I disagree, Pippen was just a better player than Pau, he ran the show when Jordan was out injured. With a rebounder as Rodman they did not really need to rely on a big man to lead them, Pippen, Jodan, Kukoc, Harper, could easily hit from the outside, Luc longley wasn't that bad as a center. IMO Jordan had alot more talent around him than kobe has.
He would have said the same thing about LeBron if that's who had just beaten him. Most coaches play it safe with that sort of bulletin board material.
Interesting stat: Kobe has played 15 more playoff games than MJ did and yet... 30+ point games in playoffs: Jordan 109 Kobe 76
Ugh. Listen. Pippen was awesome, but he and MJ had NO OFFENSIVE POST PLAYER to throw the ball to. Kobe has had Shaq and Pau. It is nearly impossible to win in the playoffs without a scorer in the post. Pippen and MJ did it six times!!!! Pau makes Kobe's job soooo much easier.
The problem for the Bulls with Grant is that how he went, so did the Bulls. They beat Phoenix in a close game in the finals in a game where Grant was terrible. He had an uncontested dunk to tie the game with time running out and didn't even want to take that shot. The game wouldn't have been that close if he had a reasonably good game, let alone his typical game. For that reason, I think the Bulls let him walk. You can't be as good as your 3rd best player.
I think they'd have paid him if they thought he was more consistent. After Jordan retired the first time, the Bulls didn't win with him. Easy enough to lose without him, so the saying goes. Anyhow, according to basketball-reference.com, his salary with the Magic was $2.1M the first two seasons, or $200K more than he made with the Bulls. And this article says he signed his big contract after 2 years with the Magic: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-15869587.html And this article says the Bulls offered him $4M/year and rescinded the offer forcing Grant to leave. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/30/s...-leaves-the-bulls-to-help-solidify-magic.html It also states the Bulls felt he cost them a championship without Jordan that season:
I just wanted to point out that MVP trophy's are sh*t. NASH = 2 back to back. NO TITLES.. LEBRON = 2 back to back. NO TITLES. The MVP trophy is a joke. The real TROPHY comes when the FINALS ARE WON. KOBE > LEBRON and NASH. Everyone talks about SHAQ and GASOL helping KOBE without giving any credit to SCOTTIE PIPPEN. The man was all star talent. He is listed as one of the NBA's 50 greatest players. Without Scottie would Jordan have WON 6? Its highly debatable.
When talking about who is the greatest player of all time, I do not think it is right to consider NBA titles. MVP isn't that great but it is better. I think it is absolute bullshit when people say if they were that good they would have won titles. One player cannot win titles. and arguing about supporting cast is incredibly subjective. I know I'm in the very small minority with that opinion but it is just how I think.
I agree completely. Winning (games and championships) is the ultimate measure of teams, not individuals. Individuals can only do their best to help their teams win...if the rest of their team isn't good enough, even the best individual contributions won't be sufficient.
Pippen was a GREAT player. But to compare him to Shaq (while on the Lakers) isn't reasonable. Shaq absolutely terrorized teams, and completely dominated games. IMO, as far as most dominant player ever: Shaq is above Kobe, let alone Pippen.
I know PER doesn't tell the whole story, so don't bother stating that. I am however going to use it as a metric to those saying Jordan's supporting cast was better. Code: Playoff PER Jordan: Pippen: 90-91- 32.0 90-91- 22.0 91-92- 27.2 91-92- 20.1 92-93- 30.1 92-93- 16.9 95-96- 26.7 95-96- 19.4 96-97- 27.1 96-97- 18.1 97-98- 28.1 97-98- 19.5 Bryant: O'Neal: Gasol: 99-00- 19.3 99-00- 30.5 00-01- 25.0 00-01- 28.7 01-02- 20.5 01-02- 28.3 08-09- 26.8 08-09- 21.9 09-10- 25.3 09-10- 24.1 Like I said, PER doesn't tell the whole story, but it's interesting to me to see the parity between the two players. Kobe's best championship year is basically equal to Jordan's worst championship year. Also, Kobe has had significantly more help than Jordan ever received from their respective cohorts. If you're wondering why I'm only using playoff PER, it's because the conversation turned towards championships and playoffs. However, regular season is actually pretty similar. Also, I included this season for a larger sample size.
The factors PER misses are durability, usage rate, assisted bucket %, and defense. Generally I'd rather go with Win Shares and it seems to correlate much better with greatness (for the modern era, missing numbers complicate things before Magic's time). Since the post-season is a bit longer now, I would also suggest WS/48. Jordan struggled in two of his title runs (for his standards), because he had some usage rate problems and adjusting for teammates, he didn't ALWAYS come out on top of Kobe. Kobe was at about .24 WS/48, beating MJ two of those titles. LeBron was all-time historic in the 09 playoffs, so he deserves credit as well. Now of course, MJ had two other non-title years where he played better than Bryant. Shaq was a dominant player but Kobe almost had two outliers in the playoffs, which brought his dominance to a similar level in his prime. Pau Gasol is also being underrated because his defense has improved (Dwight Howard had a better series against Boston this year than against Pau last year), and he works well without an exorbitant amount of touches. I would say some of Grant's/etc. abilities and contributions are being solely attributed to Pippen. Just some nuances I wanted to take into account.
It's safe to say that without Pau Gasol, Lakers wouldn't have won last year's championship, and we could say same for this year, (haven't won it yet, but 3 games wins away from doing it). Isn't Pau considered as best big post player in the league right now? So was Shaq during the 3 rings they got together. What happened when he left? Did LA win anything? Plus when talking about Grant, Rodman, etc, remember Kobe has had Horry, Fisher, etc. (role players who played big for their championships) Then remember all the great teams MJ and Bulls had to beat to get to the Finals, year after year. HOFers like Barkley, Ewing, Stockton, etc etc, didn't get any rings because of MJ.
