The relationship between Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen has fallen apart greatly. Last month, Scottie Pippen’s memoir came out, and it had a lot of negative comments towards Michael Jordan, mostly over how Pippen was treated by MJ and ‘was used’ to help his image during the airing of ‘The Last Dance’ docuseries.
Pippen aimed a lot of barbs at Michael Jordan, including calling him condescending when he complimented Pippen. And he even suggested that Jordan’s ‘flu game’ was not as impressive compared to his 1998 Game 6 performance playing with a jammed back.
It was an odd look, especially given Jordan had always spoken kindly about him. And Pippen’s venom seems a little unwarranted with that information in context. But one former teammate of both players believes that Jordan was not going to respond, and their feud was a long time coming, way before ‘The Last Dance’ aired.
Former Chicago Bulls player Charles Oakley spoke in great detail to Betway about the recent beef between his former teammates. He believes that the beef has been brewing for a while, mostly because Pippen believes he’s better. He also noted that Jordan had no interest in responding to Pippen, especially in the press.
“Scottie felt like he was mistreated, and he didn’t look good. Scottie did some things that we talked about. I’m friends with Scottie and Mike, but I don’t talk about Mike to Scottie, or Scottie to Mike.”
“I know everybody thinks it’s some feud from The Last Dance, I think it’s something else that happened. We don’t know, but one day we will find out. I don’t think Scottie would just turn from all this from The Last Dance. Some stuff happened 10, 20 years ago but now he’s got a platform to talk about it. But he did say he wants to have his last say about The Last Dance, so who knows what’s going on?”
“Mike’s not going to feud in the press about what Scottie has to say, he’s not going to comment on it. Scottie feels like he’s got six rings, Michael’s got six rings. One thing he did say when he first got to the league when he was a rookie, he said he wanted to be better than Mike.”
“He feels like he’s better than Mike. He said it back then, a lot of people just didn’t hear him say it. If you asked 100 people who’s better, 99 are going to say Michael Jordan, so [Scottie’s] the one. There’s always one, right?”
“Scottie went through a lot as time passed, stress can put you in a different place. He said something about Phil Jackson. I think he apologised about that. But sometimes you get in the heat of battle, you know, and that’s why you’ve got to be careful when you do interviews and talk to people because they dig. They dig holes all the time, they dig up stuff about you and something you said, when this could be 30 years ago. But you said it and then you try to backtrack. I said a lot over my career, but it must be all true because I’ve never had to backtrack about anything I said.”
Oakley believes that Pippen may have been coming from a place of anger, resentment, and feeling underappreciated. That could be the reason why he has been making these comments recently.
There isn’t any word on how Jordan feels about Pippen’s comments. Stephen A. Smith has speculated that their relationship is over, and Pippen’s comments were the straw that broke the camel’s back. This would be a sad end to one of the greatest duos in NBA history.
