For those who don’t follow basketball closely, the sport’s biggest moment of the past half-decade was not an instance of the present, but a commemoration. “The Last Dance,” aired as a weekly docuseries during 2020 which became a rare modern live-TV phenomenon, has gone on to maintain consistent friction as an archived streaming option, and as a reliable source of memes and mythology. A mostly paint-by-numbers affair about the Chicago Bulls’ legendary 1990’s run, it took on soap-operatic qualities that have carried over into its unpacking over the following years, perpetuating the palace intrigue that surrounds Michael Jordan, Dennis Rodman, and Scottie Pippen.
This intrigue is strong enough that it swerves over into the Kardashian Extended Universe, a catty contest game on Peacock, and the Bravo reality TV network, which is where I first saw what Scottie’s son, Scotty, looks like. He was on screen as the son of a Real Housewife before he ever got televised playing basketball. About a decade popping up as a pre-teen sprout, he’d finish his NCAA career at Vanderbilt and briefly share a locker room with a teammate who’d just dated his mother Larsa—Malik Beasley—during a six-game stint with the Los Angeles Lakers. They probably wish they’d kept him for longer than that.
Over the weekend, Pippen had a career night. That it happened in Chicago, where his father played, made it extra sweet. But his 30-point, 10-assist performance was hardly a blip. Pippen has quickly become one of the NBA’s best reserve guards, looking like an absolute bargain on a four-year, $9 million contract he earned by playing high-quality ball with Memphis last year, joining the roster after injuries had exploded the Grizzlies’ 2023-24 hopes and turned their season into a talent-farming project rather than a winning endeavor. Even on a rejuvenated 10-7 team with many more warm bodies this season, though, Pippen maintains a plush role in the Memphis rotation, averaging 26 minutes per game.
There’s nothing especially striking about Pippen’s game, unless you’re a big fan of professionalism. He simply doesn’t ever do much that’s wrong. An able and unflashy dribbler, he drives and probes and attacks close-out defenders judiciously, and shoots from beyond the arc well enough to hurt you if you ignore him (40 percent, on the season). Despite being undersized, he can usually finish in traffic, using his speed and great hand coordination to get on defenders’ wrong sides and scoop it in through any inch of the rim’s circumference. He can also decelerate fantastically, stopping and floating the ball up mid-drive, before opponents have caught up to what he’s doing.
Off the ball, Pippen plays off defenders’ wrong anticipations, knifing his way into the lane for a dish the second he sees them becoming “blind pigs,” as the offensive architect of his dad’s dynastic days would call them. As a passer, Pippen isn’t a visionary, but he rarely misses the play. No store owner would hesitate to give him the overnight keys. Defensively, he makes up for his lack of height with aggression, instinct, quick hands, and a masterful footwork that’s more reminiscent of his father than anything else he does. Cutting into ball-handlers’ operating space, he disrupts their timing and makes the moment his own instead. Try to screen him, and you’ll be hit with Pippen’s surprising upper-body strength as he rallies his way back into front-of-ball containment. He knows just when to sneak into a fellow defender’s office, too, and provide the opportunistic extra pressure needed to suddenly turn a likely stop into a full-on fast break.
If Pippen weren’t currently surging into the Sixth Man of The Year contest, all these displays of consummate strategic rectitude would make for an A1 resume for a coaching career. In all facets of the game, he knows what needs to be done. It’s a heartwarming sight for any hoops head in their mid-thirties or older, who wanted to see a shining next step taken in the Pippen family legacy after so much weird, unsavory fallout from “The Last Dance” spiraled all the way into tabloids that usually wouldn’t about basketball. What Scotty’s doing is not quite redemption, because the greatest team ever doesn’t need it. But the weepy fans of that team, watching him play today, are searching for similarly weighty words to describe what they’re feeling.