Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

8/15/2010 at 8:39am

Scottie Pippen was often thought of as little more than a sidekick to Michael Jordan. Saturday, Pippen got his due and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Pippen’s journey “Out of the Shadow” was chronicled Friday in an excellent piece by Harvey Araton of the New York Times.

Most in Arkansas know that Pippen went unrecruited out of high school and eventually became a star at Central Arkansas. Araton details Pippen’s unlikely ascent in greater detail than we’ve seen before:

Pippen was the youngest of 12 children and grew up in a two-room house in rural Hamburg, Ark. His father, Preston, a mill worker, was disabled by a stroke and became unable to work when Pippen was a teenager. Dyer got him into school on a Pell grant and put him to work as the team manager until a position on the team opened during the season.

He cleaned lockers, handed out towels. “And now he’s going into the Hall of Fame — and that’s amazing,” said Dyer, who will attend the ceremony in Springfield, Mass., at the invitation of Pippen.

Preps to pros, rarely has an N.B.A. great emerged from such humble beginnings. Far from the clichéd Jordan comparisons, there lies the essence of the Scottie Pippen story.

According to Jerry Krause, the former general manager who traded for Pippen in a prearranged draft-day deal with Seattle, it was a sight to behold, watching Jordan punish the rail-thin and raw Pippen in practice.

“One of the smartest things Doug Collins did was match them up,” Krause said, referring to the Bulls’ coach before Jackson. “And I mean Michael just killed Scottie, beat the hell out of him. But it was the best thing that could have happened to Scottie, winding up with Michael in Chicago. He had to get stronger. He had to learn to compete.”

Pippen was selected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame with a class that included Karl Malone, members of the 1992 “Dream Team” (including Pippen) and WNBA player Cynthia Cooper.

As we’ve written before about Pippen: what a remarkable journey.

Tagged: Scottie Pippen, Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan, Dream Team, NBA, University of Central Arkansas, Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame