Last week, Scottie Pippen kicked up some controversy when he claimed that Phil Jackson’s decision to call a play for Toni Kukoč in Game 3 of the 1994 Eastern Conference Semifinals was “a racial move.” He first made the comments in an interview with GQ, but then doubled down on them, and really drew attention, in a follow up interview on Dan Patrick’s radio show.
And the Patrick interview was particularly interesting, as one small exchange from it seems to sum up so many of the problems with our racial politics. I’m going to quote the crucial piece:
PIPPEN: Why would Toni, who’s a rookie, get the last second shot, and you put me out of bounds? That’s what I mean ‘racial.’ That was Scottie Pippen’s team. Scottie Pippen was on pace to be an MVP that year. Why would you put him in a position not to be successful? Why wouldn’t you put him in a position to succeed? Michael Jordan is not there, so who’s next in line for you?
PATRICK: But have you talked to Phil about this? Because by saying a ‘racial move’ you’re calling Phil a racist.
PIPPEN: I don’t got a problem with that.
Each part of this exchange is revealing. First, there is Pippen’s insistence that he had earned the right to take the final shot by being the best player on the team in 1994. Moments before, he had invoked his long tenure with the Bulls, seemingly implying that shots should be awarded based on service time.
A part of me admires this way of thinking, as it seems to prioritize player experience and over coaching strategy—a very pro working class attitude. But I can’t really get behind it 100%. The shot should go to whoever has the best chance of making the shot, not whoever means more to the Bulls holistically. And, indeed, it does seem like Phil Jackson’s play call was primarily about who was most likely to make the shot. After all, Kukoč’s shot went in and the Bulls won the game.
But that doesn’t mean Pippen is totally wrong. If you look at his comments, all he’s really asking for is some institutional support: “Why wouldn’t you put him in a position to succeed?” After all, Pippen in 1994 had one of the hardest jobs imaginable in sports—trying to keep a team that had just lost Michael Jordan on track—and he handled it shockingly well. He finished third in MVP voting, and the Bulls won only two fewer games than they had the year before. So I think it’s fair for Pippen to think the Bulls owed him some deference. And while the Kukoč shot went in, it’s reasonable for Pippen to conclude that it was an example of the team not setting him up to succeed.
Indeed, Kukoč’s mere presence on the team was controversial among some players, as documented in The Last Dance last year. Bulls GM Jerry Krause was enamored with Kukoč, and explored trading Pippen so Kukoč could replace him in the lineup. There were many reasons for this tension, but it certainly seems like race—and the desire to groom a white star for the team—may have been one.
It’s a pretty complicated subject, but Pippen’s answer is actually an interesting look at how Black players can feel let down by white-dominated institutions. But then we get to Patrick’s response: “By saying a ‘racial move’ you’re calling Phil a racist.” It’s so profoundly flattening and thoughtless, even after the supposed racial reckoning of last year, that it’s almost depressing. The WHOLE POINT of talking about structural or systemic racism is to acknowledge that structures and systems can have racist effects even if the people in them have no ill intent or personal animus towards other races. But now we are hopelessly mired in a debate over Phil Jackson’s supposed racism. Indeed, the entire rest of the interview becomes about whether or not Jackson himself is racist (plus about 45 seconds about Pippen’s new bourbon). Not only that, but every takeaway from the interview was “Pippen calls Phil Jackson” a racist, when in fact his statements were much more thoughtful and complex than that.
Even the specific words Pippen used—“I don’t got a problem with that”—were interesting. He seems to consciously avoid the inflammatory language. It’s Patrick who insists he call Phil a racist. Similarly, in the original GQ interview, it was the interviewer who brought up Jackson, not Pippen. Instead, what Pippen seems to say is If what I’m saying leads you to that conclusion, then so be it. He doesn’t insist on calling Jackson a racist, but he also doesn’t recoil at the suggestion, as Patrick seems to imply he should. Of course, once Pippen refuses to back down, any hope of a nuanced discussion is completely lost. The entire conversation becomes a referendum on Phil Jackson.
In other words, what happens here is that Pippen makes a flawed but nuanced point about how he perceives institutions working against him, which the white interviewer interprets that as calling a famous white person a racist. Then, when this doesn’t lead Pippen to change his story, the whole thing becomes about the famous white person’s alleged racism, instead of the original point the Black subject tried to make. It seems like every racial conversation proceeds this way now, and it’s just such a bummer.
I don’t really have anything original to say about the solution, except that people—especially white people—need to stop thinking of racism as a matter of personal feelings and bigotries, and start thinking of it in materialistic terms.