LeBron James is widely regarded as the greatest small forward of all time, but five-time NBA champion Ron Harper believes there is someone else more worthy of that title. Harper reacted to a clip of his former teammate John Salley praising Scottie Pippen by declaring he is the best ever at the position.
“The best small forward that ever played…… pip 33.”
Pippen made the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team and is one of the very best players we have ever seen. He won six titles with the Chicago Bulls and made seven All-Star, seven All-NBA, and 10 All-Defensive teams over the course of his career.
Pippen was an exceptional two-way player and effectively played as a point forward for the Bulls. He was very versatile, and that was the point that Salley brought up in that clip Harper was reacting to.
“Scottie played point guard, shooting guard, small forward, big, and ran the squad,” Salley said. “Can shoot the three, can dunk on you, and made sure the ball was distributed and got to every place it needed to get to.”
Pippen wasn’t actually a great three-point shooter (32.6% for his career), but that was about the only thing he didn’t do well on the court. His playing second fiddle to Michael Jordan throughout his career, though, led to him not always getting the appreciation he deserved.
We saw the best of Pippen after Jordan retired for the first time in 1993. He averaged 22.0 points, 8.7 rebounds, 5.6 assists, 2.9 steals, and 0.8 blocks per game in 1993-94, and finished third in voting for MVP and fourth for DPOY.
Pippen was just an incredible player, but Harper might just be a little biased when he puts him at the top. They were, of course, teammates on the Bulls from 1994 to 1998 and won three titles together.
All things considered, it would be a stretch to call Pippen the best ever at the position. We had him at sixth in our list of the 25 greatest small forwards of all time.
You can maybe make a case for Pippen to be a couple of places higher, but not at the very top of the rankings. No matter how you slice it, he can’t rank over someone like James.
James has won four titles, four Finals MVPs, four MVPs, a scoring title, and an assists title. He is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and is considered the closest challenger to Jordan for that GOAT title.
Pippen ranked himself over James from a team standpoint on a podcast earlier this year by pointing to his six titles. That alone doesn’t make someone a better player, though. We’d be talking about seven-time NBA champion Robert Horry ranking over both of them if that were the case.
