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For Some Reason, the Internet is Re-Litigating Scottie Pippen vs. LeBron James Based on a Year-Old Podcast Clip
By Matt Schultz
Published:
The internet is currently arguing over something Scottie Pippen said on Patrick Bet-David’s PBD Podcast in January 2025, which was this:
Some of the exchange:
PATRICK BET-DAVID: “Would you put yourself ahead of LeBron as a team standpoint?”
PIPPEN: “My success as a team is more successful than LeBron. I got six rings.”
BET-DAVID: “Okay. So then, if I talk to an NBA owner… If I speak from an NBA standpoint – owner – and I want to find an all-around player to be my number one, do you think the average owner is going to pick you or LeBron?”
PIPPEN: “I don’t know.”
BET-DAVID: “Got it. Okay. So that –”
PIPPEN: “Do you want individual accolades, or do you want championships? Because I didn’t chase mines.”
I have a good amount to say on this story, and I think the best way to format my thoughts is to break this up into three sections. Here we go:
1) A Few Stray Observations/Statements/Questions About This Clip in a Vacuum
-I don’t know who Patrick Bet-David is. I never heard of him until I saw this clip and did some research about what this podcast is so I’d have a real source to point to besides content farms that make up 99% of NBA discourse.
-I have also never heard of his PBD Podcast.
-A quick Google has taught me this about Bet-David:
-Why was Scottie Pippen on this podcast?
-Does this being a business podcast explain why they’re talking so weird about sports?
-This back and forth sounded particularly nuts to me:
PATRICK BET-DAVID: “Would you put yourself ahead of LeBron as a team standpoint?”
PIPPEN: “My success as a team is more successful than LeBron. I got six rings.”
-What does that mean? “As a team standpoint?” That’s not a sports question. That question has never been uttered before in history. It is nonsense.
-Then there was Scottie’s response, which made almost as little sense: “My success as a team is more successful than LeBron.” You are not a team, Scottie. You are one man. A team is a collection of many.
-All in all, this was a baffling response to a baffling question; neither the question nor the answer needed to be said. Pretty useless back and forth here. It should have been forgotten to time immediately after the podcast episode aired way back in January 2025 — but, strangely, it wasn’t. Which leads cleanly into the next part of this blog:
2) Some Stray Thoughts About the Nature of NBA Discourse, Especially When it Comes to LeBron
I have been an NBA fan for a very long time, so I’m no stranger to the way LeBron drives conversation in the basketball world. But in the time since LeBron has come to the Sixers, I’ve come to experience just how powerful a conversation-starter he is without even having to do or say anything. I guess because he’s on my favorite team now, I’m seeing this type of LeBron debate appear out of thin air every single day, and it’s pretty nuts. This Scottie clip is a prime example.
Why the hell is the whole internet talking about what Scottie Pippen said in January 2025? That was 18 months ago. Isn’t that weird? And not only are people talking about it – they’re forming very emotional opinions and arguments for one side or the other. Then content farms and clickbait-ass brands are leeching from the debates they see happening on Twitter and turning those tiny content crumbs into blogs or social posts with no context or anything. Then those blog/social posts are being digested and dissected by Twitter users reacting to the reactions, and the cycle repeats itself, over and over, forever.
It’s an ouroboros of content slop. And it’s self-sustaining. The discourse doesn’t even need new things to happen. When it comes to LeBron, time is irrelevant. There will always be something to post about. It’s a whole industry and way of life online. Very powerful/strange stuff. And it feels weird as hell that Sixers fandom is now tied up in it. Which brings me to this blog’s final section:
3) My Actual Opinion on Scottie Pippen vs. LeBron
Scottie Pippen is an insane and weird old man. We’ve all known this for quite some time. He was on a podcast for entrepreneurs no one’s ever heard of being his awkward self, and he said something that doesn’t even really make sense, and aggregators picked at the carcass of this boring conversation like vultures and took whatever sustenance they could gather. That’s all there is to it. Not even really worth arguing about, in my opinion. We all know he’s wrong. Except Scottie, I guess. He posted this on X on Sunday:
More importantly, though, Pippen’s wild claim has me wondering a bigger point as it relates to LeBron and the GOAT conversation: As Sixers fans, should we now argue/believe that LeBron is the greatest basketball player ever? He’s a Sixer now; we should all want the best to ever do it to be a Sixer, right?
I’m leaning yes. I think this is what we should all be positing going forward. I think it may be our duty. I’m not 100% sure yet, I have to think about it some more, but I do really like the sound of it as I mutter it to myself at my laptop right now: “LeBron James, the Philadelphia 76er, is the greatest basketball player of all time…”
Again, haven’t fully decided if that’s my take just yet. Gonna be patient with this one. Gotta wait and see what Twitter/content farms say about it first, then develop my opinion from there. And on and on we go…
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…) email: M.Schultz@sportradar.com