At this point, it’s hard to think that there’s nothing that the Chicago Bulls Hall-of-Fame forward Scottie Pippen won’t say. He’s already including a number of his former teammates, including all-time great shooting guard Michael Jordan and legendary head coach Phil Jackson, among his issues he’s taking on ahead of the release of his memoir “Unguarded”.
This includes his problem with Jordan shedding too much praise on himself in the hit 10-part docuseries “The Last Dance” and not giving enough to his teammates. Pippen also thinks that Jordan was pretty selfish throughout his career in the way he looked at himself.
In terms of his issues with Jackson, it looks like it stemmed back to that infamous moment when Pippen did not get the final play drawn up for him in a game in the 1994 playoffs against the New York Knicks. Instead, the play went to the newly inducted Hall-of-Fame forward Toni Kukoc.
The shadow that Pippen found himself in behind Jordan looks to be something that is now really boiling over. In fact, a lot of the frustrations that Pippen apparently felt during his playing days in the NBA, especially during his run with the Bulls, could be coming to the surface in Unguarded.
Chicago Bulls Hall-of-Famer Scottie Pippen taking some shots at Michael Jordan ahead of the release of his book
It will be interesting to see if there are any claims that emerge in Unguarded that are new and hold any merit. In an interview with the New York Times that was released over the weekend, Pippen didn’t really mention a whole lot that showed that he would be doing to smooth anything over with the likes of Jordan and Jackson either.
But he also doesn’t think that what he’s said in this book will cause any permanent rift in his relationship with Jordan in particular. Interestingly enough, he also mentions that he hasn’t told Jordan about anything that he put in the book either.
Pippen seems to use the justification that Jordan didn’t tell that many people about what he was going to say about some of his former Bulls’ teammates in The Last Dance, so he can do the same thing with this memoir, and it will all be fine.
It’s hard to know how all of this will go over in terms of maintaining some long and important relationships for Pippen from his days with the Bulls in the 1980s and 1990s. But that is a move, and risk, he’s looking like he will take on now.
Pippen is likely to continue to stay in the midst of headlines ahead of the release of Unguarded if the past few months are any indication of what’s to come. He’s working to generate quite the buzz for this book.