From teammates to rivals. Despite Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan playing on the Chicago Bulls together for many years, their once-tight bond has since deteriorated.
“They glorified Michael Jordan while not giving nearly enough praise to me and my proud teammates,” Pippen wrote in his November 2021 Unguarded memoir, alleging Jordan’s The Last Dance docuseries didn’t feature enough of their teammates. “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.”
Jordan, for his part, had shared his NBA experience with the Bulls during their 1997 season in the Netflix documentary, which premiered in April 2020. In the footage, the businessman revisited the Chicago-based team’s basketball dynasty.
“I think it was [a] genuine time even though we were competing and we were learning about each other and we were pushing each other, those are still genuine times,” Jordan previously told ABC’s Australian Today in August 2021 of his former teammates, noting he felt “sad” when it ended. “And you don’t share those with too many people.”
While Jordan revisited his basketball career and rise to stardom in the Last Dance, Pippen was notably upset that his contributions to the Bulls’ success were seemingly excluded from the documentary.
“I don’t think it was that accurate in terms of really defining what was accomplished in one of the greatest eras of basketball, but also by two of the greatest players — and one could even put that aside and say the greatest team of all time,” the Arkansas native told U.K.’s The Guardian in December 2020. “I didn’t think those things stood out in the documentary. I thought it was more about Michael trying to uplift himself and to be glorified. I think it also backfired to some degree in that people got a chance to see what kind of personality Michael had.”
Pippen even claimed that he told his former teammate that he “wasn’t too pleased” with the series. “He accepted it,” he added at the time. “He said, ‘Hey, you’re right.’ That was pretty much it.”
In his personal life, Pippen was married to Larsa Pippen (née Younan) for nearly two decades before their divorce was finalized in December 2021. Nearly one year later, Us Weekly confirmed that the Real Housewives of Miami star was seeing Jordan’s son Marcus Jordan.
“Marcus and Larsa are dating and have been spending more time together in recent weeks,” a source exclusively told Us Weekly in September 2022, after the Larsa Marie designer was spotted cuddling with her new beau. “They are trying to keep it on the down low because of the rift between Scottie and Michael.”
Scroll below for a complete breakdown of Scottie and Michael’s relationship history amid Larsa and Marcus’ newfound romance: