Very few duos in NBA history had anywhere near the success together that Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen did. Six championships, an undefeated Finals record and a run of dominance unlike anything we’ve seen since, those Chicago Bulls teams were iconic. They ended the Pistons dynasty, beat Magic’s Lakers in the Finals and took on all comers from Charles Barkley, to Reggie Miller, to Payton and Kemp, to Stockton and Malone.
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They say time heals all wounds, but as the glory years of the Bulls have receded into the past, the rift between the two players most responsible seems to have only gotten wider. By all accounts, Jordan and Pippen aren’t close, a fact Pippen has made especially obvious in recent years through numerous interviews.
Pippen didn’t like the way he was portrayed in The Last Dance, a documentary produced by Netflix and ESPN on the Bulls’ sixth and final title run, and he didn’t like the fact that Jordan’s son Marcus dated his ex-wife Larsa (though MJ didn’t seem happy about that, either).
According to Pippen, he and Jordan were never super close, even during their playing days. Pippen once revealed that the two of them never even had dinner together, which is pretty unthinkable considering the chemistry they showed on the court.
In a 2004 interview, just one year before the Bulls retired his jersey, Pippen was asked whether his chemistry with MJ was developed from playing so many games together, or whether it was the practice court that really helped each one know exactly where the other would be at all times.
“I think it just comes from playing together over time, but practice is definitely what brought it all together,” Pippen said. “Putting the time in on the practice court and competing, playing hard, getting an understanding of one another. That’s what got us over the hump.”
Pippen spent 11 years in Chicago. He entered the league three years after Jordan did, and they both left after completing their second three-peat in 1998. Other than the time that MJ temporarily retired to play baseball, they pretty much had all of that time to hone their chemistry, both in practice and in games.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the Jordan-Pippen dynamic is that their success is proof that teammates don’t have to be best friends to succeed, they just have to be able to work together toward a common goal. Neither of the two ever let their lack of a personal relationship get in the way of their professional responsibilities, and the result was the greatest dynasty in modern basketball history.
