The Last Dance focused heavily on Scottie Pippen’s undervalued contract and how it caused friction between him and the Chicago Bulls.
On Sunday night, the NBA world was collectively captivated for the first time since the night the NBA season was suspended in mid-March with the debut of The Last Dance. Scottie Pippen‘s contract was one of the main themes of episode 2.
Pippen is widely regarded as Michael Jordan’s “Robin” throughout some of the most successful seasons in Chicago Bulls history. Being the second-best player in this case really isn’t a bad thing at all.
In episode 2, the documentary focused on the building tension between Bulls management and the contingent of players and coaches. Philosophies and outlook were starkly different, and there was a clear distaste from Pippen and Jordan toward team general manager Jerry Krause.
Pippen’s friction with Krause was built on his contract. Throughout much of his tenure with the team, Pippen was wildly underpaid for his services. A legitimate force on a title team, Pippen was making nowhere near top-tier NBA money.
A graphic from ESPN shows just how influential he was in terms of Bulls productivity and how far he was from the top in terms of pay for his services.
Scottie Pippen was the 122nd-highest-paid player in the NBA in '97-98, but was easily one of the best players in the league. #TheLastDance pic.twitter.com/CcJ132Nbb8
— ESPN (@espn) April 20, 2020
Pippen is a Hall of Famer, a 7-time All-Star, and a 10-time All-Defense team member.
Arguably, he should have been getting paid top-10 money.
So, how did this come to be? Well, as The Last Dance detailed, Pippen signed a long-term contract in an extremely untimely manner. Part of it was bad luck, but Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf remarked in the documentary that he felt like Pippen shouldn’t have signed such a long deal.
Pippen, prior to the 1991-92 season, signed an extension with Chicago that would span for eight seasons and was valued at $18 million. Over those seven seasons, the salary cap jumped from $12.5 million to 26.9 million, an increase of 115 percent.
Had Pippen negotiated a shorter extension, he could have re-upped in-line with what he was worth under an increased salary cap, something most players these days do.
It’s almost directly opposite to the salary cap spike of 2016. That summer, the cap — due to an influx of cash from new TV rights deals for the league — shot from $70 million to $94 million, leading to teams having much more money to work with than they knew how to handle.
Players like Nicolas Batum made out like bandits. Batum signed a five-year, $120 million deal with the Hornets, and has yet to make a single All-Star game. Now coming up on the tail end of that deal, Batum was under contract for nearly $25 million this year for a stat line of 5.6 points, 7.1 rebounds, and 4.7 assists per game.
Though these two contracts are polar opposites, they both heed the same warnings — Be sure that you evaluate the entire length of a deal before you sign on.
From a player’s perspective, are you going to be able to re-negotiate your value as soon as you’d like? For the team, does an influx of cash now mean you need to sign on for long-term deals that leave the cap unusable for future years?
Pippen’s untimely deal ultimately was a big part of what lead to him requesting a trade away from the Bulls.
The Last Dance will air with two episodes at 9 and 10pm EST over the next four Sundays. If you missed this week’s episodes, here’s how you can stream.