Scottie Pippen slams Michael Jordan and The Last Dance: "My teammates and I didn’t earn a dime"

Sports Illustrated

Pippen has complained before about his portrayal in the Emmy-winning ESPN docuseries. But in his upcoming memoir Unguarded -- excerpted by GQ -- Pippen details his frustrations with The Last Dance, saying that the footage captured behind-the-scenes moments of his and his teammates' lives, yet they "didn't earn a dime" from it and didn't have any editorial control. “They glorified Michael Jordan while not giving nearly enough praise to me and my proud teammates," Pippen writes. "Michael deserved a large portion of the blame. The producers had granted him editorial control of the final product. 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.” Pippen adds: "Now here I was, in my midfifties, seventeen years since my final game, watching us being demeaned once again. Living through it the first time was insulting enough. Over the next few weeks, I spoke to a number of my former teammates who each felt as disrespected as I did. How dare Michael treat us that way after everything we did for him and his precious brand. Michael Jordan would never have been Michael Jordan without me, Horace Grant, Toni Kukoc, John Paxson, Steve Kerr, Dennis Rodman, Bill Cartwright, Ron Harper, B. J. Armstrong, Luc Longley, Will Perdue, and Bill Wennington. I apologize to anyone I’ve left out. I’m not suggesting Michael wouldn’t have been a superstar wherever he ended up. He was that spectacular. Just that he relied on the success we attained as a team—six titles in eight years—to propel him to a level of fame throughout the world no other athlete, except for Muhammad Ali, has reached in modern times. 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 also shared a text message from Jordan two days after The Last Dance's finale, reading: "What’s up dude? I’m getting word that you’re upset with me. Love to talk about it if you have time."