Scottie Pippen was not among the millions of people praising The Last Dance when it came out. As far back as last year, reports surfaced that the Chicago Bulls legend had a problem with the way he was portrayed in the documentary and how the team was often depicted as successful only because Michael Jordan was there.
Now, the public can finally get the story from Scottie Pippen himself. GQ published an excerpt of his upcoming memoir on Tuesday. The book is called Unguarded. In it, Scottie lets loose on Michael, ESPN, and the producers of The Last Dance.
“They glorified Michael Jordan while not giving nearly enough praise to me and my proud teammates,” he writes.
It is well-known that Michael Jordan had editorial control of the documentary. Plenty, including documentarian Ken Burns, have raised objections to that, saying that it turned The Last Dance into a propaganda piece and not truly a documentary. It is a sentiment that Pippen echoes in his book.
“Michael was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior. I was nothing more than a prop. His ‘best teammate of all time,’ he called me. He couldn’t have been more condescending if he tried.”
Scottie Pippen paints a depressing picture of being Jordan’s teammate. He said the documentary brought back memories of the Bulls’ success being “Michael on a pedestal, his teammates secondary, smaller”.
Pippen does write that Michael Jordan reached out to him when he received word that he was unhappy. He says that John Paxton reached out too to make sure Pippen knew that he was respected by the organization and his teammates. They were calls that felt less than sincere to Pippen.
“Both were aware of how angry I was about the doc. They were checking in to make sure I wouldn’t cause any trouble: to the Bulls, who still paid Paxson as an adviser; or to Michael’s legacy, always a major concern.”
Unguarded is out next week.
