Scottie Pippen Called Michael Jordan A ‘Horrible Player’ Before Pippen Joined The Bulls

Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen were once the most successful teammates in the NBA, winning six championships together with the Chicago Bulls in the 90s. However, in recent years, the relationship between the two has soured, in large part due to Pippen’s frustration with The Last Dance and how he was portrayed in the documentary.

With that as a backdrop, Pippen made a recent appearance on Stacey King’s “Gimme The Hot Sauce” podcast and ripped into Jordan during a discussion of LeBron James and all the things he does for his teammates. Pippen called Jordan a “horrible player” prior to Scottie’s arrival with the Bulls.

“I’ve seen Michael Jordan play before I came to play with the Bulls. You seen him play. He was a horrible player. He was horrible to play with. He was all one-on-one. He was shooting bad shots. And, all of a sudden, we become a team and we start winning. Everybody forgot who he was.”

There’s certainly some truth to Jordan having to grow as a leader and teammate to become a winning player, needing to learn to have the necessary trust in the rest of his team to win championships. That said, to call him a “horrible player” is rather ridiculous.

It’s mostly sad to see Pippen and Jordan reach this point, but it’s also not particularly surprising. Jordan has never been particularly good at managing his friendships in his post-playing career (see: Barkley, Charles) and Pippen has long felt he doesn’t get his just due for what he brought to those Bulls title teams. You can tell this comes from a place of hurt just by going back five years to Pippen talking about the LeBron-Jordan debate, where he said you can’t compare them because it’s unfair since Jordan was utilized differently on the Bulls. Now, he’s no longer in the business of keeping up the Jordan mystique and seems determined to instead chip away at it.