Scottie Pippen on the astronomical growth of NBA salaries: 'Players have a healthier wallet'

Scottie Pippen was a guest a month ago at the Real-World Asset Summit in New York, where he discussed plenty of interesting topics, and one of those included the NBA player's salaries.

After a moderator, Dan Roberts, asked him if he wished he could've played long enough to team up with his son Scottie Jr., Pippen jokingly said he would do it for the salaries. 

Cash rules everything around me

As the salary cap has grown astronomically in the last decade, Roberts wanted to know how he feels about the current trend where the biggest NBA stars are being paid hundreds of millions of dollars every season.

"Salaries are great. The game has grown so much. I've been around the game for 20 years, so I think it's great to see that growth in salaries. I've watched it grow and grow over my years out of the game. NBA has grown globally; we have a lot more international players, and that growth has allowed the players to have a healthier wallet," Scottie said.

Irony

When Pippen was in his prime, the rules and regulations about contracts were virtually non-existent, which led Scottie to sign one of the worst contracts in NBA history.

In 1991, Pippen signed a five-year, 18 million-dollar deal with the Chicago Bulls, and the deal was much worse than it seemed at first glance. He signed the new contract after still having two more years on his rookie deal, which weren't erased by signing the new deal. If Scottie had waited, by the end of the last Bulls championship season (1998), the league's salary cap nearly doubled, so Pippen could've gotten a much more lucrative contract. 

However, he couldn't say no to financial stability for the sake of his family, who lived mostly poor, as Scottie grew up with 11 siblings. He took the money, but even the Bulls owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, told him it was a bad deal for him, as he detailed during the Last Dance documentary.

Even though a common individual is probably laughing at the fact that getting 18 million is being called a bad deal, when we realize that Pippen was the sixth-highest-paid Bull and the 122nd-highest-paid player in the league by the end of the second three-peat, it becomes much more clear how bad of a deal Scottie signed. He was the second-best player behind Michael Jordan during those title runs, so it's clear he was worth much more.

That's why it's kind of ironic for Pippen to comment about the current state of NBA salaries. And even though he is certainly happy for today's generation, a part of Scottie probably wishes he was born 20 years later so he could reap the benefits players have today.