Transcription
Hi, ma'am. Peace. So, hall-of-famer, six-time champion, and one of the great two-way players of all time, Scottie Pippen, has recently made the news by making what is deemed to be "controversial" statements in regards to the comparison between Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
Those of us who have followed Scottie Pippen's statements about Michael and the Michael versus LeBron comparison over the years are not surprised. Scottie has made the news or the airwaves in the past in regards to his statements about LeBron James being "better" than Michael Jordan. He's also made statements, quite as kept, about Kobe Bryant, in his opinion, having advantages over Michael Jordan. But those of us who understand Scottie and where many of those statements come from, you know that it comes from a place of him being the NBA's "little brother." For those of us who know, we know that Scottie Pippen, when he was drafted by the Bulls, he was put through a lot of mental turmoil by Jordan. Both him and Horace Grant were, which is why they both kind of still to this day have a very passive-aggressive viewpoint in regards to how they speak about Jordan, because he put them through a lot of things in their first three or four seasons with the Bulls. Because he was trying to make them tougher and prepare them for their title runs, which would come in the early 90s.
Anyway, Scottie has said more than a couple of times that he feels like LeBron James is a better player than Michael Jordan. He's also said that he felt like Kobe Bryant is a better shooter than Michael Jordan, which is what he's going to say in this interview right here with Tracy McGrady on "The Rachel Nichols Show" on ESPN. So, let's see what Scottie has to say. Let's see the way in which he says it. He kind of got caught off camera making a slick statement about Michael in comparison to Kobe, and Rachel Nichols called him out, as did McGrady. So, let's see what he has to say.
Alright, time to debut a new segment on the show called "Hot Mics." Take a listen to Scottie. This is during a commercial break yesterday. They were recording this, but of course they were. I say this, and I may be wrong: "There's no way." "I'm Jacob. I'll shoot." Okay, no, listen to us. God, he said, he said, "I must say this, and I may be wrong, but there's no way MJ could outshoot Kobe."
Well, if you feel like you may be wrong, how the hell are you going to say "there's no way"? When you make a statement and you preface it with "I may be wrong," then the subsequent statements should have some form of doubt to it, right? You're supposed to say, "I may be wrong, but I think that it's a possibility that..." You don't say, "I may be wrong, but there's no way that..." So, that's basically Scottie trying to be sneaky about trying to start a conversation about somebody being better than Jordan at something. And that's the way he'll oftentimes approach the Jordan comparison. He tries to, in a sneaky way, put someone over Jordan. Why? Because, in my view, Scottie still has a lot of baggage that he carries around about the credit that Jordan gets for many of the title runs, which, in my view, Scottie thinks is an inordinate amount of credit. In my view, Scottie believes that playing with Michael has taken away a lot of prestige from his career. I think that Scottie believes in his heart that had he been able to go on his own team and, you know, really kind of craft out or cut out his own niche in NBA lore, that he would have been him, but he would have been viewed in a much higher esteem than he is. And I think that that's really one of the reasons why I love what I stated earlier about him and Horace Grant and a lot of the other younger Bulls players being put through the meat grinder by Jordan in the late 80s, early 90s, which is why he does what he does in regards to these little silly statements.
But let's see how Tracy McGrady goes about analyzing his comparison between Jordan and Kobe Bryant as far as jump shooters. "Oh, shoot, I'll let you guys have that conversation." "Well, because Kobe shot more outside shots to where Mike was in between, right? That's when Kobe stepped out a little bit more. Kobe thrills me like Steph Curry thrills people in today's game, like when he was him, like, 'Oh, you took my shooting about...'" "Yes, no, no, no, Scott, I don't understand him." "No, man, Ellen Haley, what was T-Mac saying?" T-Mac was merely saying, "Scottie, you on that [ __ ]." First of all, he was trying to make Scottie understand that...
And this is something that I've touched on numerous times in regards to the Kobe Bryant comparison with Jordan, because you'll oftentimes hear Kobe Bryant fans state that Kobe was a better outside shooter than Michael Jordan. And for those of us who really follow the game and really understand what they're watching, you know that Kobe was not a greater outside shooter than Jordan; he just took more outside shots. Why? Because he did not have the explosive first step that Jordan had, which is the reason why he had to use a lot of crossover moves and go between the legs a whole bunch of times, because he had to – he knew he had to fake his opponent out. Jordan would oftentimes just beat his defender with the first step and get to the basket, and because Jordan had such big hands, he was a better finisher around the rim. Kobe was also very good to great finisher, but he wasn't a finisher like Jordan because he didn't have the hand size. He also didn't have Jordan's first step, so that's why Kobe started to relegate himself more to being an outside shooter. He could still go to the basket, of course, and he was very good; he was a very explosive leaper. But Kobe actually preferred to shoot from the outside. So, because he took more outside jump shots, and he was – Kobe was one of the great streak shooters in NBA history. Like, when Kobe got hot from outside, he could shoot with anybody. And then, because he could shoot off the dribble, people actually attribute a greater shooting prowess to Kobe than what he actually had. And as usual with Kobe, the mystique and the narrative tend to outweigh the reality, as is going to be shown later on in this segment.
But McGrady already picked – you know, he already picked away at Scottie's argument early on when Scottie first off tried to compare Kobe to Steph Curry. That's narrative. Like, in Scottie's mind, Kobe Bryant could shoot with Steph Curry, but the reality? No, he couldn't.
"Continue for, 'No, that's not true. That neither way you are wrong, because the debate is not whether or not they're both great players. The debate is who was a better shooter.'" "Okay, so that's the debate. I say Kobe was a better outside shooter." "I agree with that, especially early on in his career." "The statement you made about Kobe eyes..."
Well, look, let me say this: I don't agree that Kobe was a better outside shooter than Jordan. I believe that Kobe practiced the long-range shot more than Jordan because by the time Kobe came into the NBA in the late 90s, the three-point shot was much more of a featured item than it was in Jordan's era.
I mean, if you look up Larry Bird's outside shooting numbers as far as being a 3-point shooter, even he did not really start to shoot that shot until the mid to late 80s. Now, Larry Bird had a 50-40-90 season; I think he had one in '88. But other than that, Larry Bird was not a guy who sat out there and took, you know, 300, 400 three-point shots a season. He didn't really do that, and he didn't really even approach that until later on in his career when the shot became more prominent. Now, one of the old wives' tales that many of the Kobe Bryant and LeBron James superfans state is that the NBA moved the 3-point line in for Michael Jordan. That's not true. The reason why the NBA moved the 3-point line in, which they did in the '94 offseason, was because the scoring had gone down so much in the NBA in the '93-'94 season. Because the league got so defensive and so physical, they moved the 3-point line in, and Jordan was retired when they did that; he wasn't even playing. So, when he did come back into the NBA at the end of the '95 regular season, yes, he did play in the league that had a shortened 3-point line for two years, and then '97-'98 they moved the line back out. But the 3-point shot was not a shot that a lot of players really took; you had to be a specialist to take that shot. Like, guys didn't come down back then in that era and pull up off the dribble for three. Most players were not doing that. Like, you have certain guys who did it, like Mark Price, Tim Hardaway would do it every once in a while, John Stockton if they needed him to, he could do that. But even Reggie Miller would run off screens for the most part. Reggie Miller very rarely pulled up off the dribble for three, very rarely. So, you know, that shot was not a shot that most players did until like the early 2000s, late 90s, early 2000s. So, it's hard to compare. Now, when you're talking about shooting proficiency and shot selection, it's not even close in regards to who took better shots.
Score. Kobe Bryant's shooting reminds me of a guy like a Steph Curry when he was in his prime. "With you." "So now you want to say, for as far as us, for a scorer, yeah, you want to say, how does your shooter shooting the ball?" "Yes, sorry, we had shooting all. Kobe shot the ball waiting. Steph Curry, yeah, shooters." "But the guy could shoot, he could shoot the basketball."
But once you call somebody a volume shooter, what are you saying? You're saying that he's a guy who takes bad shots. That's really all a volume shooter is: is a guy who takes bad shots and who does not really understand where on the court he should be shooting. That's part of what's called basketball IQ. And this is why I kind of get on, you know, the Kobe Bryant fans when they talk about his basketball IQ. Kobe was a very intelligent person, and he had up intelligence, and he could understand the game. But now, that's what made it even more grossly offensive to many of his coaches: that he had a brain like that and he still made the decision that he made with the basketball in regards to shooting, because he would take bad shots at bad moments. But because he was so fearless, oftentimes he would come out the hero just because of it. As a numbers game, if you're taking every game winner, yes, you're going to hit some. Then, because he was a transcendent talent, he would hit some shots that other guys couldn't hit, but he would also miss shots that other guys wouldn't take. Okay, that's part of basketball IQ: is knowing where you should be shooting and at what moment in the game you should be shooting certain shots. That's the difference between a 42-43% shooter and a 51-52% shooter, you know, as well as just skilled shooter.
"We, Daddy, I'm mistaken." "That's right there, man. I didn't say that I'll shoot it. I didn't say he could outshoot. I did not say, 'I see we will take that talent Kobe is,' but I'm some to say the guy can shoot the ball."
Now, this is really what matters right here when you look at the stats that says who's the better shooter. Two-point field goal percentage: Jordan was the better. And please keep in mind, this is including the years with the Wizards with Jordan. You know, but I won't use that – I won't use that corollary because Kobe also has, we all know, his years after the Achilles tear are like equivalent to Jordan's years with the Wizards. So, we'll just look at the numbers. Jordan had a better two-point shooting percentage. They had an equivalent three-point shooting percentage, but Jordan took far fewer threes. Why? Because he came from an era where the belief was you get to the basket, you try to get the best shot possible. It wasn't "keep jacking up three-point shots," right? So now, if you're playing in an era where the three-point shot is not quite as valued, you're taking less three-point shots, you're going to work on the shot less. Kobe Bryant worked on that shot incessantly and still shot the same percentage as Jordan. So, I mean, it's left to – it's left to basic methods of deduction that if Jordan had worked on that shot to the degree that Kobe Bryant had, that he would have been a better percentage shooter, just when you look at the fact that he played in an era where that shot was not as important and his percentage is still the same: 33%.
"I look at these dollars. Please, do we have three?" "I will say, I won't take the point. Look at being attempts. Yeah, yeah, felt like biggest fan. Mike didn't shoot that many threes. Mike was planning the ball. Is good. I talked to Free this morning, Ron Harper, man. He said there's no player ever, and we all know this, that you could ever compare to Mike." "So, Kobe?"
Oh, yeah, well, I mean, yeah, they were very similar because Kobe patterned his entire life off of Jordan, hitting just powder in his game. I mean, didn't Iggy try to walk like him, talk like him, and he tried to throw people off by growing an afro? Remember, first he came in late, boy, at it, but he's like, "Damn, I'm giving it away. Let me grow afro so that people don't know who I'm trying to copy." These guys, he said, Kobe did everything like Mike. I mean, it was like he copied everything that Mike did, from eating to sleeping.
LeBron is so different, right? And you look at like who are the great greats of the game, and Kareem is so different. His mentality is super different. LeBron is very social, right? Likes people to like him, likes to have fun. MJ and Kobe aren't totally – whoa, by most accounts, Jordan is much more social than Kobe. But I think that Jordan has become less social as he's gotten older because of the time period that we're living in, a hyper-scrutiny and everybody's quest to find something negative. I think that's the reason why he's pulled back a lot. He seemed to be much more gregarious if you look at a lot of his older interviews, you know, back in the 80s, early 90s. But, you know, early 90s when the media started to turn on him, I think that's when he started to retreat more to his shell. And then, of course, with the death of his father, he did not really have his guide/handler to, you know, to help him out of certain situations. So, I think that he just kind of fell back into his own cocoon and has been very reluctant to come out from that cocoon, which I don't blame him. But because of the cult of personality that has been created around him as a god-like figure, if I was Jordan, I would be really distant as well. Because, you know, when people worship you as a god, it's only a matter of time before they want to kill you as a false god, which is what you see now with many other statements about him funding prisons and all this other silly [ __ ] that guys allege and have never done any research on. You know, this thing that you could say about Jordan, but him funding prisons? Like, that's just – that's one of the urban myths, urban legends. It is really more of a testimony to how desperate people are to try to tear him down, then they try to corroborate this narrative that he's anti-black and that he hates black people. Also, the craziness.
But I definitely wanted to use this video because Scottie Pippen has oftentimes gone out of his way to try to throw a little darts at Jordan. And as you can see, this was something that wasn't purposeful; he said it during what he thought was a commercial break, and the woman who runs the show, Rachel Nichols, decided to turn it into a segment. So, he basically came on the air and had to kind of, you know, he had to kind of sidestep it a little bit. But overall, is Kobe Bryant a better jump shooter than Michael Jordan? No, he's just a guy who took more jump shots. And anybody who watched Jordan play, particularly from the early 90s to the mid 90s, knows that Jordan's jump shot was, you know, it was very, very underrated. You can't – you can't score 30-plus points a game in the league and be a shooting guard unless you can shoot. You just can't. But let's see what else Scottie Pippen has to say.