Better Overall Player: Pippen or Kyrie?

[Elpolo_14]

This might be close if we said single best year and playing in 2025. Career, Irving v. Horace Grant might be a closer comp.

I do think if we use single best year aka. PEAK Pipen would take it comfortably.

94 Pippen up the volume as offensive loader for the Bulls without MJ and still lead them to a great team while still maintaining his defense capabilities.

I think 2018 kyrie at Boston is his peak. He a great scorer but his offense engine didn't bring the Celtics overall offense up that much to be over Pippen as overall player when they both help engine a mid offense rating throughout the Regular Season

[MavsDirk41]

This might be close if we said single best year and playing in 2025. Career, Irving v. Horace Grant might be a closer comp.

Kyrie Irving is a 9x all star and 3x all nba. Horace was great but just stop lol

[penbeast0]

This might be close if we said single best year and playing in 2025. Career, Irving v. Horace Grant might be a closer comp.

Kyrie Irving is a 9x all star and 3x all nba. Horace was great but just stop lol

If you go by impact stats and the like (and people have been using them to make comps), Horace was greatly underrated and should have more accolades and Kyrie less. Scorers tend to get overrated. Add the leadership and consistency and locker room craziness issues, and it's not that strange a comp; they are virtual opposites in terms of what you want in a supporting player around a superstar.

[NZB2323]

And..... do you not think Kyrie shows out better playing besides James near his whole career? Or do you just wanna ignore the entire point?

There’s no guarantee that Kyrie and LeBron sing kumbaya and that Kyrie is the model citizen who stays healthy if he stays with LeBron. He’s had 1 season since leaving Cleveland where he played in 65 or more games.

Just as there is no guarantee Pippen was as good if he didn't play most of his career with Jordan. Not sure why you keep making this difficult.

Pippen was much better in 94 than Kyrie was in 2019. Kyrie also has been more injury prone.

[MavsDirk41]

This might be close if we said single best year and playing in 2025. Career, Irving v. Horace Grant might be a closer comp.

Kyrie Irving is a 9x all star and 3x all nba. Horace was great but just stop lol

If you go by impact stats and the like (and people have been using them to make comps), Horace was greatly underrated and should have more accolades and Kyrie less. Scorers tend to get overrated. Add the leadership and consistency and locker room craziness issues, and it's not that strange a comp; they are virtual opposites in terms of what you want in a supporting player around a superstar.

I get it, but Kyrie Irving was the second best player on 2 teams that made the finals. Horace was the 3rd best player and although he was a great defender and locket room guy, Irving is a 9x all star and 3x all nba and he deserved those selections. Irving is a more talented player than Irving. Dont be silly.

[penbeast0]

I get it, but Kyrie Irving was the second best player on 2 teams that made the finals. Horace was the 3rd best player and although he was a great defender and locket room guy, Irving is a 9x all star and 3x all nba and he deserved those selections. Irving is a more talented player than Irving. Dont be silly.

Talking career, more talented isn't always better. Kyrie also was a disaster, injured, or no show in several seasons so while he may have peaked higher, I'd rather have Grant for career with many teams and lineups.

[tsherkin]

A great forum for discussing scoring versus other things. Pippen was at worst a comparable playmaker, was a better rebounder and was miles and miles better on D. He was also considerably inferior as a scorer and he too had his issues with being a petulant headcase at times. If Ho Grant and BJ Armstrong hadn't blown up in 94 alongside incoming talent like Steve Kerr and Kukoc, I don't know that we'd think of Pippen without Jordan the same way. He was certainly a guy who contributed to winning, but that 94 season gets a lot of mileage without a ton of context very regularly, I find.

That said, it's hard to imagine picking Kyrie here. Like, you wouldn't want Kyrie as your focal guy, so the scoring gap starts to matter a lot less. And when Scottie was in his heyday and the league wasn't grinding everything to a halt, he scored reasonably well. 90-99, he was about a 19/8/5.5 guy in the playoffs on around 98 TS+ (falling off notably after 92). Mediocre scorer who relied heavily on transition, uninspiring jumper, unimpressive isolation skills. But he could post, he was killer in transition and he was a very good offensive rebounder for a wing.

Kind of the ultimate supporting star. I have to side with him here.

[IG2]

I think Jordan's best ever career teammate was better than Lebron's 5th best career teammate.

Wade, AD, Doncic....Kyrie!

I'd say Kyrie was LeBron's 4th best teammate. Heck, Pippen's better than any version of Wade LeBron got to play with besides 2011.

[Texas Chuck]

Gross that some posters turned this into Mike vs LeBron again.

Sent from my SM-A156U using RealGM mobile app

[MavsDirk41]

I get it, but Kyrie Irving was the second best player on 2 teams that made the finals. Horace was the 3rd best player and although he was a great defender and locket room guy, Irving is a 9x all star and 3x all nba and he deserved those selections. Irving is a more talented player than Irving. Dont be silly.

Talking career, more talented isn't always better. Kyrie also was a disaster, injured, or no show in several seasons so while he may have peaked higher, I'd rather have Grant for career with many teams and lineups.

I get what you are saying. Team wise if im a GM im drafting Bird, Duncan, Magic or Jokic over any other players to ever player the game. Without question.

[Ian Scuffling]

LOL...One of the goofiest polls. Not even close. It's Pippen.

[lessthanjake]

I do wonder a bit if Pippen was largely just a Triangle merchant, since he wasn’t a particularly good player before the triangle and was pretty mediocre after leaving Chicago (with RAPM actually being even lower on him than the box stuff, which itself wasn’t great). I think the conventional wisdom on this is that Scottie was 22-23 in his pre-triangle years, and was 33+ in his post-triangle years, so it’s not a surprise that he’d not be as good in those years as he was in the middle. And while that’s surely a significant part of the picture, he didn’t have a steady ascent or decline. Rather, he had a pretty steep increase in quality early on and steep decrease later. That steep decrease came when he left the triangle (for example, his BPM was cut in half from 1998 to 1999). The big leap in his earlier years came in 1991, which was the second year with the triangle not the first year, but seems pretty reasonable to think that it’s connected, particularly since the triangle notoriously takes time to learn and get comfortable with.

And the evidence of this is not just circumstantial evidence regarding the timing of Pippen’s best years. I also think it makes sense for Pippen to be particularly good in that system. Pippen was not much of a creator, nor was he a particularly good shooter. What he did have offensively was a good ability to read and react, as well as crisp passing, combined with the athleticism to attack into space and on cuts. This made him well-suited for the triangle. To be fair, he also was a great transition player, which would be an asset no matter what. But I do think the triangle really helped him find value offensively. In most systems, I think his offensive impact would’ve been merely a slight positive, whereas I think in the triangle he was genuinely a significant-impact offensive player, despite his limitations on that end.

That said, I don’t know that that really matters here. Even if I’m skeptical that Pippen would’ve generalized nearly as well in other contexts, what we saw was him in the context he was in, and in that context I think he was a better player than Kyrie. Kyrie is still a better offensive player than Pippen, but Pippen more than makes that up with his defense.

[dcstanley]

Kyrie is one of the most overrated players in NBA history.

[TheGOATRises007]

Pippen's better, but if you swapped him and Kyrie for the 2016 finals, I'm not sure the Cavs win that series without Kyrie's scoring.

[ShotCreator]

Kyrie in his true peak from 2019-2021 probably got to hover at or above Pippen level at times. I’m talking literally weeks at a time.

Closest would be 2019 Kyrie. Started the year on fire defensively for the first time ever, and maintained his efficiency at a really high volume.

Prime Kobe offense was on the table when he was the lead guy. Really his arc was very similar to prime Kobe in his 20’s. Something of a locker room saboteur towards a far better player because of ball dominance insecurities and narcissism.

Then he spiraled out of Boston for whatever reason. To say nothing of Brooklyn.

Pippen is better. But I think Kyrie’s mental disaster run really underrated what he was proving himself capable of as a lead guy. He looked very, very good for a few year stretch. Outside Cleveland.

By the time he became humble enough to be relied upon, he left his athletic prime in Dallas.

[Elpolo_14]

Pippen's better, but if you swapped him and Kyrie for the 2016 finals, I'm not sure the Cavs win that series without Kyrie's scoring.

To be fair everything is about Matchup and Your role in a System/ how the team are built to use your specific trait.

Switch Kyrie for Pippen in 91 I don't think they would won either. Kyrie would get mismatch hunt by Magic easily which Pippen Defense help the bull to contain him both as primary and secondary defender. Also Pippen rebound game able to retain the possession allowing the Bull offense to be better ( He even out rebounded Vlad ). And Lastly Pippen on offense was still great with his playmaking

So every player cannot be swap and be expected to perform in different situations that are built for different role.

[durantbird]

Why is that a comparison?

[TheGOATRises007]

Pippen's better, but if you swapped him and Kyrie for the 2016 finals, I'm not sure the Cavs win that series without Kyrie's scoring.

To be fair everything is about Matchup and Your role in a System/ how the team are built to use your specific trait.

Switch Kyrie for Pippen in 91 I don't think they would won either. Kyrie would get mismatch hunt by Magic easily which Pippen Defense help the bull to contain him both as primary and secondary defender. Also Pippen rebound game able to retain the possession allowing the Bull offense to be better ( He even out rebounded Vlad ). And Lastly Pippen on offense was still great with his playmaking

So every player cannot be swap and be expected to perform in different situations that are built for different role.

You can certainly argue that, but I also think Kyrie torches that same Lakers squad(again if we're taking 2016 Kyrie's performances from the finals specifically).

And that series wasn't particularly close either way. The Bulls won by 10 pts per game. Not really convinced swapping Pippen for Kyrie leads to the Lakers somehow winning that particular series. I concede the Bulls definitely get worse for that match-up, but not sure they're losing it.

There's a myth that Pippen spent the majority of the series defending Magic after game 1 which isn't true. That said, the fact Pippen could also guard Magic at times to converse Jordan's stamina certainly did help.

[Djoker]

I would side with Pippen in this comparison. As others said, his overall impact is higher. Kyrie was the better offensive player but Pippen is the better overall player factoring in defense. He also has more impressive accolades (3rd in MVP, 1st Team All-NBA selections etc.) as a result of that.

That said, I think there are some hyperbolic posts here in claiming that Kyrie wasn't a positive impact player.

2015-2017 Cavaliers

With Kyrie (200 games): 136-64 W-L, +5.57 MOV --> 57 Expected Wins
Without Kyrie (46 games): 25-21 W-L, +0.13 MOV --> 41 Expected Wins

With Lebron With Kyrie (183 games): 132-51 W-L, +6.98 MOV --> 60 Expected Wins
With Lebron Without Kyrie (36 games): 25-11 W-L, +4.33 MOV --> 53 Expected Wins

When we correct for Lebron's presence, Kyrie is still worth about 7 wins. That's a sizable chunk. His presence pushes a solid but non-contending team into clear contenders.