The Chicago Bulls created a dynasty with Michael Jordan as its face. While he had a completely able and supportive cast, the conversation has shifted to how impactful their roles were in the team that delivered the franchise its three-peat, twice.

On the Game Over podcast, LeBron James’ agent picked a side, and he picked it loudly. Rich Paul, founder of Klutch Sports, was not having it when Gilbert Arenas labelled Pippen’s championships “sidekick rings” and argued that they were not equivalent to MJ’s. “I think Scottie’s rings are the same as Michael Jordan’s,” he said. “He was the most impactful player on the team. If you unplug Scottie Pippen off that team, Jordan’s 0 for 6.”

Max Kellerman pushed back. He argued that replacing Pippen with any other All-Star would still have given Jordan a credible running mate, and that the six titles would not have vanished entirely. However, Paul’s response cut to the structural argument: “Just because it’s an All-Star doesn’t mean it’s Scottie Pippen. How many All-Stars are going to be willing to take a backseat knowing what they’re walking into?”

When Jordan retired in 1993, Pippen led the Bulls to 55 wins the following season and finished third in MVP voting, the strongest available proof that his value didn’t come from the number 23 jersey.

Pippen was a seven-time All-Star, a three-time All-NBA First Team selection, and one of the most complete wing defenders the game has seen. Paul’s argument was not that Pippen was better than Jordan; it was that the construction of those Bulls teams was a collective achievement and that flattening Pippen’s role to “sidekick” distorted what actually happened.

Paul’s argument for Pippen is also about something bigger than the Bulls

The timing of Paul’s framing was not incidental. His broader point landed right next to the ongoing LeBron versus Jordan debate, and the implication was clear: if Pippen’s rings are “sidekick rings,” then the standard being applied to Jordan’s dynasty needs scrutiny before it gets applied anywhere else.

Paul made it explicit near the end of the segment: “I’m not discrediting anything. All I’m saying is, I also don’t agree with you guys kind of saying what Steph’s rings aren’t.” The Pippen conversation was the entry point. The GOAT debate was the destination.

Jordan himself, for all the reverence he commands in the legacy conversation, once said in The Last Dance: “I would never be able to find a tandem, another support system, another partner in the game of basketball like Scottie Pippen.” Paul couldn’t understand the hypocrisy: the sport that spent thirty years nodding at that quote immediately went back to ranking Pippen’s rings as lesser.

Kellerman’s framework, that a sufficiently talented All-Star would have enabled Jordan to win some championships regardless, is the more conventional view and probably the safer one. But “some” is not six, and Paul’s question about who else would have done what Pippen did, for the money Pippen was paid, inside the shadow Pippen voluntarily accepted, does not have a clean answer.

Pippen himself has been stoking this fire all spring, posting cryptically about things “considered second-best for so long” being “blindly accepted as gospel,” a shot aimed somewhere that everyone understood without a label. Paul just said the quiet part out loud.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​