Scottie Pippen says MJ averaged more assists than him seven times in nine years together because Jordan’s stats were intentionally inflated.
Michael Jordan’s legacy has been under attack lately. NBA analyst Tom Haberstroh published an article for Yahoo Sports questioning the integrity of MJ’s only Defensive Player of the Year award in 1988.
Now, internet articles are resurrecting a quote from Scottie Pippen’s autobiography, Unguarded, released nearly three years ago on November 9, 2021. According to Pippen, a scorekeeper handed over the game’s stats sheet to Phil Jackson while telling Jordan they padded the stats for him.
“One night, a scorekeeper came into the locker room to hand the stat sheers to Phil Jackson. I couldn’t believe the look the guy gave Michael: ‘See MJ, we take care of you,” wrote Scottie.
Jordan got help from scorekeepers
On page 89 of the book, Pippen talks about competing with Jordan for the most steals in a season. Scottie calls it a “healthy competition” so that they can concentrate more on playing defense. However, Pip says that it was never a “fair fight.”
And it wasn’t because MJ was the better defender. “Heavens, no,” Pip said. Instead, it was because Jordan was better at getting people to do whatever he wanted. Furthermore, Pippen claimed that he saw it happen repeatedly, from the first training camp in 1997 to the final victory rally in 1998.
“Say I deflected the ball and tapped it over to him. I should get credit with the steal, right? Nope, more often than not, the steal went into his column on the stat sheet, and I could do nothing about it,” added Pippen.
MJ had 182% more steals at home
Interestingly, Haberstroh’s research revealed that during Jordan’s greatest individual season ever in 1988, when he won his only DPOY award, his ‘stocks’ or totals for steals and blocks were consistently nearly twice as many at home as they were on the road.
“Dating back to 1982-83 when the award was established, Jordan’s home-vs.-away disparity in combined blocks and steals represents the largest of any Defensive Player of the Year award winner in NBA history. No other instance in the award’s history has a player shown a disparity that touched 160 percent — except for Jordan’s 1987-88 season, which clocked in at 182 percent,” Haberstroh wrote.
One year after Unguarded was released, Pippen also said that he never won the DPOY award during his illustrious NBA career because people were busy looking at Michael. Well, he actually meant they were busy looking after MJ.
But then again, these things that Scottie said were after the Last Dance, when his relationship with his former teammate was already estranged, so we don’t know if he really meant his words or if it was one of his many counter-attacks at MJ after he felt slighted by ‘The Last Dance.’