Should Pippen be rated higher than a player like Chuck?

[ScrantonBulls]

Barkley is unquestionably a better offensive player. Chuck averaged 24/12/4/2/1 on 62% TS for 11 seasons from 1985-86 to 1995-96. He's the guy you'd rather have as a #1 option on offensive. Scottie, while no slouch, is a better #2 on offense. He is an all time great defender though. Chuck on the other hand is a weak defender. Defense is the big reason the sun's didn't win in those finals and why they didn't go to more finals.

Should a got who contributed so greatly to championships be rated higher than Barkley? There's no question who is better on offense. But that gap on defense between the two is bigger than the gap between them on offense.

[Percentsign]

Barkley’s rebounding puts him ahead

[OdomFan]

individually Barkley was a higher tier player throughout their primes in the 1990s.

[ball_takes23]

watched a good video yesterday about Pippen and Barkley's time together as teammates in Houston. Pippen basically sabotaged the team because his ego couldn't handle being the third banana behind Hakeem and Barkley. He also showed who he was by refusing to go in the game in the 1994 playoffs vs the Knicks. Saying that Pippen should be above Barkley would be like saying Jalen Williams should be ranked higher than Luka

Watch on YouTube

[Percentsign]

watched a good video yesterday about Pippen and Barkley's time together as teammates in Houston. Pippen basically sabotaged the team because his ego couldn't handle being the third banana behind Hakeem and Barkley. He also showed who he was by refusing to go in the game in the 1994 playoffs vs the Knicks. Saying that Pippen should be above Barkley would be like saying Jalen Williams should be ranked higher than Luka

Watch on YouTube

Didn’t Shaq once deliberately postpone surgery in 2002 to occur during the season, saying that “I got hurt on company time; I’ll rehab on company time.” Pippen wasn’t always a team player, as indicated by 1994 playoffs, but he wasn’t the only one with that problem. And you mention that one game in 1994. What about the whole year? Pippen was the clear #1 and MVP candidate on a Bulls team that won just 2 games fewer than it did with Jordan in 1993. A

[Effigy]

Barkley was over rated. He’s an all offense sound bite. I’ll take Pip.

[Cavsfansince84]

I think Pippen needed more years as a top 5 player to be ranked above Chuck or to have an argument for it. Barkley is I think the only guy to finish above MJ twice in mvp voting from 88-93 other than Magic. So I think that shows how good he was even if he has other issues. Pippen has his own issues as well when we think of him being a #1 such as not much of a track record, reliance on Phil and perceived mental weakness or flakiness at times.

[Black Jack]

Barkley was better as a #1 guy. He would have a ring if he didn't run up against MJ.

Pippen the goat #2 option.

[lessthanjake]

I kind of think Pippen was a bit of a triangle merchant. His career arc included a very rapid increase in quality and then a very rapid decrease in quality. The rapid increase occurred in his second year with the triangle—which is a system that famously takes a long time to learn. And his rapid decrease coincided with leaving the triangle. I think we can draw a pretty good inference from this. And it makes sense that Pippen would be pretty dependent on the triangle. He was a player who had some serious flaws offensively—he was not a good shooter, wasn’t particularly good at creating his own shot, etc—but he was very good at the reading-and-reacting and making crisp passes, which are foundational skills for the triangle. It allowed him to maximize the skills he had.

In the context of the triangle, I think one could argue that Pippen may have had more impact than Barkley generally did. Barkley was definitely a way better offensive player, but there really was a significant gap on defense, and the triangle allowed Pippen to extract enough offensive value to be competitive with Barkley IMO. But I think if you generalized things more than that, Barkley would be a better player in most situations, and indeed was almost certainly a better player for the actual teams he played with than Pippen would’ve been.

I do also want to note though that Pippen’s RAPM in the play-by-play era is…really not very inspiring. His three-year RAPM from 1997-1999 was ranked 31st according to NBArapm and 13th according to TheBasketballDatabase. Even just looking at two-year RAPM from 1997-1998, he’s ranked 15th according to NBArapm. And those rankings all just plummet from there. For instance, his RAPM from 1999-2001 was ranked 238th according to NBArapm and 108th according to TheBasketballDatabase. People might say he was old, but this was age 33-35. We wouldn’t expect him to be as good as he was earlier at that age, but it doesn’t look good even accounting for that. For reference, at those same ages, Barkley was ranked 30th and 35th in RAPM still. This perhaps goes to the triangle-merchant thing. Pippen’s Squared RAPM looks better (and is actually above Barkley’s), and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’d be the case with full data from their best years, but I did want to note that Pippen’s late-career RAPM data is perhaps a cause for concern.

[NZB2323]

watched a good video yesterday about Pippen and Barkley's time together as teammates in Houston. Pippen basically sabotaged the team because his ego couldn't handle being the third banana behind Hakeem and Barkley. He also showed who he was by refusing to go in the game in the 1994 playoffs vs the Knicks. Saying that Pippen should be above Barkley would be like saying Jalen Williams should be ranked higher than Luka

Watch on YouTube

Didn’t Shaq once deliberately postpone surgery in 2002 to occur during the season, saying that “I got hurt on company time; I’ll rehab on company time.” Pippen wasn’t always a team player, as indicated by 1994 playoffs, but he wasn’t the only one with that problem. And you mention that one game in 1994. What about the whole year? Pippen was the clear #1 and MVP candidate on a Bulls team that won just 2 games fewer than it did with Jordan in 1993. A

The Bulls added Kukoc, Kerr, and Longley and Kukoc hit some game winning shots during the season, and the 1993 team underperformed during the regular season as they were going for a 3-peat, but in 1992 they won 67 games.

Barkley won a MVP and was the best player on a team that went to the finals. Pippen finished 3rd in MVP voting once and won 1 playoff series as the best player on his team. This is like debating Harden vs. Paul George.

[dcstanley]

watched a good video yesterday about Pippen and Barkley's time together as teammates in Houston. Pippen basically sabotaged the team because his ego couldn't handle being the third banana behind Hakeem and Barkley. He also showed who he was by refusing to go in the game in the 1994 playoffs vs the Knicks. Saying that Pippen should be above Barkley would be like saying Jalen Williams should be ranked higher than Luka

Watch on YouTube

Didn’t Shaq once deliberately postpone surgery in 2002 to occur during the season, saying that “I got hurt on company time; I’ll rehab on company time.” Pippen wasn’t always a team player, as indicated by 1994 playoffs, but he wasn’t the only one with that problem. And you mention that one game in 1994. What about the whole year? Pippen was the clear #1 and MVP candidate on a Bulls team that won just 2 games fewer than it did with Jordan in 1993. A

The Bulls added Kukoc, Kerr, and Longley and Kukoc hit some game winning shots during the season, and the 1993 team underperformed during the regular season as they were going for a 3-peat, but in 1992 they won 67 games.

Kukoc was a rookie, Kerr was a bench player, and Longley only started 17 games that season. No matter how you slice it, they replaced the best player in the league with depth pieces and only won two fewer games than they did the previous season. Pippen was a legitimate MVP candidate, 1st team all-NBA team, and 1st team all-D.

[rand]

There already is a lot of circumstantial luck in which franchise drafts you but a ranking like this totally reduces the matter to this kind of luck. Imagine if somehow Barkley had been drafted by the Bulls instead of Pippen, how many titles would the Bulls have won then?

Yeah, to a certain extent you have to reward the player who actually won these championships but it doesn't have to be hard determinism.

[tsherkin]

Definitely Chuck.

[SportsGuru08]

watched a good video yesterday about Pippen and Barkley's time together as teammates in Houston. Pippen basically sabotaged the team because his ego couldn't handle being the third banana behind Hakeem and Barkley. He also showed who he was by refusing to go in the game in the 1994 playoffs vs the Knicks. Saying that Pippen should be above Barkley would be like saying Jalen Williams should be ranked higher than Luka

Watch on YouTube

Didn’t Shaq once deliberately postpone surgery in 2002 to occur during the season, saying that “I got hurt on company time; I’ll rehab on company time.” Pippen wasn’t always a team player, as indicated by 1994 playoffs, but he wasn’t the only one with that problem. And you mention that one game in 1994. What about the whole year? Pippen was the clear #1 and MVP candidate on a Bulls team that won just 2 games fewer than it did with Jordan in 1993. A

What about the whole year? It was a fluke as the following season proved. In the end it doesn't matter what you do in the regular season; he got exposed all series long as a guy who couldn't close out his opponent in crunch time. When the lights got brighter, he shrank.

[SportsGuru08]

watched a good video yesterday about Pippen and Barkley's time together as teammates in Houston. Pippen basically sabotaged the team because his ego couldn't handle being the third banana behind Hakeem and Barkley. He also showed who he was by refusing to go in the game in the 1994 playoffs vs the Knicks. Saying that Pippen should be above Barkley would be like saying Jalen Williams should be ranked higher than Luka

Watch on YouTube

Also delayed his foot surgery in '97 until just prior to the start of the preseason.

[SportsGuru08]

Didn’t Shaq once deliberately postpone surgery in 2002 to occur during the season, saying that “I got hurt on company time; I’ll rehab on company time.” Pippen wasn’t always a team player, as indicated by 1994 playoffs, but he wasn’t the only one with that problem. And you mention that one game in 1994. What about the whole year? Pippen was the clear #1 and MVP candidate on a Bulls team that won just 2 games fewer than it did with Jordan in 1993. A

The Bulls added Kukoc, Kerr, and Longley and Kukoc hit some game winning shots during the season, and the 1993 team underperformed during the regular season as they were going for a 3-peat, but in 1992 they won 67 games.

Kukoc was a rookie, Kerr was a bench player, and Longley only started 17 games that season. No matter how you slice it, they replaced the best player in the league with depth pieces and only won two fewer games than they did the previous season. Pippen was a legitimate MVP candidate, 1st team all-NBA team, and 1st team all-D.

And then got exposed in the playoffs, which is all that matters.

[NZB2323]

Didn’t Shaq once deliberately postpone surgery in 2002 to occur during the season, saying that “I got hurt on company time; I’ll rehab on company time.” Pippen wasn’t always a team player, as indicated by 1994 playoffs, but he wasn’t the only one with that problem. And you mention that one game in 1994. What about the whole year? Pippen was the clear #1 and MVP candidate on a Bulls team that won just 2 games fewer than it did with Jordan in 1993. A

The Bulls added Kukoc, Kerr, and Longley and Kukoc hit some game winning shots during the season, and the 1993 team underperformed during the regular season as they were going for a 3-peat, but in 1992 they won 67 games.

Kukoc was a rookie, Kerr was a bench player, and Longley only started 17 games that season. No matter how you slice it, they replaced the best player in the league with depth pieces and only won two fewer games than they did the previous season. Pippen was a legitimate MVP candidate, 1st team all-NBA team, and 1st team all-D.

Kukoc was a rookie but he was also 25 and hit 4 game winning shots during his rookie season. He misses those, and the Bulls only win 51 games and Pippen probably doesn’t beat Shaq in MVP voting.

The Bulls had great depth, the best depth of any Bulls team as they still had Paxson, BJ, and Cartwright, and added Kukoc, Kerr, and Longley, and won a lot of close games. A great bench can help you win a lot of regular season games. We don’t have access to play-by-play data from 1994, but we can look at point differential:

1992 Bulls: +11.0
1993 Bulls: +6.8
1994 Bulls: +3.3

[NZB2323]

Didn’t Shaq once deliberately postpone surgery in 2002 to occur during the season, saying that “I got hurt on company time; I’ll rehab on company time.” Pippen wasn’t always a team player, as indicated by 1994 playoffs, but he wasn’t the only one with that problem. And you mention that one game in 1994. What about the whole year? Pippen was the clear #1 and MVP candidate on a Bulls team that won just 2 games fewer than it did with Jordan in 1993. A

The Bulls added Kukoc, Kerr, and Longley and Kukoc hit some game winning shots during the season, and the 1993 team underperformed during the regular season as they were going for a 3-peat, but in 1992 they won 67 games.

Kukoc was a rookie, Kerr was a bench player, and Longley only started 17 games that season. No matter how you slice it, they replaced the best player in the league with depth pieces and only won two fewer games than they did the previous season. Pippen was a legitimate MVP candidate, 1st team all-NBA team, and 1st team all-D.

Kukoc was a rookie but he was also 25 and hit 4 game winning shots during his rookie season. He misses those, and the Bulls only win 51 games and Pippen probably doesn’t beat Shaq in MVP voting.

The Bulls had great depth, the best depth of any Bulls team as they still had Paxson, BJ, and Cartwright, and added Kukoc, Kerr, and Longley, and won a lot of close games. A great bench can help you win a lot of regular season games. We don’t have access to play-by-play data from 1994, but we can look at point differential:

1992 Bulls: +11.0
1993 Bulls: +6.8
1994 Bulls: +3.3

[Percentsign]

watched a good video yesterday about Pippen and Barkley's time together as teammates in Houston. Pippen basically sabotaged the team because his ego couldn't handle being the third banana behind Hakeem and Barkley. He also showed who he was by refusing to go in the game in the 1994 playoffs vs the Knicks. Saying that Pippen should be above Barkley would be like saying Jalen Williams should be ranked higher than Luka

Watch on YouTube

Didn’t Shaq once deliberately postpone surgery in 2002 to occur during the season, saying that “I got hurt on company time; I’ll rehab on company time.” Pippen wasn’t always a team player, as indicated by 1994 playoffs, but he wasn’t the only one with that problem. And you mention that one game in 1994. What about the whole year? Pippen was the clear #1 and MVP candidate on a Bulls team that won just 2 games fewer than it did with Jordan in 1993. A

What about the whole year? It was a fluke as the following season proved. In the end it doesn't matter what you do in the regular season; he got exposed all series long as a guy who couldn't close out his opponent in crunch time. When the lights got brighter, he shrank.

It wasn’t a fluke. His numbers in 1995 were almost identical to his numbers in 1994 . The team as a whole regressed. They lost even with Jordan in 1995 (and no, Jordan wasn’t rusty. Right before they lost to Magic, he put up a 50-point performance against the Knicks at MSG)

[SportsGuru08]

Didn’t Shaq once deliberately postpone surgery in 2002 to occur during the season, saying that “I got hurt on company time; I’ll rehab on company time.” Pippen wasn’t always a team player, as indicated by 1994 playoffs, but he wasn’t the only one with that problem. And you mention that one game in 1994. What about the whole year? Pippen was the clear #1 and MVP candidate on a Bulls team that won just 2 games fewer than it did with Jordan in 1993. A

What about the whole year? It was a fluke as the following season proved. In the end it doesn't matter what you do in the regular season; he got exposed all series long as a guy who couldn't close out his opponent in crunch time. When the lights got brighter, he shrank.

It wasn’t a fluke. His numbers in 1995 were almost identical to his numbers in 1994 . The team as a whole regressed. They lost even with Jordan in 1995 (and no, Jordan wasn’t rusty. Right before they lost to Magic, he put up a 50-point performance against the Knicks at MSG)

Yes it was a fluke because the team was struggling to even be .500 for most of the season. But wait, I could have sworn the Bulls had an ultra stacked team and shouldn't have been struggling that much anyway?

Again, the regular season doesn't mean squat if you choke when the lights are brightest, which is exactly what happened against the Knicks.