NBA FINALS : Reluctant Star : Pippen Recoils From the Swirl Surrounding Jordan, Yet He Still Wants to Be Like Mike

Wanted man in Detroit.

Wanted man in New York.

It was getting so bad that Scottie Pippen must have wondered if he should turn in his No. 33 for a bull’s-eye so Dennis Rodman, Xavier McDaniel and Anthony Mason could find him in a crowd.

In the old days, before this season’s Eastern Conference finals, every playoff series involving the Chicago Bulls started with a question about Pippen’s prospects against the house thug.

Anything but enchanted at the line of inquiry, Pippen used unusual defenses.

After a four-for-15 game in the regular-season finale against the New York Knicks, he told reporters: “I have two rings. I don’t have to prove anything to you guys.”

Pippen’s ring collection, though impressive, is the same size as Will Perdue’s, so this didn’t close the case.

Midway through the Bulls’ second-round series against Cleveland, Pippen was averaging a desultory 17 points. After a single-digit night against the Cavaliers, he announced:

“I’m not going to lead the league in scoring, so why should I go out and try to put up big numbers?”

A couple of days later, Michael Jordan told him why.

Jordan had a sore right wrist and someone had to pick up the slack. Pippen stepped up and hasn’t stepped back since.

In the opener of the Knick series, he missed his first five shots while everyone in Madison Square Garden nodded sagely. A year before, McDaniel had knocked five points off Pippen’s playoff scoring average (21 to 16) and eight off his shooting percentage (48% to 40%) and taught him some new words while the TV commentators thought up excuses--his ankle, his back--and the Knicks barely missed upending the Bulls.

Pippen had been that route before. Remember his migraine against the Detroit Pistons in Game 7 of the ’90 Eastern finals? So everyone waited to see what would happen.

Surprise! He kept going to the basket, kept shooting and started hitting. He made eight of his final 14 shots in Game 1 and more than 50% for the rest of the series. Since the midpoint of the Cleveland series, he has averaged 22 points.

The Suns don’t have a house thug, or any intense commitment to half-court defense, so the pressure is off.

Pippen was asked after the Knick series if he felt he had arrived.

“I thought I arrived two years ago,” he said.

But the critics. . . .

“Damn the critics,” he said, laughing.

“I never tried to figure out why it was said,” he says now. “I just deal with it. You know, you take it with a grain of salt and you go ahead on. I know I got a job to do as well as you guys. I just go on from there. I take care of my business and do my job and I make the team win, make my teammates satisfied, the management and that’s as far as it goes. I don’t have to impress the public or the media.

“I don’t let it tee me off. I let my play speak for all (the) negative things that are being written. I don’t try to come out and make any type of statement. I just play through it.”

Behind the iron-willed serenity is a shy young man from Hamburg, Ark., trying to come to grips with the expectations placed on a player of Dream Team status.

Pippen has a love-hate relationship with stardom.

On one hand, he and his buddy, Horace Grant, recoil at the swirl around and the pressures on Jordan.

On the other, Scottie, too, wants to be like Mike.

“He tries to talk himself into a minimal role to this team, but he’s a major role,” Jordan says.

“He’s trying to relax, I guess, to where he can go out and play like he wants to play. But one thing about this game, this league, this level, is that it’s a lot of expectations for every player. Especially star players. If they can’t live up to it, they’re gonna be criticized.

“Everyone thinks if they take him out of the game, that takes us out of the game. They figure I’m going to do my part of the scoring or whatever. . . . Everyone feels he’s the guy that can be broken.

“I understand it. I feel it came from the Detroit series, once he had the headache. The harassment by Rodman. The inconsistency of his play in the playoffs. I think all those kind of were rolled up into one to ‘Hey, he’s the guy that can be shaken.’ I think he’s been trying to deal with that ever since. And I think that’s a challenge for him.

“I don’t think he wants to be a star because he can see some of the pressures that the stars must deal with--talking to you guys every day, the whole atmosphere of being a star, the expectations of being a star. He’s got a taste of it. He wants a little bit, but he’s going to have to take a lot because he’s a major emphasis on this team. And he is a star on this team.

“He’s got too many skills to be adequate or supporting cast. He can be a star. I mean, he’s got all the right tools. And I think everyone knows that. And I think that’s why you guys push him. That’s why we support him. That’s why he gets paid the type of money he gets.”