Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Is MJ To Blame For Pippen's Return?

I'm sure you're all aware Scottie Pippen wants to make a comeback to the NBA.

You're probably also aware Pippen owes U.S. Bank about $5 million.

So what exactly happened to all the money that Pippen made during his NBA career? Sure, he didn't make as much money as the players are paid today, but he made more than enough to survive.

Turns out, Michael Jordan probably has a bunch of Pippen's money. Henry Abbott of ESPN and True Hoop received a pretty interesting email from SI's Andrew Lawrence involving bets made between MJ and Pip back in the day.

News of his imminent financial demise hardly surprise. Rather, it calls to mind the absolute coolest Jordan story I'd ever been told -- courtesy of the AP's Jim Litke, the George Washington on my sports journalism Mt. Rushmore. That said, I take everything Jim says as gospel, this story especially. It starts with Jordan shooting around at practice at old Chicago Stadium when he looks up and notices the m&m race on the jumbotron. Curious, he asks one of the Bulls' staffers what's up and learns what he is seeing is actually a dry run-through of the night's in-game entertainment, in which the jumbotron and m&m race factor prominently. (I'm pretty sure this was before shooting t-shirts out of an air cannon captivated a nation.) Naturally, MJ wanted to know if the winner of the race was predetermined. Of course the 8-bit graphics betrayed the answer: a resounding "yes".

So later that night, Phil calls a time out and Jordan & co. repair to the bench. As he's sitting down, he looks up at the jumbotron to see the m&m race about to start. So he nudges Scottie.


MJ: "Bet you 5 grand yellow takes this."

Pip: "Bet."

I'm told this went on for years before Scottie ever got wise...

Oh Scottie, I'm sure you know the old saying: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me over and over for years, and I'll have to make a comeback a few years after I retire to pay off all my mounting debt."

(Via the Fanhouse)
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3 comments:

  1. That's an old story from Smith's book, Jordan Rules, but in the book it's Horace Grant that getting cleaned out.
    ReplyDelete
  2. I was wrong. An email from Sam Smith in response to my asking if he had wrote of this earlier, "i never wrote about that and doubt it went on for years as everyone knew that
    was taped. but who knows for sure"
    ReplyDelete
  3. You should have went with the old saying from Hamburg, Arkansas: "There's an old saying in Arkansas — I know it's in Texas, probably in Arkansas — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

    Isn't it illegal to pronounce Arkansas as "AR"-"KANSAS?" I think it is (saw it somewhere in stupid laws article), but I would suspect the man that uses the aforementioned quote to perfection would no doubt pronounce it that way.
    ReplyDelete

Try to play nice with each other, or else I will remove your comment.

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