"He won a few rings" - Kobe Bryant’s ex-teammate gives Scottie Pippen the edge as Arkansas' top player
LA Lakers veteran Derek Fisher gave Scottie Pippen his flowers, naming the six-time NBA champion as the best player to come out of Arkansas. While Fisher himself is from Arkansas, while speaking in a video that appears to be taken at the 2024 Paris Olympics, he was asked who the best player from Arkansas was.
Rather than saying himself, Fisher praised Scottie Pippen, citing the fact that Pippen was a part of the NBA 75th anniversary team. Apart from being a member of the NBA 75th anniversary team, Pippen was also a member of the NBA 50th anniversary team.
Pippen amassed six championships with the Chicago Bulls while earning seven All-Star selections. Moreover, Pippen also won two Olympic gold medals, first in 1992 with the Dream Team and then in 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics in the United States, where he was named the USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year.
Given his accolades and status as one of the greatest NBA players of all time, Fisher couldn't help but give Pippen his flowers, naming him as the best player to come out of Arkansas while joking that he wasn't on the same level as Pippen.
"Scottie Pippen. I'm not a Top-75 all-time great. ... He won a few rings though."
Looking at Scottie Pippen's high school and college career before getting to the NBA
While Scottie Pippen may be known as one of the best defenders of his era and one of the greatest players of all time, before getting to the NBA, he was overlooked in college. Before making it to college, Pippen hadn't yet gone through a growth spurt.
Because of that, while in high school, he played point guard. As Hamburgh High School basketball coach Donald Wayne, who coached Pippen all those years ago, explained in an interview with Basketball Network earlier this year, not only was Pippen undersized, he was also physically weak.
As Wayne explained, he required his players to lift weights, something that didn't go over well initially with a young Scottie Pippen. Nevertheless, Pippen wound up putting on muscle over the course of his high school career, leading Hamburgh High to the playoffs in his senior year.
However, Pippen didn't receive much attention as a young student, and as a result, wound up receiving no college scholarship offers. Eventually, he settled on playing for the University of Central Arkansas, where he walked-on for the team.
While in college, Pippen went through a growth spurt that saw him reach six-foot-eight. That, combined with his double-double average, earned him NAIA All-American honors in back-to-back years, earned him attention from NBA scouts, and Chicago Bulls GM Jerry Krause.
After the 1987 draft was underway, Krause and the Bulls packaged their No. 8 pick for Pippen, who was drafted fifth by the Seattle Supersonics.