Scottie Pippen appeared on the latest episode of the PBD Podcast, where he had quite an interesting question posed to him. Host Patrick Bet-David wondered if Pippen would have preferred winning a title without Michael Jordan or making another $100 million in salaries during his career, and the Hall of Famer went with the latter option.
Patrick Bet-David: “Which of these two would you rather have? Would you rather have won a ring without Michael or would you rather have made an additional $100 million while you played in the NBA?”
Scottie Pippen: “Give me that $100 million.”
Bet-David: “(laughs) $100 million, seriously?”
Pippen: “I got a gold medal ring without Michael so that did mean a lot. But yeah, definitely would have loved to play in this era.”
Bet-David: “Would you rather have won that season where you guys got what 47-48 wins? I think you went to the Eastern Conference Finals if I’m not mistaken.”
Pippen: “Yeah.”
Bet-David: “Would you have rather won that year or that additional $100 million?”
Pippen: “Oh, I would have taken that $100 million.”
Bet-David: “How about (an) additional $50 million or that ring?”
Pippen: “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll take the ring.”
Bet-David: “Interesting. So the number is what matters, the $100 million.”
Pippen: “It matters to be known as the best. It matters to be the best. It pays to be at the top.”
Pippen, who now reportedly has a net worth of $20 million, made around $109 million in salaries during his time in the NBA and won six championships. It shouldn’t be all that surprising that he’d choose nearly doubling those earnings over winning another title, even if it’s without Jordan.
It is interesting that if you bring that amount down to $50 million, Pippen would take the ring. As he stated, though, it does matter to be known as the best and he would have been looked at a lot differently had he managed to win without Jordan.
Pippen is today regarded as one of the greatest if not the greatest sidekick in NBA history and while that is something to be proud of, you’d imagine it’s not a title he’s too fond of. That becomes apparent when you consider some other comments he made during this episode.
Pippen claimed he’d have won six rings with Dominique Wilkins on the Atlanta Hawks while Jordan would have only won two or three with the Chicago Bulls without him. You admire the confidence, but that’s a stretch. Pippen often gets underrated but he was not going to have as much team success as he did, if he didn’t play with Jordan.
Pippen also ranked himself above LeBron James from a team standpoint. The reasoning was pretty simple in his mind, he won six titles while James has won four.
Considering James was the best player on his team in his title runs while Pippen was clearly the second-best in his, it’s not really a fair comparison, but the latter doesn’t care too much about that. This episode sure was an interesting watch and gives you an insight into what kind of a character Pippen is.
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