“There were moments when it was upsetting” – Scottie Pippen admits being the only underpaid Bull used to bother him originally appeared on Basketball Network.
Scottie Pippen embodied the Chicago Bulls through and through. He was a complementary piece in a dynasty led by Michael Jordan and the axis of the team’s rhythm, the stabilizer when chaos loomed and the man who often took on the hardest tasks with the least recognition.
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Pippen wanted to play for the team. Not just because it was Chicago, not just because of Jordan, but because he believed in the mission. Yet, his role in building one of the greatest dynasties didn’t reflect on his paycheck.
Pippen was quietly tallying up the cost of loyalty.
A run built on a flawed deal
During the mid-’90s, the NBA’s salary cap was climbing, and players with less impact were starting to command bigger numbers. Meanwhile, Pippen was becoming the league’s premier two-way forward — handling the ball and guarding the best scorer while still averaging 20 points a night.
Yet he was underpaid compared to even most of his Bulls teammates.
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“I think at the time there were moments when it was upsetting,” Pippen, reflecting on those contract years, told The Guardian. “But also, there was so much joy that rose among the pain that I was feeling. There was too much to celebrate and enjoy to be thinking about the negative side of it.”
Back in 1991, fresh off the team’s first title and rising into his prime, Pippen inked a five-year, $18 million contract extension. But the deal didn’t override the final two years of his rookie contract. Instead, the new money was stretched across eight years.
Eight years. And that detail would haunt both his finances and his relationship with the Bulls for the better part of the decade.
The success was undeniable — six championships in eight years, a defensive and offensive juggernaut — but beneath the glory was a feeling that he was never quite valued the way he should have been. The tension wasn’t solely about the money, it was about respect. By the time the Bulls were heading into their final run in the 1997-98 season, Pippen was the sixth-highest-paid player on the team and ranked 122nd in the entire league in salary.
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On paper, he was making $2.8 million that year, while Jordan raked in $33 million. Even role players on other teams were surpassing Pippen’s income, despite him being a consistent All-Star and the backbone of the Bulls’ defense.
Pippen’s loyalty frayed
While fans were focused on the last dance season, inside the locker room, the writing was already on the wall.
Pippen’s frustration had reached a boiling point and most of it stemmed from his long-standing tension with Bulls general manager Jerry Krause. The two rarely saw eye to eye. Krause was known for his sharp front-office decisions but also for undervaluing the human side of the game. Pippen, the ultimate team player, never felt his sacrifice was fully appreciated.
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His lowball contract was never restructured despite his performance far exceeding its value. As the league evolved and contracts ballooned, Pippen watched others cash in while he remained locked into one of the most outdated deals in professional sports.
It started personal and later became public. By the 1997-98 season, the tension between Pippen and management spilled into the epicenter of the NBA universe. He delayed surgery at the start of the season as a form of protest and made it clear that his time with the Bulls was nearing its end.
That final season, immortalized in ESPN’s “The Last Dance”, was both triumphant and fractured. Pippen contributed to the sixth title but did so carrying the weight of being underappreciated. After the confetti settled, he was traded to the Houston Rockets, joining forces with Charles Barkley and Hakeem Olajuwon.
His departure marked the unraveling of the dynasty, even as Jordan retired for the second time. The Bulls never truly recovered in the years that followed, and Pippen’s time away from Chicago only emphasized what the franchise had lost.
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Over his career, Pippen would go on to earn roughly $109 million in NBA salary, but the bulk of that came after his prime years, during stints with the Rockets and the Trail Blazers.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jul 12, 2025, where it first appeared.