When Toni Kukoc got $26 million from the Bulls, Scottie Pippen was mad: 'First the last shot and now this'

It wasn't until 1997 that Scottie Pippen demanded a trade from the Chicago Bulls, but Pip's beef with the Bulls' management had been brewing for quite sometime before that.

One of the early cracks in Pippen's relationship with the Bulls was when Phil Jackson bypassed him and let Toni Kukoc take the game-winning shot in Game 3 of the Bulls' second-round series against the New York Knicks. That offseason, Scottie got more agitated when the Bulls gave Kukoc a new contract that made him the highest-paid Chicago Bull of all time.

"I wasn't thrilled, however, with another move the Bulls made, which was signing Toni to a new deal for $26 million over six years, the largest in the history of the franchise," wrote Pippen. "It figured. They leave me underpaid year after year, then hand Toni a fortune. First the last shot, and now this."

The Bulls gave Toni the biggest contract in franchise history

Kukoc initially signed an 8-year $17.6 million contract with the Bulls in 1993. However, one year later, he exercised an early termination option to void the remaining years and sign a new one. Four months after that infamous playoff game, the Croatian sensation signed a new six-year deal worth $26 million, which at that time was the largest ever paid by the team.

Meanwhile, Pippen was stuck with the five-year $18 million extension deal he signed in 1991. Because that contract was inked during the 1991 NBA Finals and it did not erase the remaining two years of Scottie's rookie deal, the money was spread over a total of eight years, leaving him grossly underpaid.

Pip tried to rework the deal with GM Jerry Krause, but without a player option like Kukoc, Krause refused to do so, opting to use the team's extra money to build a better team around MJ. Scottie ultimately played out the deal, and he ended up leaving the Bulls after their Last Dance in 1998.

Pippen was angry at Phil

As stated earlier, there was already a previous incident also involving Kukoc that Pippen was furious about. It was during Game 3 of the Bulls' 1994 second-round series against the New York Knicks when Pippen refused to enter the game after head coach Phil Jackson picked Toni over him to take the game-winning shot.

"There was one person I was angry with: Phil Jackson," Pippen wrote. "Michael Jordan was gone. This was my team now, my chance to be the hero, and Phil was giving that chance to Toni Kukoc. Are you serious? Toni was a rookie with no rings. I was in my seventh year with three rings. And, by the way, in the MVP race that season."

Pippen had an MVP-type season in 1993-94, but during that crucial play, Phil wanted him to inbound the ball to Kukoc, which, of course, he dissented to. But Toni made the game-winning shot, which made it a double blackeye for Pip. Kukoc and Pippen got over that and the other issues. 

However, as we saw during The Last Dance Documentary, Jordan did not forget about Pippen's contract complaints and the Game 3 incident in 1994.