Fair Jordan?

Michael Jordan should have demanded that the Bulls trade Scottie Pippen.

I say this in jest, of course, but while he called out LeBron for wanting to play with elite talent he seemed to have no problem whatsoever with sharing the court with another Hall of Famer.

With that said, the question then becomes if Pippen would have been a Hall of Famer without Jordan. We can never know for sure, but the evidence points to yes. He was on eight All-NBA Defensive First Teams and of the three times he made the All-NBA First Team, two of those times were without Jordan. Following Jordan's retirement before the '93-94 season, Pippen lead the Bulls to the second round of the Playoffs and finished third in MVP voting. In fact, they only won two fewer games than the previous season.

Of course, Pippen didn't do as well after leaving the Bulls, but his career was winding down at that point and he did have a couple good years in Portland.

So, if the two seasons Pippen spent in the prime of his career without Jordan are any indication of what the rest of his career would have been like, it seems pretty fair to say that he would have made it to the Hall of Fame. He might have never won a championship, but neither did Stockton, Malone, Barkley, Ewing, or Reggie Miller. They were all victims of the Jordan era. Or, is that the Jordan and Pippen era?

Before you accuse me of blasphemy, I'm not saying that Jordan needed Pippen to win. Michael Jordan is the greatest player of all-time and always will be. I'm just saying that the next time Jordan calls out a player for wanting to team up with another elite player (Bosh is good, but not that good) he might want to take a look at his championship team rosters. Two of the best players in the league were always on them.

Oh yeah. And Phil Jackson.

I guess it comes down to this: Scottie Pippen was drafted after Jordan's third year. He was there pretty much the entire time. If the Cavaliers had drafted a player the caliber of Scottie Pippen after LeBron's third year he'd have won at least one ring by now and would still be in Cleveland.