Klay Thompson's Dad, Mychal, Responds to Scottie Pippen About Bulls vs. Warriors
It appears TMZ Sports has found the one old-timer willing to give the Golden State Warriors a little credit. Problem is, he may be a bit biased.
TMZ caught up with former NBA forward Mychal Thompson, father of Warriors guard Klay Thompson, who laughed off Scottie Pippen's belief that the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls would sweep the record-setting Golden State squad.
"It doesn't surprise me. That's the way he's supposed to feel," Thompson said. "They're one of the greatest teams ever. [Pippen] is one of the greatest players ever, and that's the way he's supposed to feel. But I think the Warriors would win."
Pippen, who was Michael Jordan's co-pilot on those Bulls teams of the 1990s, said over the weekend that Chicago would win a hypothetical seven-game series in four. He also said he'd be able to do the impossible and find a way to fluster MVP favorite Stephen Curry.
"I think that my size and length would bother [Curry] a little bit," Pippen said, per ESPN.com.
Thompson, for his part, gave much more credit to the Bulls. That said, he remained boastful about his son's team in a way that makes you understand where some of Klay's confidence comes from.
"It would take seven games," Thompson said. "The way the Warriors can shoot—the greatest shooting team in history. They're already NBA champions. They can beat anybody, any time, anywhere."
In many ways, Pippen's comments are the type of eye-roll-inducing nonsense that comes from retired players from time to time. The 1995-96 Bulls lost a game to the New York Knicks in the second round of the playoffs. Those Knicks won 47 games, fired their coach midway through the season and had a roster filled with past-their-prime players in their early 30s.
It defies logic that the Bulls would lose a game to that team and somehow sweep these Warriors. That's not even mentioning the fact Chicago dropped two games in the Finals to a Seattle Sonics team that was a boatload of fun but statistically worse than Golden State in nearly every category.
On the other hand, what's Pippen supposed to say? He didn't deride the Warriors. He didn't call them a gimmick team or mock their jump-shooting tendencies. He merely said his Bulls would defeat the Warriors in four games—the exact type of comment you'd expect from an all-time competitor.
Perhaps the only person with a logical answer to this question was Warriors head coach Steve Kerr—himself a member of the 1995-96 Bulls—who pointed to the silliness of comparing eras.
"For example, if you actually put the teams in a hypothetical game, my guess is the Bulls would be called for a million hand-check fouls, and we would be called for a million illegal defenses when we overloaded the strong side," Kerr said, per ESPN.com. "So the game would take, like, six hours because the refs would be calling stuff all game. It's kind of hard to get past that. Now, they wouldn't call traveling in either era."
In a nutshell: Let's stop the nonsense. Let the Warriors be great. Let the Bulls have their place in history. It's all fine. Two teams can be independently great without us pounding on the table and making arguments we'll never be able to verify.
Call me crazy, but I enjoy watching Michael Jordan and Stephen Curry.
Follow Tyler Conway (@jtylerconway) on Twitter.
