Chris Bosh calls Scottie Pippen NBA’s most underrated all-time great

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As part of ESPN’s “5-on-5″ feature, Chris Bosh was asked who he thought was the most underrated all-time NBA great.

The Miami Heat forward, who knows a little about being underrated, responded with this:

“Scottie Pippen. Yeah, Scottie. Because they always say he was Robin to Batman, and I think that’s so disrespectful. It’s a little personal for me, because I understand filling a role and doing your job and it’s very difficult to do that. You have to be really, really good to win a championship. As good as Michael was, you can’t win a championship by yourself. You need someone who’s your equal or pretty close. It hits close to home but I don’t know what it’s like to win three in a row. He’s pretty, pretty, pretty good [Larry David voice].”

Bosh might be right. Pippen enjoyed his two best seasons with the Bulls when Jordan retired in 1993. A career 16.1 ppg scorer, Pippen jumped to 22.0 and 21.4 during MJ’s first retirement. His rebounds went from 7.7 in ’93 to 8.7 and 8.1 the following two seasons. Pippen also played the best defense of his career without his sidekick, posting the two lowest defensive ratings of his career—97 and 98 points per possession—while leading the league in steals (2.9 per game) in ’94-95.

Stats via Basketball-Reference