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Michael Jordan is a five-time NBA Most Valuable Player, a six-time champion and widely regarded as the greatest basketball player of all time. But he was no fun to play with, according to one famous former teammate.
In two spells with the Bulls, Jordan led the Chicago side to back-to-back-to-back titles – known as a Three-peat – on two separate occasions.
The first of those treble crowns was earned between 1991 and 1993, after which the iconic No.23 retired to play baseball following the murder of his father.
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He then returned to the NBA in 1995 and once again guided the Bulls to three championships in succession between 1996 and 1998. Then Jordan retired for the second time, a break from the game he'd cut short once against when he came back in 2001 for a short sting with the Washington Wizards.
The individual and team glory Jordan powered throughout his career saw him etch a strong case to be considered the NBA GOAT.
Yet Scottie Pippen, an All-NBA teammate of Jordan's on the Bulls, claims the basketball megastar was a "horrible player" and "horrible to play with".
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speaking on his former Bulls teammate Stacey King’s podcast Gimme the Hot Sauce, Pippen unleashed on Jordan.
“I’ve seen Michael Jordan play before I came to the Bulls," he said. "You guys have seen him play … He was horrible to play with.
"It was all 1-on-1, shooting bad shots. All of a sudden, we become a team and we start winning.
"Everybody forgot who he was. He was a player who was really not at the top of his category. It was scoring.”
After their sixth title alongside Jordan with the Bulls, Pippen was traded to the Houston Rockets.
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He then moved swiftly on to a four-year spell with the Portland Trail Blazers before a brief return to Chicago at the tail end of his NBA career.
Regarded as one of the best players of his generation and an all-time great defender, Pippen played a major role in the triumphant Bulls teams. Since retiring, he has not held back on his feelings towards Jordan, though.
Topics: NBA, Michael Jordan, Chicago Bulls, Basketball
Ryan Baldi