As you would expect from these two Basketball legends, Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan have both amassed a very impressive fortune.
The pair were an iconic duo who were instrumental in winning six NBA Championship titles for the Chicago Bulls in the ’90s.
While Jordan was overwhelmingly considered the greatest player of the time, and perhaps all time, Scottie Pippen was arguably the second greatest.
Jordan said of Pippen, “I considered him my best teammate of all time,” and speaking about when Pippen was injured, he said, “every day that Scottie wasn’t playing gave someone else confidence that they could beat us.”
Pippen helped the Bulls to their first NBA championship in 1991, averaging 17.8 points and 7.3 rebounds per game, numbers that were second only to Jordan himself and Horace Grant.
Pippen and Jordan have been in the news after starring in ESPN’s The Last Dance, but how much money did these two incredible athletes accrue in their respective careers?
How much were Jordan and Pippen paid at the Bulls?
Pippen was already on a rookie contract worth $5 million, but after that first NBA Championship, he received a five-year extension worth $18 million that became effective from 1993.
However, Pippen was less than delighted with this, and in 1995 he said in a courtside interview that he wanted the Bulls to trade him.
Bulls general manager Jerry Krause refused to trade Pippen, which may have been the smart move as he won two more titles after that interview.
When the Bulls got their second three-peat of championships, Pippen was overwhelmingly Chicago’s best player bar Jordan, yet he was only the team’s sixth highest-paid player.
He ranked 122nd in the league in terms of salary, something Jordan referred to as “embarrassing.”
While the Bulls were collecting their six titles, Scottie Pippen never earned more than $4 million a year. He made up for it later in his career as he went on to earn $11 million playing for the Houston Rockets in 1998-99.
He next earned approximately $65 million playing four seasons for the Portland Trail Blazers and pocketed a little over $100 million in salary over his playing career.
So best not to feel too sorry for him.
Scottie Pippen is worth $50 million, and Michael Jordan is worth $2.1 billion
According to The Richest, Scottie Pippen is currently worth about $50 million.
Meanwhile, Michael Jordan signed back-to-back deals with the Chicago Bulls that allowed him to earn a whopping $30 million a year. Before that, his first two deals with the Bulls bagged him a cool $29 million.
That said, when Jordan retired in 2003, his take-home salary for his whole career was actually a little less than Pippen’s, at a measly $89 million.
But with the Chicago Bulls, the main star was making significantly more money. Jordan opted out of the players’ union’s group licensing program, which meant that he was allowed to make his own marketing deals.
Jordan became something of a commercial icon when Nike launched the Jordan range and he made the majority of his money off the court.
As well as Nike, he has sponsorship deals with Hanes, Gatorade, and Upper Deck. Forbes magazine reckons he’s currently worth about $2.1 billion.