The one-sided feud between legendary Chicago Bulls Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan has persisted for a while now. This situation started in earnest back in 2021 after the latter shared blunt thoughts on The Last Dance docuseries. Since then, Pippen has critiqued Jordan on a number of occasions. He recently even argued that the Air Jordan mogul was a “horrible” player. A number of other notable players have weighed in on Pippen’s comments, including his and Jordan’s former teammate – Dennis Rodman. The eccentric basketball great first entered the chat in early 2022 and, now, he’s back with some praise for Pippen.
A major question that’s cropped up amid the spat between the two former cohorts is just how much one needed the other. Many would argue that MJ was skilled enough to have won those six NBA championships with any group of players. Meanwhile, others would assert that those titles couldn’t have been earned without Scottie Pippen’s contributions. Well, when it comes to that argument, Dennis Rodman seems to sit in the second camp. The hall of famer sat down with VladTV for a wide-ranging chat and was asked if he thinks Pippen was more skilled than Jordan. Rodman admitted it’s a tough question and, while he didn’t give a definitive answer, he did highlight Pippen’s merits:
I said earlier in the interview – I keep saying this – I said thank God Michael Jordan got Scottie Pippen. Because Michael couldn’t do it by himself. Michael scored 40 points a game, and Scottie came and just filled in the blank and just made him a major, major superstar.
The Arkansas native did prove to be an X-factor on those championship teams and was usually second in the scoring column after his teammate. And during the time that Air Jordan retired from the game to play baseball, his on-court partner stepped up as the leader of the team. And as the former Detroit Piston stated during his interview, “Pip” did help to take some of the ease off of his teammate due to his scoring prowess. “The Worm” also argued that his colleague helped to revolutionize a particular on-court position:
I just think Scottie Pippen is probably one of the innovators of the power foward/point guard [position]. Because he’s six-foot-nine, and these kids today are six-foot-ten doing the same thing Scottie was doing. Scottie, his game was polished, he was good, and I think if Scottie played today, he’ll probably have a triple double.
The NBA great capped off his thoughts by saying that both Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan “played well together.” When Dennis Rodman commented on the feud a year ago, he offered similar thoughts on Pippen’s impact on the point-forward position. He also said that he never saw any kind of bad blood between his two teammates when they played together though did opine that Pippen might’ve been upset by Jordan allegedly being paid $10 million for The Last Dance. Despite that mention though, Rodman has shared mostly diplomatic sentiments on the feud.
Other thoughts on the matter have been somewhat mixed. Charles Barkley called out Pip for taking shots at Michael Jordan and accused him of “big game hunting” in order to sell his memoir. Former Chicago Bull Charles Oakley also disagreed with the notion that the fan-favorite small forward is as great as Michael Jordan. And after the “horrible” comments went viral, Lakers icon Jerry West weighed in, praising Pip but also questioning his criticisms of Jordan.
At this point, the chances of a reconciliation between Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen doesn’t seem all that likely. What seems more of a sure thing, though, is that more former players like Dennis Rodman or Charles Barkley are going to continue to chime in as time goes on.
