Some say Scottie Pippen was a better overall player than Michael Jordan, and Pip recently said MJ was a horrible player without him. All that could be a never-ending debate, but one thing certain is that there was no way Pippen could ever beat Jordan in golf. Not because MJ is a better golfer than Pippen by a mile, but because Pip doesn't want to bet an insane lump sum of money in a golf game like Jordan.
"I like chipping balls out in the backyard. I played with some pretty good golfers. If you're wondering if I played with Michael, yes. I played with him. He's a pretty good golfer. [But] I haven't beaten him. His stakes are a little too high for me," Pippen told Architectural Digest in 2020.
If Jordan fancies seeing his best Chicago Bulls co-star and teammate lose a staggering amount of money in a golf match, what can we expect from someone who hasn't been a part of his illustrious NBA career, someone like Cigar Aficionado and Wine Spectator founder Marvin R. Shanken.
Like Pippen, Shanken also once revealed that MJ didn't just want to win. He wanted to see him lose more than he could.
"The rumor is that he likes to play for a lot of money," Shanken said. "He wants to play for more money than you can afford to lose. He thinks he has an edge that way."
No matter how you slice it, it's safe to say that Jordan likes to gamble whenever he plays golf. And if you are worth $2 billion, that doesn't sound too negative. However, many fail to understand that regardless of Jordan's stakes, golf is more than just a platform for his gambling habits.
According to Jordan himself, golf ultimately became his outlet after he was done with basketball because he needed to do something that would allow him to release the brimming competitive drive inside him.
"From a competitive standpoint to me, it's the hardest game to play. I can always respond to an opponent, a defensive guy, an offensive guy, whatever," Jordan once opened up. "But in golf, it's like playing in a mirror, and you are battling yourself consistently that you can try and get perfection, every swing, every pud. For a competitive person like me, this is what keeps me sane because when I walked away from the game of basketball, that was enough to keep my competitive juices working."