A touching moment in Karl Stefanovic’s interview with NBA hero Scottie Pippen has gone viral after he made a major admission about Michael Jordan.
Pippen seemed to forget his long-running feud with the 61-year-old when he admitted that his former Chicago Bulls teammate is the greatest player in basketball history.
“It’s hard to make comparisons, but from your point of view, was Michael the best, the best of all time?” Stefanovic asked.
“Sure, I mean, if you look at the MVPs he was able to achieve,” Pippen told Channel Nine’s Today show on Tuesday.
“I think it’s all because we were successful as a team,” he continued. ‘Obviously someone will take those praises home. Yes, he was definitely the best basketball player.
It comes after the six-time NBA championship winner gave a completely different answer when former teammate Stacey King asked him the same question last year.
A touching moment in Karl Stefanovic’s interview with NBA hero Scottie Pippen has gone viral after he made a major admission about Michael Jordan.
Pippen seemed to forget his long-running feud with the superstar when he admitted that his former Chicago Bulls teammate is the greatest player in basketball history.
“LeBron (James) is going to be the greatest statistician to ever play basketball,” Pippen said on King’s Gimme The Hot Sauce podcast in May.
And there is no comparison with him. None. So does that make him the best player to ever play the sport? I’ll leave that up for debate, because I don’t think there is a great player because our game is a team game and one player can’t do it.’
He also told the podcast that Jordan was a “terrible player” before joining the Bulls.
‘I saw Jordan play before I came to play with the Bulls. You saw him play. He was a horrible player. “He was horrible to play with,” he said.
“He was one-on-one, he was taking bad shots and all of a sudden we became a team and we started winning and everyone forgot who he was.”
The Today hosts asked Pippen for his impression of ESPN’s ‘Last Dance’ docuseries, which chronicles the rise of Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
Pippen was reportedly enraged by the way he was portrayed in the series, and his relationship with Jordan suffered as a result.
He surprised basketball fans by praising the docuseries on Tuesday.
Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls are seen discussing strategy in 1993.
Pippen (pictured in Melbourne last week) shocked fans by admitting Jordan was the greatest basketball player of all time in an interview with the Today Show on Tuesday.
“I thought it was special,” Pippen said. “I thought it was a special moment for us to really relive some of the greatest moments in basketball history. Even more so, get a chance to see what team basketball was really like.
“I think during the pandemic, with everyone sitting at home, it was more of an educational tool for people to see how great the game can be if you play it the right way.” If basketball is shared, there are infinite things you can achieve.”
Pippen had previously criticized the series, saying that Jordan was credited with the Bulls’ success in the 1990s, while his teammates were portrayed as lesser players.
“They glorified Michael Jordan without sufficiently praising me and my proud teammates,” Pippen, 58, wrote in his 2021 memoir, Unguarded.
‘Michael deserved a lot of the blame. The producers had given him editorial control of the final product. The document could not have been published any other way. He was the protagonist and the director.
As a result, Pippen claims, the documentary felt inauthentic.
“I don’t think it was that accurate in terms of really defining what was accomplished in one of the greatest eras of basketball, but also by two of the greatest players, and one could even put that aside and say the greatest team ever. “. time,” Pippen told The Guardian in December 2020.
‘I didn’t think those things were highlighted in the documentary. I thought it was more about Michael trying to elevate himself and be glorified. I think it was also counterproductive to some extent because people got a chance to see what kind of personality Michael had.’
Pippen (pictured in Melbourne) is in Australia this month to take part in the country’s National Basketball League awards banquet and subsequent speaking tour with former teammates Horace Grant and Luc Longley.
Complicating matters further is the romantic relationship between Pippen’s ex-wife Larsa, 49, and Jordan’s son Marcus, 32 (the couple is pictured).
Further complicating matters is the romantic relationship between Pippen’s ex-wife, Larsa, 49, and Jordan’s son, Marcus, 32.
The couple are understood to have started dating since 2022 before splitting earlier this year.
Pippen and Larsa were married for almost 20 years and had four children together before divorcing in 2021.
Pippen is in Australia this month to participate in the country’s National Basketball League awards banquet and subsequent speaking tour with former teammates Horace Grant and Luc Longley.
The Hall of Famer was a member of all six of the Bulls’ title-winning teams.