Pippen: Praising the other '33'

Bill Simmons praises one of my favorite NBA players, Scottie Pippen.....

ESPN.com: Page 2 - Praising the other '33':
You don't define a career by one play that wasn't.
... you probably wonder why Scottie's recent retirement wasn't a bigger story. It's not every day one of the 20 greatest players ever hangs it up, right? Does MJ win six rings without him? Does anyone even consider the concept of a point forward? Did any other small forward affect a game in more ways? Was there a more influential defensive player in the past 30 years?


During the 1992 Olympics, Chuck Daly called Scottie his second-best player, describing him as the ultimate "fill-in-the-blanks guy." That's right. Like The Wolf in "Pulp Fiction," Scottie specialized in cleaning up everyone else's mess. When Magic was running amok in the 1991 Finals, Scottie shut him down. When the Knicks were shoving the Bulls around in the 1994 playoffs, Scottie dunked on Ewing, then stood over him defiantly. During the Charles Smith game the year before, Pippen and Horace Grant were the ones stuffing Smith again and again. And when the 1998 Pacers tried to snuff out the MJ era, Jordan and Pippen crashed the boards and willed themselves time and again to the foul line in Game 7, two smaller guys dominating the paint against a bigger team. They just wanted it more

....

which was precisely what happened in 1994 during MJ's first sabbatical. Scottie (20.8 ppg, 8.7 rpg, 5.6 apg, 49% FG) came within a fishy foul on Hubert Davis from taking Chicago to the Finals. How did he not win the MVP award? Pippen detractors conveniently forget that season, just like they ignore the older Scottie leading Portland to within one self-destructive quarter of the 2000 Finals, or gutting through the 1998 playoffs with two herniated disks, in the process jeopardizing his crack at free agency. It's easy to dismiss him as Jordan's sidekick.