious. That’s it. Mmmm. Sweet, sweet crack.

See, the great thing about crack is that it’s cheap and…wait a minute. I just realized something. You don’t smoke crack. This is awkward. That also probably means that you don’t think Scottie Pippen is the greatest Chicago Bull ever. You probably think it’s John Paxson.

I mean, how many Finals clinching game winning shots did Scottie Pippen have? Zero. Or maybe you think it was Jerry Sloan, who played for the Bulls for 10 years and was the first Chicago Bull ever drafted. Or maybe you think it was that other guy, Michael what’s his face. How many regular season MVP trophies does Scottie have? Zero. How many scoring titles? Zero. What about defense? Scottie was always considered a great defender. Surely, he has at least one Defensive Player of the Year award to at least match Jordan. Nope, zero. Geez Louise Cheddar Cheese, maybe this guy should change his name to Scottie Zero.

But despite Scottie Zero’s lack…I mean Scottie Pippen’s lack of general greatness defining credentials, he should still be considered the greatest Chicago Bull of all time. How can that be?  Hang on, let me hit the crack pipe one more time…annnndddd…let’s go.

“I know Michael’s the best player, but Pippen was the best player on that team.”: That was a quote from Chuck Daly about the 1992 dream team, courtesy of Sam Smith. That team not only featured MJ, but also Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.

Michael Jordan is a better player than Scottie Pippen. Agreed? I’m not arguing that Pippen was a better player at any point in his career than Michael. My argument is that Scottie Pippen is the greatest Chicago Bull ever. Not just because of what he did on the court, but because of what he sacrificed as well.

He won the most for the Chicago Bulls: There were three mainstays for the Chicago Bulls six championships—Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson, and Scottie Zero. Sorry, calling him that is really not helping my argument, but I think it has a nice ring to it. We can throw Phil out of this debate because we are talking about Chicago Bull players. Phil’s clipboard isn’t retired on the rafters. (But a reader just pointed out that his name is retired. Doh! Stupid crack making me forget important details.)

So, it comes down to Michael and Scottie. Neither won a championship without the other, though Pippen did come closer than Michael. Pippen went farther in the playoffs without Michael than Michael ever did without Pippen.  And I’m not just talking about Pippen’s time with the Blazers, when he went to the Western Conference Finals. Scottie took the Bulls to the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals without Jordan.

It wasn’t until Pippen joined the Bulls in 1987 and was put into the starting lineup during the 1988 playoffs that Jordan finally made it out of the first round of the playoffs. But this isn’t about Pippen being a better player than Jordan. So, I’ll switch my statement to support my argument, when Pippen arrived to the Chicago Bulls as a rookie he helped them get to the Conference Semi-Finals for the first time in over a decade.

Not only was Scottie Pippen one of just two Chicago Bulls to win six championships, but he also had only one losing season as a Chicago Bull. His last year in the league. Just one losing season in 12 years as a Chicago Bull. While Jordan never missed the playoffs, he did have three losing seasons, including one 30-52 season, in his 13 years as a Chicago Bull. 

Jordan won 661 regular season games as a Chicago Bull and 340 losses. Scottie Pippen won 665 regular season games and lost 319 games. Pippen had a winning percentage of 67.5 percent with the Bulls while Jordan is at 66.1 percent. So, going by these stats, we can safely say that Scottie Pippen won the most games of any Chicago Bull ever while also having the best winning percentage.

Think that all that winning of Scottie Pippen’s was strictly a result of playing with Jordan? If you use his only time in his prime leading the team without Jordan then the argument doesn’t hold water. Pippen won just two games less with the Chicago Bulls in '94 after Jordan retired. They didn’t add any significant parts either. Just two less games.

You could argue that Pippen was playing with a better team then Jordan did in his first three years without Pippen. But if we look to the last championship season, the 1997-98 campaign. It’ll show you how many wins Pippen added. Pippen was out to start the season because of surgery, a blemish on his resume that I’ll address later, and the Bulls were 26-12. If we project that win total out for the course of the season, it would come out to 56 wins., that’s if Scottie never returned.  The Bulls ended up winning 62 games.  That’s Jordan winning six games less for the Chicago Bulls, with a strong team around him, but no Pippen. 

Jordan might have had the individual accolades, but that doesn’t help the Chicago Bulls. You could argue that if Jordan didn’t have the scoring titles or MVPs that the Bulls wouldn’t have won. But there were years where he wasn’t MVP or scoring champ and they still won. The individual accomplishments are why Jordan was the greatest player ever, and the fact that Scottie won the most for the Chicago Bulls is why he was the greatest Bull ever.

Scottie Pippen was the Greatest Teammate: It could be said that it was an easy thing to do, taking a backseat to arguably the best player ever, but it is still an important part of why Scottie Pippen was the greatest Bull ever.

To be great at sports, you need to have confidence. Most times this leads to athletes just being cocky. So, it’s almost impossible to take a backseat and still be considered a great player, but Scottie was able to do it. He was able to take a backseat to Jordan without compromising his own game.

Pippen and Jordan were both wing players. When two great players are able to co-exist together they usually can’t occupy the same space. Stockton and Malone. Magic and Kareem. Bird and McHale. Each of these players’ strengths complemented one another. So, in order for everything to work, Scottie had to change his game and redefine his position. He couldn’t be just a small forward in order for the Bulls to win. He had to create the point-forward position.

Scottie changed his game to help Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls win. Not everyone could’ve done this because they wouldn’t had been as effective as a player. Not everyone would’ve done this because they couldn’t swallow their ego. And don’t think for a minute that Scottie wasn’t up to the task of being the “man.”

1.8 seconds. Most Chicago Bulls fans would bring up that specific time and moment to showcase how selfish Scottie Pippen was: How he put himself over the team; how he was not a great teammate at all. But I view those 1.8 seconds as the time that Scottie Pippen showed that he was, in fact, the greatest teammate ever.

Pippen refused to go in the game for the final 1.8 seconds of a playoff match against the New York Knicks in the 1994 playoffs. Why? Because Phil Jackson had designed the last shot to go to Toni Kukoc and not Pippen. 

This shows that Pippen wanted to be the man. He wanted the pressure. He wasn’t afraid of it. When he played with Jordan he was willing to let MJ be everything that he wanted for himself. And those 1.8 seconds are proof of that. Sure, Pippen would concede the last shots to Jordan, but he wasn’t going to do that for Toni Kukoc.

Pippen did what he thought was best for the team., what was best for the Chicago Bulls. He wanted to take that last shot because he thought he was the best man for the job. What’s wrong with that? I love that he thought he was the best man for the job. He was their best player all season. That year, he was only the third player ever to lead his team in every major statistical category.

When Jordan left, the Chicago Bulls needed Scottie to be the man. And not only did he do it—he wanted to do it. Which means that the whole time he was playing second fiddle to Jordan, he wanted to be the man. But he let Jordan be that. Because to me, that’s what Scottie thought was best for the team. And he was right. 

In a way, Scottie allowed us, as Chicago Bulls fans, to watch the greatest player ever. He allowed Michael to get all the individual accomplishments and accolades, but he also helped Michael win the six championships. Without having the individual and team accomplishments, MJ wouldn’t be in the discussion of greatest of all time. He would be Dr. J. In 1.8 seconds Scottie Pippen showed you 10 years of being the best teammate ever.

The Blemishes: Scottie Pippen was far from perfect as a player, a person, and a  Chicago Bull. But Pippen also had to deal with more baggage than Jordan. Pippen had to go through two trade rumors while playing for the Chicago Bulls.

One was in 1994, when Jerry Krause wanted to trade him to Seattle for Shawn Kemp. The other was in 1997, when Krause wanted to trade Pippen to Boston so he could draft Tracy McGrady. Naturally, Pippen was upset, and I believe this is why he waited till the start of the 1997 season to get ankle surgery.

It was a very selfish move. MJ had come back specifically to defend his title with Pippen, Rodman and Phil Jackson. Pippen then would say that he would never return to the Chicago Bulls even after his surgery was over. MJ never did anything close to this. He was far too competitive to have waited till the start of the season to get the surgery he needed. But if we are assuming the roles are reversed then we also have to think of how MJ would’ve handled trade rumors.

Obviously, the Bulls never considered trading Michael Jordan. Not only was he the best player in the game, but also he was extremely marketable and made Jerry Reinsdorph a LOT of money. The new United Center literally is the house that MJ built (well, he didn’t literally build it with lumber, hammers, nails, but you get my point). However, let’s assume that Reinsdorph lost his marbles and wanted to see what he could get for MJ on the open market.

How do you think Jordan, the most competitive man on the face of the planet, someone so vindictive that in his Hall of Fame acceptance speech he ripped on anyone and everyone that ever doubted him, how do you think he would’ve handled being talked about in trades? He would’ve wanted to get traded. Not only that, but he would have demanded to get traded, and then ripped the Bulls apart every time he played them, ripped them in the media every time they were brought up.

Summing it all up: The Chicago Bulls wouldn’t be what they are today without Michael Jordan. They wouldn’t be as known globally or throughout the country. They wouldn’t had been on national TV as much. But that only really helps the owner of the Bulls. As a Chicago Bulls fan, the only thing that matters is winning.

Imagine you are the only Chicago Bulls fan in the world. No one else cares about them. They have no MVP caliber players, no scoring champs, no slam-dunk champs, no Defensive Players of the Year, not even any all-stars. But they still win. And they win a few championships. Would you mind that? As long as they are winning, then nothing else matters, right? And when Scottie Pippen was a Chicago Bull, they were winners. That’s why he is the greatest Chicago Bull ever. And that’s why I’m glad he’ll be immortalized outside of the United Center. Now, where the hell did I put my crack pipe?!