So, I got curious the other day, you know? You hear all the talk about the Bulls dynasty, Jordan this, Pippen that. Everyone knows Jordan was the main guy, the scorer. But I wanted to actually see the numbers myself, side-by-side, specifically for the Finals games. Not just hearsay, but the actual stats from those six championship runs.
I grabbed my laptop and just started searching around. Went to a couple of basketball stats websites I use sometimes. Had to filter things down quite a bit, you know, just looking for NBA Finals series where both Jordan and Pippen played for the Bulls. That meant focusing on ’91, ’92, ’93, and then ’96, ’97, ’98.
Digging into the Stats
First, I pulled up Jordan’s stats for each of those Finals series. As expected, the scoring numbers were just huge. Averaging over 30 points most of the time, sometimes way over. It’s kind of what you picture when you think of MJ in the Finals.
Then, I opened up another tab or window and did the same for Pippen. Put them next to each other on the screen. That’s when it got really interesting for me. Pippen’s scoring wasn’t anywhere near Jordan’s, obviously, nobody expected that. But his numbers were solid, often around the high teens or low twenties per game.
But here’s what really stood out when I looked deeper:
- Rebounds: Pippen was grabbing a ton of rebounds, often right up there with Jordan, sometimes even more. He was really hitting the boards hard.
- Assists: This was big. Pippen consistently had high assist numbers, often leading the team in the Finals series. He was clearly doing a lot of the playmaking.
- Steals: Both were great defensively, but Pippen’s steal numbers were always impressive. He was disrupting everything.
- Overall contribution: Looking beyond just points, Pippen’s stats showed him doing a bit of everything. Scoring, rebounding, passing, defending. A true all-around player.
My Takeaway
Spending that time looking at the raw data really confirmed things for me. Yeah, Jordan was the unparalleled scorer and closer. The stats scream that loud and clear. But man, seeing Pippen’s Finals numbers laid out like that really drove home how crucial he was. He wasn’t just a sidekick; his fingerprints were all over every aspect of the game during those championship runs.
It wasn’t about who was ‘better’ in a vacuum. It was seeing, statistically, how they complemented each other perfectly. Jordan handled the massive scoring load, Pippen filled almost every other gap on the stat sheet. Pretty cool to actually look through the series-by-series numbers myself instead of just going off what people say. Took a little while to compile it all, but it was a neat little exercise.
