Scottie Pippen reveals truth about his relationship with Michael Jordan

Scottie Pippen has peeled back more layers around his relationship with Michael Jordan during the Bulls’ decade of dominance.

Scottie Pippen has revealed his on-court chemistry with Michael Jordan didn’t always translate to their off-court interactions as he opened up on his relationship with the greatest basketballer in history.

The pair were the perfect double act as Chicago won six NBA championships in the 1990s but after documentary The Last Dance was released last year, cracks began to appear between the dynamic duo.

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The series focused on Jordan and the Bulls during their reign of dominance but Pippen took aim at His Airness for how the team’s story was told and was reportedly livid with how he was portrayed.

Pippen is set to release a tell-all memoir — UNGUARDED — that will go into depth about his time at the Bulls but he’s already hinted it wasn’t always rosy between himself and his partner in crime off the court.

“Michael was bigger than the game, you know. Even my initial arrival to Chicago he was a big, iconic figure for the NBA. So, we never really had that off -the-court relationship,” Pippen told GQ in a recent interview.

“Our relationship between the lines was impeccable. We pushed each other to be great. We trained with each other to be the best. So, everything we did, from a basketball standpoint, it was a high level of respect there that we knew we could be the best.”

Brothers in arms.

Speaking about how The Last Dance — which was co-produced by Jordan’s company Jump 23 — panned out, Pippen took a subtle swipe at his former teammate.

“I knew it was going to be something that was more built for Michael to super-size himself to this generation of basketball players, to make himself the greatest, and bigger, and everything was kind of focused on his legacy and what he did in the game,” Pippen said.

“It wasn’t about what the Chicago Bulls did. It wasn’t about what we did as a team.”

Pippen suggests in his book he was the “real” leader of the Bulls, and turned the dimmer down on Jordan’s influence on the team’s title-winning run in the 1990s, saying all the other players around him deserve more credit than they’re given.

“Basketball is a team game. And when you separate one individual out, then you are taking away from the sport,” Pippen told GQ. “You’re talking about who’s the greatest player and this and that. You know, there’s really no great players in basketball. Basketball is built on great teams. You’ve got ‘good’ players. But when you talk about great players, you can only give them greatness because what?

“Michael Jordan didn’t beat them. The Chicago Bulls beat them. The Chicago Bulls were the better team. It’s not an individual game, you can’t go into basketball and beat nobody with an individual record.”

There were good times and bad.

Pippen was often portrayed as Robin to Jordan’s Batman — which is one of the reasons he was reportedly upset with The Last Dance. However, the 55-year-old doesn’t put all the blame on Jordan for that, saying the media’s incessant desire to talk him up led to him being elevated above everyone else.

“That ain’t Michael’s fault. He wasn’t writing the articles. But it was the cheerleaders that were behind Michael Jordan that were doing whatever they can to appease him, to get his vote,” Pippen said. “They felt they could get close to him.

“(The media) were going through a bit of a frenzy, to some degree. They were cheerleaders. They were fans because they were going through something they’d never seen before: an iconic basketball (player) with global appeal. That was shocking to them.

It was something for American media to feel like they had over the world. You know? They’d say: ‘We got Michael Jordan’ or ‘I’m friends with him’ or ‘He jokes with us’ They were all looking at it as an opportunity to get close to Mike.”