Scottie Pippen

Scottie Pippen has been married twice. He married his first wife, Karen McCollum, in 1988. Their son Antron was born in 1987. After they divorced in 1990, he wed Larsa Younan in 1997. They have four children together, Sophia, Justin, Preston, and Scottie Jr. Pippen also has two daughters, Sierra and Taylor, from other relationships.

Pippen often appears as himself in TV shows and films. There is a multitude of songs that contain references to the Bulls, the Dream Team, or Pippin personally. There is also a considerable amount of literature written about him.

Born on September 25, 1965 in Hamburg, Arkansas, Scottie Pippen is the youngest of the 12 children of Ethel and Preston Pippen. Ethel was 6 feet tall while Preston was 6'1" and all their children have inherited the trait, with Scottie, at 6'8", being the tallest. Preston was employed at a paper mill until he suffered a stroke that rendered his right side paralysed. It drastically limited his ability to speak and move. He passed away on May 10, 1990.

Pippen’s passion for basketball developed early. As a youth, he aspired to make the winning shot in the seventh game of an NBA championship one day. He studied at Hamburg High School where he played for their basketball program, the Hamburg Lions.

Despite his impressive high school performance, he did not attract any interest from the college scouts and eventually enrolled at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. In the four years (1983-87) he played for the Central Arkansas Bears, he appeared in 93 games, scoring 17.2 points per game in average.

Scottie Pippen made himself available for the 1987 NBA draft and was picked by the Seattle SuperSonics as their fifth overall pick. They subsequently gave him to the Bulls in exchange for Olden Polynice and future draft options.

On November 7, 1987, he made his NBA debut against the Philadelphia 76ers and scored 10 points, 2 steals, 4 assists and 1 rebound, helping the Bulls win their season opener. He ended his first season in NBA with 7.9 points per game in average in 79 games.

In the 1988-89 season, he played 73 games, started 56 of those and scored 14.4 points per game in average. Jordan, who was already a senior member of the team, took the young rookie from Arkansas under his wing.

In the following season, Pippen’s performance drastically improved and he made his debut appearance in the NBA All-Star Team. At the turn of the decade, he became one of the league’s most promising young forward.

In the 1990-91 season, the Bulls’ coach Phil Jackson employed Pippen masterfully, so that he could contribute to the team to the best of his ability. Pippen was the Bulls’ primary defensive stopper and a key feature in Jackson’s triangle offence.

Scottie Pippen was a member of two gold medal-winning American basketball teams. He was part of the legendary US basketball delegation to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, dubbed as “The Dream Team”. Besides Pippen and his teammate Jordan, the delegation included Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird. They had an easy tournament, defeating their opponents by 44 points on average to eventually win the gold medal against Croatia.

The 1996 Atlanta Olympics was no different. While Jordan and Bird had retired, Pippen and Barkley were still there. Nicknamed “Dream Team 3”, they won all their matches en-route to the gold medal against Yugoslavia.

In 2008, Pippen played for Torpan Pojat of Helsinki, Finland and Sundsvall Dragons of Sundsvall, Sweden before formally announcing his retirement.