Michael Jordan is still considered the best player in NBA history by many, although the younger generations regard LeBron as the best but only because many of them never got to watch Michael Jordan play. Get this, he is the only players in basketball history to win every single final he played from high school all the way to his professional career. No other players accomplished this but him. His competitive nature never allowed him to acknowledge other players as better then him. But there wasone player who just revealed MJ picked him as the best all-around player at the Chicago Bulls when they both still played at the team. This player revealed this in his memoir. Jordan didn’t tell him directly but he did tell coach Phil Jackson in private.
Who is the better all-around player compared to Michael Jordan?
You gotta keep in mind who this admission is coming from, arguably one of the most complete all-around players of all-time. He didn’t just win three MVP trophies but also a Defensive Player of the Year award. During the 1992 Olympics, he admitted to coach Phil Jackson that Scottie Pippen was a better all-around player than he was. He said this in complete confidence and Scottie Pippen didn’t hear about this admission until years later. Getting Mike to confess something lik this is completely unheard of. Pippen wrote a memoir recently where he makes this revelation and many more about his time at the double three-peat Chicago Bulls. A historic team that certainly wouldn’t have won as many chanpionships without him.
Pippen writes: “Something else happened on the way toward the United States capturing the gold medal in Barcelona. I gained respect from a place where it had been absent for the longest time. From Michael Jordan. He came to the conclusion that I was the best all-around player on the team – and on occasion even outplayed him. He never told me that himself. That wouldn’t be like him. He told Phil at training in the fall of 1992, and I didn’t hear about it until many years later. Either way, that is high praise from someone with three MVPs, and to this day, it means a lot to me. Michael and I aren’t close and never have been. Whenever I call or text him, he usually gets back to me in a timely fashion, but I don’t check in just to see how he’s doing. Nor does he do the same. Many people might find that hard to believe given how smoothly we connected on the court.”