Boxed In: More important to the Chicago Bulls - Phil Jackson vs. Scottie Pippen

Every Batman needs a Robin. Every John Lennon needs a Paul McCartney. Even peanut butter doesn't reach its delectable heights without jelly picking up the slack from time to time. We all know Michael Jordan is the GOAT that led the Chicago Bulls to six championship titles in the '90s. But who was the second banana during the Bulls Dynasty? On today's Boxed In, life-long Chicago Bulls fan Andy Behrens — yes, even during the Eddy Curry years — presides over the arguments of Yahoo's Seerat Sohi and Zach Schwartz to settle the debate over who was more important to the Bulls: Scottie Pippen or head coach Phil Jackson. It's the 7-time NBA All-Star and 8-time member of the NBA All-Defensive First Team vs. the 13-time NBA Champion. It's tenacious D vs. the Zen Master.

Video Transcript

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ANDY BEHRENS: We are back on the "Boxed In" podcast to definitively settle another non-essential sports debate. Our subject today not at all surprisingly is the bulls dynasty of the '90s. Everyone is watching the last dance right now, so you know that we have to talk about the six-time NBA champs, Chicago Bulls. I feel like we are all either learning or maybe re-learning exactly how that team functioned around Michael Jordan. There is no question that he was at the top of the hierarchy at the absolute top of the pyramid for that team.

But today, we're talking about who was the second most important member of the bulls dynasty. Yahoo NBA reporter Seerat Sohi is going to argue on behalf of Scottie Pippen. He's an NBA Hall of Famer, seven-time All-NBA player. He's got a pretty good case here.

She is opposed by Yahoo's Zach Schwartz, who is arguing in support of Head Coach Phil Jackson. He's an 11-time NBA champ. That's pretty good. There's a pretty good argument there too. Two pretty good resumes here.

I will mediate this debate. I am Yahoo's foremost Bulls scholar, Andy Behrens. We might have had Vincent Goodwill do this. But, frankly, he's corrupt. He can't be trusted to do it. Vincent is--

[LAUGHTER]

--a flagrant Detroit fan. He can't be trusted here at all. So the responsibility falls to me. I will now hear opening statements. Let's begin with-- let's begin with someone who is dressed, more than appropriately dressed, as a legal counselor. Let's start with Zach. What's your case for Phil?

ZACH SCHWARTZ: Legal counselor, NBA coach-- you know, whatever. Any of it works. I'm going to lead off with this. What more do I need to say than the fact that how many rings did Michael win without Phil? How many rings did Scottie win without Phil? And even stepping back, how many rings did Kobe get without Phil? That answer is zero. And I think it's important to recognize that the man who pulled all the strings, put the systems in place that helped Jordan finally get over the hill and get that ring is Phil Jackson.

ANDY BEHRENS: It's a compelling opening case, Seerat. What is the initial argument for Scottie?

SEERAT SOHI: What do you call the guy who is anybody's number 2? You call him "the Scottie Pippen." In any debate, when you're talking about who's the most important, if something is named after that person, they kind of win that one. I think that's the best argument there is Scottie Pippen. He is the original Scottie. He's the original on purpose.

ZACH SCHWARTZ: The comic nerd in me takes a little offense to you just choosing to like gloss over Robin in this.

SEERAT SOHI: He replaced Robin?

ZACH SCHWARTZ: He did. He may have replaced Robin.

SEERAT SOHI: Who replaces an iconic superhero?

ZACH SCHWARTZ: The fact that Phil was able to manage Michael's ego, the chaos that came with Rodman when he showed up-- he was able to manage, as we saw in the doc, for almost his whole career with the Bulls Scottie being grossly underpaid and still keeping Scottie happy-- you know, that's the zen master. That's the zen master in a nutshell taking care of business and taking care that team. He's also the only coach that's won 70 games and won a championship-- still is. So, you know, I think he's a remarkable, remarkable coach.

ANDY BEHRENS: As someone who was a Chicago resident during the dynasty years, I will tell you the absolute classic sports radio argument that would break out pretty much every summer around the '90s Bulls was the idea that, perhaps, you could have replaced Scottie with, like, name your name your All-Star wingman from from the 1990s. Whether it's like Glen Rice or Reggie Miller.

This was the argument that people were making all the time. You know, meathead callers would say, yeah, you could replace him with Reggie, and they would still win the six titles. Where do you guys-- where you guys fall on that?

ZACH SCHWARTZ: Oh, Well, I think if you replaced him with Reggie, they win even more games. I think, you know, there's-- I love Scottie Pippen. And I think he's a great basketball player, and he is one of the best of all time. He deserves to be in that top 50 conversation, but there are 50 guys in there. And there's some other guys you go pluck out that maybe could fit in or guys behind him that you pluck out and suddenly they get to play Jordan.

We've seen it with other superstar guys were they-- LeBron builds his super team. And some of those guys take a slightly lesser role to win those titles. I just think they're plug and play guys that you could have grabbed.

SEERAT SOHI: You know what happens if a guy like Reggie, though, ends up being Jordan's sidekick is Jordan has to now guard the best player all the time. There are plenty of players who would have one with Jordan. Jordan's probably the best player of all time, right? But, at the same time, Scottie was the perfect complement, and I think we saw it in the last season.

With Scottie out, you know, Jordan ends up-- first of all, they got off to a horrible start to the season, at least for a championship team. And then all of a sudden, Jordan at 35 years old or 34 at the start of that season, ends up having to pump the accelerator. And he's exhausted. And I think that period right there shows you how important Scottie is because he can replace a lot of the things that Jordan does to a point that it allows him to then not really have to completely exhaust himself and the Bulls still win a ton of games.

So Scottie not only, you know, helped Jordan win those six rings but also probably-- you know, we see all this stuff about the Warriors, right? If you want to win a lot, it's a war of attrition. It's really more about managing your body than anything else. And Scottie was the best guy to take the load off of Michael I think for his career. He probably-- you know when we talk about Jordan finding a new gear, I don't know if he always is able to consistently find that new gear if he has other teammates that you probably have to pick up a lot more of the slack for. The fact that he was a perimeter player helped, I think, a lot.

ANDY BEHRENS: Yeah, that's a good point. Scottie also-- I believe Scottie in the first title run picked up Magic Johnson, and it completely flipped the series as well.

SEERAT SOHI: I don't think Reggie's doing that. I like Reggie a lot but--

ANDY BEHRENS: For sure 100% Reggie's-- Reggie's absolutely not doing that.

ZACH SCHWARTZ: Reggie may not be doing that, but you know who puts Scottie Pippen in that place to do that, and makes that decision, makes that call to flip him-- that's Phil Jackson. That's Phil Jackson pulling those strings. That's Phil Jackson who went on to win five more rings after having Michael and Scottie. So I think without Phil seeing some of these things, saying, hey, we got to put this guy in his spot, it never gets done.

SEERAT SOHI: That's Phil Jackson who also called Scottie the second best player in the NBA at the time.

ZACH SCHWARTZ: You know, like I said, Phil had to keep Scottie happy. He wasn't getting paid, so you got to say nice things about that guy to fill him up emotionally when the bank account isn't really as full.

SEERAT SOHI: Yeah, I don't know why Krause are Reinsdorf could never pick up that piece of advice.

[LAUGHTER]

ANDY BEHRENS: A totally separate discussion and absolute tangent-- but the idea that Reinsdorf would never renegotiate a contract when it was available to him as a tool and everybody's just fine with it? Like Jordan's just like, yeah, well, that was his role, so we had to play by it. Like, that's crazy to me.

SEERAT SOHI: Well, i Jordan was fine with it because Jordan was the one guy he renegotiated a contract with.

ZACH SCHWARTZ: Yeah.

ANDY BEHRENS: Yeah, that's fair. Based on where we're at in the actual documentary right now-- we're two episodes in. There's eight to go. We're like midway through the '97, '98 season. Scottie hasn't yet played-- delayed his surgery and setting up what is, honestly, the best line of the-- like, we're not going to get a better line out of this documentary than "I didn't want to [BLEEP] up my summer." Like, that's really good. That's about as good as it's going to get.

ZACH SCHWARTZ: Yeah.

SEERAT SOHI: Mhm.

ANDY BEHRENS: The team has started 12 and 9, right? So how does that-- how does that shape your opinion on the relative importance of both Phil and Scottie?

SEERAT SOHI: Well, to me, it shows, you know, despite how talented they were without one of their key cogs, they were struggling, you know. And without-- well, I mean, that's going to happen all the time. But you can take it back to the time that Scottie played without Jordan. They were still a great team. They weren't a championship team. But, you know, that time showed that they were both very important, and it was just a reversal of that, you know, Jordan without Pippen was still a fantastic player, still the best player in the league. But he couldn't consistently carry the road.

ANDY BEHRENS: What do you think Zach?

ZACH SCHWARTZ: You know, one of the biggest takeaways I've had from this documentary has been the fact that-- or, I'm not here to disparage Scottie Pippen. I'm here to argue the merits of Phil Jackson. Watching the documentary, the biggest takeaway I have had is that some of the other people on that team not very good.

Watching Steve Kerr sprint around-- it was like, oh my god, he's like-- it looks like he's like $1.30 soaking wet. Like that's-- to get that guy numerous rings, to get some of these players that were on this team in the positions that they were in to succeed is mind boggling to me. And I don't know.

Like, Michael is amazing, and the team that they ended up building around him was good. And the trades they made were good. But, oh my god, like the center play that they had, the guards that they had weren't exactly blowing your hair back. So I just-- that's the biggest takeaway I have had was it gave me another appreciation for the scheme and the system that they ended up developing there in Chicago.

SEERAT SOHI: Phil did an excellent job, but you're only ever as good as the ingredients that you cook with for any coach. But great players without a great coach can take you almost all the way. Like, I don't think you-- I don't think you win the finals without a competent coach. But you don't even sniff them if you don't have the right players.

ANDY BEHRENS: How many of Phil's contemporaries do you think as coaches could have also led the Bulls to six titles?

SEERAT SOHI: I mean, it's hard to say six, right? Like that's probably at the time only Phil. But, you know, at the time, Greg Popovich was not a head coach in the NBA. But, you know, I think it would've been different. I think it would have-- like just because of butterfly effect and what not.

But I think they probably win for or five, you know. I don't think they three-peat without Phil. I think that he kind of laid things out in a way that allowed them to tolerate each other for as long as they could, right? But I think, you know, they definitely win a couple of rings. I don't know how many. But can flip it and Scottie's off the team, I think you can make a similar argument.

ZACH SCHWARTZ: I think Pat Riley's probably the only coach in the league at that time that could get them any championship. I don't think George Karl, who got the Sonics to-- I believe he was the one who got the Sonics to the finals. I don't think he's getting it done. I just-- I think Phil is kind of the only guy that can massage and deal with certain guys' egos as well as he does.

ANDY BEHRENS: Yeah. So Zach, let me get your thoughts on the to Jordan-less years-- mostly Jordan-less years in between the two three-peats. So I think the most impressive thing about that is that they go from like a 57-win team in '93 and then they're like a 55-win team that is competing legitimately for a title the following year without Jordan. Does that speak more to the job that Phil did or the player that Scottie was?

ZACH SCHWARTZ: I mean, I think it's a direct-- it directly shows how good Phil is that you lose the best player in the history of the NBA, and you get to the Eastern Conference semis. There's only a two-game difference when you lose your best player and the best player on earth? That, I think, speaks to the ability to manage people and to put people in place to succeed.

Even Scottie only averaged 22 a game. Well, it's like, you need more scoring than that. I think Phil's best ability is to get people to rise those kind of occasions, and that's the clearest with that '93, '94 and the '94, '95 team.

ANDY BEHRENS: All right, give me closing arguments-- anything that you haven't said, any ammunition that you want to throw out there.

SEERAT SOHI: I'm going to close with my opening argument. Being a sidekick is literally named after Scottie Pippen. Like, that's it. That's just the whole ballgame, you know.

ANDY BEHRENS: Yeah.

SEERAT SOHI: It's the Bill Russell Finals MVP trophy because he was the best winner of all times. Like, Scottie Pippen is-- now everybody is somebody else's Pippen. Are you Jordan or are you Pippen? Like that, to me, kind of opens and closes it.

ZACH SCHWARTZ: I just want to circle and highlight the fact, again off of my opening argument, Phil Jackson constantly evolving-- went and got rings elsewhere, proved he could do it with other guys, proved he could do it with just one superstar really with that Kobe-Pau team. I don't think we get that necessarily from Scottie Pippen.

I don't think when you step back and look at those Portland Trail Blazers teams-- you know, granted he had lost a little bit at that point. But they didn't win a title. You know, they had two a piece by Phil and Kobe and Shaq. And I think the ability for Phil Jackson to not just lead an absolute psychopath in Michael Jordan to titles and teach him how to run a team and kind of managing him the right way, and then to leave that team and go to another team-- managed completely different egos-- have them win three titles, and then a couple years down the road win two more titles managing the most Michael-like ego you can have out there and getting that all done and managing Ron Artest along the way--

SEERAT SOHI: Mhm.

ZACH SCHWARTZ: Rodman along the way. I mean, I just don't know how many people have the hands to touch such a hot stove as Phil Jackson does.

ANDY BEHRENS: OK, I think I've heard enough. I think I'm able to render judgment on this. I will start by considering Scottie Pippen, who I think is-- I don't know. If he's not the best wing defender in NBA history, he's really close to it. Favorite player of mine for a long time. Absolutely love him. 10-time All-Defensive Team, seven-time All-NBA. I think he's fantastic.

A couple of good points that were made-- one of which was what happened after the Bulls? And the fact that Phil wins five more titles in a somewhat different manner with like two very different looks for the teams is really impressive to me. Scottie, Scottie was the best player on like a 59-win team that didn't win a title. It means something.

But where we are in the documentary right now with Scottie just doing almost everything that one can do to detonate a season versus-- like, the fact that we know that Phil somehow-- like, this plane is on fire. And Phil is going to land the damn thing, and they win a title. That is just staggering to me. So based on what I've heard, I'm going to give the slightest of edges to Phil Jackson and to Zach in this argument.

ZACH SCHWARTZ: Thank you. Hey, I was worried as you started to make the points about Pippen's contributions. I was very worried. And then when I pulled up the actual splits and saw some of the numbers there. I was, like, oh, god. Oh, god.

But I think, you know, at the end of all of it, it's that insane ability Phil had to manage some of these people. And I wish I had honestly made that point about Scottie trying to detonate that season. It's a good argument as to Phil's ability to kind of manage people and guide them through this as everything's on fire around him then still, you know, gets down to the finals and gets a chance to win it.

SEERAT SOHI: But Phil also, you know, ratchets up the conflicts in that-- I know, I just can't help myself.

[LAUGHTER]

I know I've already lost. I know I've already lost. But Phil also ratchets up the conflict in that situation by turning it into an us versus them thing when I think he had some opportunities to try to smooth things out but never really did that. Because, I mean, let's face it. Phil Jackson also has a bit of an ego himself too. And he's a zen master, and he understands people. He knows how to make his point without having to make it publicly I think, which is something that Scottie was never quite that good at.

And it did end up almost detonating the team. That's fair. But I think there's a ton of stuff that happened behind the scenes that was also not the most advisable behavior. But because some of the people doing it were just, you know, better at presenting themselves publicly, it didn't get criticized as much.

ANDY BEHRENS: I also want to give Phil credit for-- like, it's unbelievable to me the fact that they were flirting with Tim Floyd after a 72-win season in which they won the title. They're like, yeah, maybe Tim Floyd's our guy. And Phil survived that for two more years.

ZACH SCHWARTZ: I just loved that. It was hilarious that, that was the guy that they ever thought could replace one of, if not the, best basketball coach of the modern era.

ANDY BEHRENS: OK, it feels good to end on a note where we're trashing Tim Floyd.

ZACH SCHWARTZ: Yeah. Yes, it does.

ANDY BEHRENS: I feel full now. I feel satisfied. That is going to do it for this episode of "Boxed In." You can catch us every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Please, you know, the drill-- rate and review. Find us on Apple Podcasts. That is going to do it. We are out.

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