Scottie Pippen continued his disdain towards Michael Jordan by calling NBA legend a “horrible player” before the Chicago Bulls built him into their team, as he also reveals the pair were never great friends.
The 59-year-old Pippen won six championships alongside Jordan from 1991-1993 and 1996-1998 and both credited each other with key roles in their successes and dynasties throughout the 1990s.
Scottie Pippen delays an NBA game with an epic trolling of referees
For example, Pippen missed Jordan in 1999 a year after the now-61-year-old retired for a second time; and Jordan returned the favor at his Hall of Fame induction by pointing to his colleague as a key reason he was so good.
Since relations soured from around the time of the release of The Last Dance in May 2020, they haven’t managed to find their way back to friends and now find themselves in a position similar to Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal‘s relationship.
Pippen now seems to believe Jordan made himself look even better than he was in the documentary and felt the rest of the Bulls team were made to look like a supporting cast, and now he’s gone even further by slamming the all-timer as a “horrible player2.
“Our game is a team game, and one player can’t do it,” Pippen said of Jordan’s Bulls legacy to the Gimme the Hot Sauce podcast. “I’ve seen Michael Jordan play before I came to play with the Bulls. You guys have seen him play.
“He was a horrible player. He was horrible to play with. It was all 1-on-1, shooting bad shots. And all of a sudden, we become a team and we start winning. Everybody forgot who he was,”
Pippen: “We just were never great friends”
Pippen has since said his friendship on the court with Jordan was not what it seemed as he warned fans there was respect but not too much beyond that in their quest for NBA titles.
But that was in 2021. Have things changed? The answer is no. Pippen reaffirmed that feeling against in January 2025 and went on to call his former colleague a “difficult person”.
“Michael is a very difficult person to deal with,” Pippen told the PBD Podcast. “Great teammate but we just never were great friends.”
