His back bothers him just about all the time now, really.
“After I had those two disks pop out on me in 1998, it changed the whole mentality of my game,” Scottie Pippen was saying recently as his Portland Trail Blazers were finishing a trip through the Eastern Conference.
“I sort of had to accept not being the guy I was before. I felt my performance level would take a hit, that I would not be the same player I was before.”
Houston and Portland probably would have appreciated knowing that before Pippen signed the contract that pays him $18 million this season and $19.7 million next season, which he says will be his last in the NBA.
Back on the injured list with a knee problem that might require surgery, Pippen said he knows the dream of a seventh NBA championship–one more than Michael Jordan–probably won’t be realized. His Trail Blazers are now a middle-of-the-pack Western Conference team with a first-year coach and several new players.
“If you step back and take a long look at it, we broke up the team that went to the Western Conference finals and lost to the Lakers in the seventh game (in the 1999-2000 season),” Pippen said.
So that’s how it’s winding down for one of the most controversial players of his era: collecting checks and a few assists for a team hoping merely to make the playoffs.
There’s much about Scottie Pippen that is different now, a toned-down, quieter game, a player no longer regarded among the NBA’s elite. Yet much is the same. A kid in the locker room brings Pippen coffee and says it contains two sugars. Pippen sends him back to add another one. Nothing is ever quite right, it seems. And there is the stinging wit, Pippen defiant and unapologetic to the end.
He can see where the questions are heading and he looks up.
“I’d rather be here than where MJ is,” Pippen said, a smile creasing his long face. “Does that answer your question?”
It answers many questions about Pippen, who was brilliant in the role of Jordan’s straight man but often bristled over it.
He was voted one of the top 50 players in NBA history in conjunction with the league’s 50th anniversary five years ago. Many objected to his inclusion, given Pippen’s supporting role in the Jordan show.
He walked out on his team during the 1994 playoffs, one of the most astonishing mutinies in sports history, but teammates long regarded him more favorably than Jordan because of his unselfish game.
His relationship with Jordan was uneven, and effectively ended after their final season together in Chicago. Jordan was furious when Pippen started the season late because of foot surgery, then threatened to quit rather than play for the Bulls.
Jordan made it clear after the NBA Finals Game 6 victory over Utah, when Jordan hit his famous game-winning shot, that he believed Pippen had quit again in that game and exaggerated the effects of a back injury.
A year later, when Pippen was feuding with Charles Barkley and trying to get traded from Houston, he brought Jordan’s name into the controversy. Jordan called Pippen to warn him to keep his mouth shut.
Jordan remains the politician, but Pippen, with less to lose publicly, remains playful. He hasn’t spoken to Jordan “in a few years,” he said.
“I thought he’d change his mind at the end and not play,” Pippen said. “It’s hard to predict what he’s going to do.”
As it is with Pippen.
Despite the controversies and the injuries, Pippen remains a valuable player. Although he was scoring a career-low 11 points per game before going out, his unselfish play and court awareness prompted new coach Maurice Cheeks to bench Damon Stoudamire and install Pippen at point guard to run the team.
“He’s still the best guy I’ve ever played with,” said Steve Kerr, reunited with Pippen as part of the Derek Anderson-Steve Smith trade. “He knows how to find you where you want the ball.”
Though it’s harder with this Portland team of no centers, too many small forwards and a go-to guy, Rasheed Wallace, who doesn’t particularly like to take big shots.
“The approach is different with a new coach,” Pippen said. “The mind-set is more of everyone getting to know one another. I’m not able to do the things I could, but I feel I’m a leader, that I’m smarter and have learned the game more, and I like the enjoyment the game still brings.
“The ultimate goal is always to be a champion, but I enjoy the challenge of working toward that every day, the game and the camaraderie with the players. You can’t replace that.”
Pippen acknowledged that he doesn’t have much time left and he accepts it.
“I have to be happy and thank God. Here I was such a longshot from a small college . . . I didn’t think I’d get drafted and now I’m in my 15th season,” he said. “I don’t know if my career could have been any better.”
Pippen then began to smile and it’s clear the devil inside him is at work again.
“Unless maybe,” he drawled, “I had been able to go to the Lakers from Houston.”
