ESPN article says Pippen's to blame...

Without MJ, he's been
in a Pip of a slump
By Steve Hirdt
Special to Page 2


Suppose that you've been away for a while, say, on an overseas trip for a couple of months. When you left, back in the first week of March, the Portland Trail Blazers were living up to their name: They were the hottest team in the NBA. Riding a four-game winning streak, including a big eight-point win at San Antonio, the Blazers reached the 60-game mark with a record of 42-18 and held the top seed in the competitive Western Conference.


Scottie Pippen and the Blazers can only hang their heads after getting swept by the Lakers.
Now, you come back, it's the first week in May, and you find out that not only did the Blazers finish seventh in the conference, but on Sunday they became the first team eliminated from the Western playoffs. The team that hoped to play into the second week of June was gone before we turned the calendar to May.

Portland's demise was, to coin a phrase, a team effort. The net has been buzzing about where the blame should lie. Among the more popular whipping boys: general manager Bob Whitsitt, coach Mike Dunleavy, star Rasheed Wallace, import Rod Strickland and, of course, all-purpose blame recipient Shawn Kemp. The season-ending injury to Bonzi Wells didn't help, either.

In all this, it seems as if Scottie Pippen's name was rarely mentioned. This was Pippen's second season with the Blazers, his third year away from the Bulls, and he's still searching for that seventh (and perhaps more importantly, first Michael-less) championship ring. With Michael Jordan trying to make up his mind for the 2001-02 season -- his deliberations are starting to seem less the classic stuff of "Hamlet" and more the political ruminations of a Mario Cuomo -- it's time to reflect on his old teammate Pippen.

Remember when Pippen used to be called the second-best player in the NBA by those who would dismiss Hakeem, Malone, Robinson, the young Shaq, and other stars of the mid- to late 1990s with the same haughtiness with which (at least according to Billy Crystal) sportswriters of the early '60s dismissed Roger Maris? Nothing that Pippen has done without Jordan, either with the Bulls or after moving on to Houston and Portland, has given anyone the foundation to make such a claim:

During the nearly two years of Jordan's first retirement, yes, Pippen was the Bulls' leading scorer and certainly their best player. But those two seasons were the only ones in which Phil Jackson's Bulls did not even reach the Eastern Conference finals, losing to the Knicks in 1994 and to the Magic in 1995.

After he signed with Houston and played in all 50 games during the shortened 1998-99 season, Pippen's Rockets were eliminated by the Lakers in four games in the first round of the playoffs. In that series, Pippen took the most shots on his team (70) but made less than one of every three. Since the best-of-5 first round was established in the 1984 playoffs, no one has ever taken as many shots, shot for such a low percentage, and failed even to reach a decisive Game 5.

Last season's Blazers seemed Finals-bound, but the Lakers, trailing by 13 points entering the fourth quarter in Game 7 of the Western finals, came back to win 89-84, outscoring Portland 31-13, in that fateful quarter. Pippen shot 42.5 percent for the series, 3-for-10 in Game 7. His numbers from that final fourth quarter: no points (0-for-3 shooting), two rebounds, three fouls and a turnover.

This year, in three games against the Lakers, Pippen averaged 13.7 points while shooting 42 percent (including 3-for-17 from three-point range).

In his three post-Michael playoffs, Pippen's teams have won two series and lost three. They have won only 11 of 23 games, and twice they have not reached the second round.

WWMD?: What Would Michael Do, if his team became the first in any 82-game season in NBA history to win 42 of its first 60 games, but finish the season with no more than 50 wins? WWMD if a teammate had 41 technical fouls? WWMD if that teammate fired a towel into the face of another player?

Scottie Pippen is a good player -- a legitimate All-Star for years -- who has had a marvelous career. In regular-season play, his teams have won more than 70 percent of the games in which he has played. Among long-term NBA players who have appeared in at least 700 regular-season games, only two old Lakers (Magic Johnson and Michael Cooper ) and three old Celtics (Bill Russell, Larry Bird and Sam Jones) have had higher personal winning percentages. Yes, Pippen has a higher personal winning percentage in the regular season than even Jordan had (remember that the Bulls had losing records in each of Jordan's first three years, under three different head coaches).

But just as Jordan's shadow seems destined to hover over the entire NBA this offseason -- will he or won't he? -- it continues to hover over Pippen, who still searches for that Michael-less ring. And for the second time in the past three years, the guy once called the second-best player in the NBA, as a compliment, has seen his team finish second-best in an opening round playoff series.


http://espn.go.com/page2/s/number/010502.html




------------------