Scottie Pippen will join his former Chicago Bulls teammates Horace Grant and Luc Longley for a series of public appearances in Australia to discuss Michael Jordan, the club’s six NBA titles, and the controversial ESPN documentary about those teams, The Last Dance.
In partnership with Australia’s National Basketball League, the ‘No Bull’ tour begins in Tasmania on Friday before moving on to Melbourne and Sydney.
The trio of former Bulls recently appeared at the NBL’s award ceremony in Melbourne – the birthplace of the 55-year-old Longley.
Pippen, a Hall of Famer, was a member of all six of the Bulls’ title-winning teams. Grant won three championships in Chicago before moving on to Orlando as a free agent in 1994, which is when Longley joined the Bulls en route to the club’s second three-peat of the decade.
The No Bull tour promises to revive recent criticism about the documentary, which Pippen and other former Bulls saw as being favorable to Jordan, who reportedly negotiated ‘final cut’ on the project.
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Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant and Luc Longley speak during the 2024 NBL MVP Awards Night
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Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman are pictured during a 1997 playoff game
‘I would say [the documentary was] entertaining, but we know, who was there as teammates, that about 90 percent of it [was] BS in terms of the realness of it,’ Grant said on ESPN 1000’s Kap and Co podcast in 2020.
‘It wasn’t real – because a lot of things [Jordan] said to some of his teammates, that his teammates went back at him. But all of that was kind of edited out of the documentary, if you want to call it a documentary.’
Grant goes on to reveal that he last communicated with Jordan three years ago via text and the pair’s fractious relationship was touched on during the series when Jordan accused Grant of being the one leaking information to journalist Sam Smith for the infamous Jordan Rules book that came out in 1992.
The book generated a lot of interest at the time with Jordan, arguably for the first time in his career at that stage, reflected in a less-than-impressive light in certain sections.
Pippen and Jordan have been at odds since the release of ESPN’s 2020 docuseries about the 1997-98 Bulls, The Last Dance, and things only got worse when Jordan’s adult son, Marcus, began dating Pippen’s ex wife, Larsa.
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Larsa and Marcus confirmed that they were dating in 2023 and split up about a year later
Things were fine between the two in the years after they retired.
Pippen described Jordan lovingly terms during his own Hall of Fame induction speech in 2010: ‘MJ, you have touched so many people’s lives, but none like mine. Thank you for being the best teammate; I will always cherish that experience and I will cherish our relationship forever.’
Similarly, Jordan credited Pippen for their six championships together in Chicago during his induction speech a year earlier.
‘In all the videos, you never just saw me; you saw Scottie Pippen,’ Jordan said. ‘Every Championship I won.’
Their partnership is legendary.
Jordan was one of the NBA’s preeminent stars when Pippen was acquired by the Bulls in a draft-day trade in 1987. The problem was, despite his obvious gifts, Jordan had yet to win much of anything at the professional level.
Enter Pippen, a former 6-foot-1 guard who grew into a dynamic 6-foot-8 forward at unheralded Central Arkansas.
Pippen’s arrival in Chicago, coupled with Phil Jackson’s promotion to Bulls head coach in 1989, became the catalyst that turned a woeful franchise into six-time NBA champions.
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Jordan and Pippen watch the Charlotte Bobcats take on the Bulls in Chicago in 2011
Not only did they win six titles together, but the pair remained fiercely loyal too.
In fact, in 2018, Pippen told ESPN that Jordan was ‘the greatest player to ever put on shoes and play in our game.’
He even backed off a comparison between Jordan and James: ‘I’m always asked to compare him to LeBron, and I try to make the best of it. But really, the comparison shouldn’t ever be made.’
More recently, though, Pippen’s praise of Jordan has descended into something entirely different.
The issues with Pippen began with ESPN’s ‘Last Dance’ docuseries, which aired in 2020 to wild acclaim.
The problem, from Pippen’s point of view, is that Jordan seemed to be credited for the Bulls’ success in the 1990s, while his teammates were seen as minor players.
‘They glorified Michael Jordan while not giving nearly enough praise to me and my proud teammates,’ Pippen, 58, wrote in his memoir, Unguarded, which was released in 2021. ‘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.’
As a result, Pippen claims, the documentary felt inauthentic.
‘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,’ Pippen told 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.’
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Scottie Pippen takes a photo with Michael Jordan during the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
But Pippen may have a separate issue with Last Dance, stemming from the criticism he took from Jordan in the docuseries.
Specifically, Jordan took issue with Pippen’s reluctance to get a necessary ankle surgery before the 1997-1998 season.
Although he eventually did undergo the procedure, he waited to do so until much of the off-season had passed, and as a result, did play until January.
And according to Jordan, Scottie’s reluctance to have the surgery came as a result of his contract dispute with Bulls general manager Jerry Krause.
‘Scottie was wrong in that scenario,’ Jordan said. ‘He could’ve gotten the surgery done as soon as the season was over and be ready for the season.
‘What Scottie was trying to do was try to force management to change his contract. Jerry wasn’t going to do that. So now I got to start the season knowing that Scottie wasn’t going to be around.’
As a result, the Bulls got off to a slightly disappointing 24-11 start that season, although they still went on to win their sixth title together.
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In the documentary, Jordan is the focus and Grant felt parts of what happened were edited out
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The back-and-forth between the pair escalated and Grant went as far as to call Jordan ‘a snitch’
Further complicating matters is the romantic relationship between Pippen’s ex-wife, 49-year-old Larsa, and Jordan’s 32-year-old son, Marcus.
‘Marcus and Larsa are dating and have been spending more time together in recent weeks,’ a source told Us Weekly in 2022 after the couple was spotted in public. ‘They are trying to keep it on the down low because of the rift between Scottie and Michael.’
Pippen and Larsa were married for nearly 20 years and had four children together before divorcing in 2021.
Larsa described their relationship candidly during an episode of Real Housewives of Miami, saying that the couple had intercourse four times a night for 23 years.
‘I was married for 23 years, I’ve always had sex like four times a night,’ she said. ‘So three times a week is nothing… I had sex four times a night, every night. I never had a day off for 23 years.’
