A couple months ago, Scottie Pippen said something very interesting. He said that he was "LeBron James before LeBron James." On the sports talk radio circuit, this earned Pippen a fair amount of derision, as his name has become synonymous with being a sidekick, a "second banana," a guy who was never the best player in the world. For many, for Pippen to compare himself to James seemed to beggar belief. On closer inspection, however, it's not hard to see why Scottie would believe this to be true.
Smart basketball guys, like SBNation's own Tom Ziller and Paul Flannery, have ranked Pip as the second best player in the entire NBA for the 1990s.