Scottie Pippen Is a Hall of Famer, Not an Insult, Cleveland!

Among the jeers thrown by the Cavaliers fans at LeBron James was the chant, "Scottie Pippen."  I'm sure Patrick Ewing would agree. Maybe in Cleveland they are unaware that Pippen was recently inducted into the Hall of Fame. They may as well have been trying to insult James by chanting, "Hall of Famer!"

Of course their intention was to say that James, unable to win a championship without a great teammate, became the great teammate, making himself the "Scottie Pippen" to Dwyane Wade's "Michael Jordan." This is even more preposterous. Their chant might as well have been, "You are selfless!" 

What made Pippen great is not that he played alongside Jordan; it's that he played with Jordan. He wasn't merely Jordan's teammate, but he was, for lack of a better word, Jordan's Pippen. Being a "Pippen" seems to be a negative thing for some. It's not. It's putting the goals of the team above those of the individual. 

When Jordan retired the first time to play baseball prior to the 1993-94 season, Pippen had the best year of his career, and finished third in the MVP voting. He was great enough to have been considered great in his own right. His career was arguably the most selfless of any in the Hall of Fame. No star in the history of the game ever shone as bright as Michael Jordan. No star was ever more obscured than Pippen. 

It's not that Pippen didn't want to be "the man." When Pippen was asked to inbound a pass while rookie Tony Kukoc took the game-winner against the Knicks in Game 3 of the 1994 Eastern Conference Semifinals, he refused to take the court. 

Pippen set aside his own personal ambitions and goals, and as a result the Chicago Bulls became arguably the greatest dynasty in the history of the NBA, and definitively the greatest in the free agency era. Surely this had much to do with Jordan's greatness, but it also had to do with Pippen's greatness, and part of that was his selflessness. 

Which brings us back to James. Many want to call him a narcissist. No one ever accused Scottie Pippen of that. If you hold the position that James' ego is out of control, to call him "Scottie Pippen" is not only an insult, but it's giving him credit he doesn't deserve.