Scottie Pippen the movie critic is no fan of Michael Jordan the film director.
The former Chicago Bulls teammates are at odds over the portrayal of the squad’s dynamics in ESPN’s “The Last Dance.” While the10-part documentary captivated audiences in 2020, Pippen believes Jordan’s control over its production resulted in a one-sided view of Chicago’s final championship season. Pippen in his upcoming memoir, “Unguarded,” blasts Jordan for his work on “The Last Dance.”
” … they glorified Michael Jordan while not giving nearly enough praise to me and my proud teammates,” Pippen wrote in an excerpt that GQ published Tuesday. “Michael deserved a large portion of the blame. The producers had granted him editorial control of the final product. The doc couldn’t have been released otherwise. He was the leading man and the director.”
” … Even in the second episode, which focused for a while on my difficult upbringing and unlikely path to the NBA, the narrative returned to MJ and his determination to win. I was nothing more than a prop. His ‘best teammate of all time,’ he called me. He couldn’t have been more condescending if he tried.
“On second thought, I could believe my eyes. I spent a lot of time around the man. I knew what made him tick. How naïve I was to expect anything else.”
Pippen also criticizes Jordan for receiving a hefty paycheck for working on “The Last Dance” and notes no other Bulls players were compensated for it.
“To make things worse, Michael received $10 million for his role in the doc while my teammates and I didn’t earn a dime, another reminder of the pecking order from the old days. For an entire season, we allowed cameras into the sanctity of our locker rooms, our practices, our hotels, our huddles…our lives.”
Pippen isn’t the only former Bulls player who took umbrage with Jordan over “The Last Dance.” Horace Grant, who played for Chicago between 1987 and 1994, blasted Jordan and the filmmakers for producing what he describes as a “fake documentary.”
Nevertheless, Pippen’s comments will garner more attention than Grant’s, given the former’s status as Robin to Jordan’s Batman.
