Just about every basketball fan associates Hall of Fame forward Scottie Pippen with those Chicago Bulls teams of the 1990s that were led by Michael Jordan. He gave Jordan the help he badly needed early in his career, and together, they carried the Bulls to six NBA championships and made them one of the biggest cultural phenomena of the decade.
With the Bulls’ dynasty ending, Pippen wanted to come to the Los Angeles Lakers on two occasions in the late 1990s. But it never happened, and he retired as a player following the 2003-04 season.
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In the fall of 2005, Phil Jackson, his old head coach who was now in charge of the Lakers, invited him to training camp to help out. The Lakers had missed the playoffs the previous season after trading Shaquille O’Neal in 2004, and they had a young, thin team that had only one viable player outside of Bryant: Lamar Odom.
Jackson saw Odom as a Pippen-like player. At 6-foot-10, Odom had a wide range of skills, and he could bring the ball upcourt and set up a team’s offense just as easily as he could score 20 points when he wanted to. Jackson wanted Pippen to help Odom become L.A.’s offensive maestro, and Pippen believed Odom was capable of doing so.
“No one can remember, but when I was first put in the front of the court as a point guard, it took me time to develop the skills where I wasn’t afraid of getting the ball stolen from me,” Pippen said at the time.
“I had more confidence in getting us into the offensive sets after time. It’s just something that he (Odom) is going to have to work at. He’s a very talented player. There’s no reason why he can’t do even better than what I did. He has the size; he has the skills.”
Ultimately, while Odom had his moments, he couldn’t rise to Pippen’s level as far as being a facilitator or a consistent offensive threat. He lacked Pippen’s basketball IQ, focus and desire, and he saw himself merely as a role player who wanted to fill in the blanks and go with the flow rather than put his imprint on the game.
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Bryant had grown up watching the Bulls of the 1990s, and he was impressed with Pippen. The following season, with the Lakers struggling to rise above mediocrity, Bryant apparently wanted Pippen to suit up for them, even though the forward was 41 years of age.
Via Los Angeles Times:
“He was in camp with us last season, and he looked like he was in great shape,” said Bryant. “I’m going to tell him there’s a place in the triangle for him.”
Pippen remained retired, and even though things remained rocky for the Lakers, it all worked out in storybook fashion. The February 2008 trade for Hall of Fame big man Pau Gasol restored the franchise’s mystique, not to mention Bryant’s hopes and dreams, and soon enough, it won back-to-back NBA championships, including one over its archrival Boston Celtics.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: Scottie Pippen once assisted Kobe Bryant’s Lakers in training camp