Jordan’s most acclaimed teammate said the NBA legend wasn’t a pleasant co-worker: “He was a horrible player.”
Michael Jordan was a “horrible player” who was “horrible to play with,” Scottie Pippen, the top wingman for His Airness on the Chicago Bulls, said recently.
Pippen — a consensus top NBA player of all time in his own right — has long been a critic of Jordan, but he threw more fuel on the fire in an interview on last week’s episode of the “Gimme the Hot Sauce” podcast with former teammate Stacey King.
“Our game is a team game, and one player can’t do it,” Pippen said. “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.”
While Jordan is known for his fierce competitive nature, Pippen said the young Jordan’s passion was for scoring, not winning.
“He was a player that, really, winning wasn’t at the top of his category,” Pippen said. “It was scoring. He was going after scoring titles.”
A representative for Jordan couldn’t be immediately reached for comment Tuesday. Fans seemed to take Jordan’s side.
Pippen credited Bulls coach Phil Jackson with bringing the team together to win all those titles. But in the interview, he also threw shade on the Jackson, often portrayed as a “Zen master,” for not harnessing his own ego. “I just don’t know if he was ever in my corner,” Pippen said.