FROM THE OTHER SIDE

What papers in the Houston area are saying about the series:

FRAN BLINEBURY, HOUSTON CHRONICLE

In the three-plus months since his heralded arrival in a stretch limousine with police escort, Scottie Pippen has inched no closer to understanding his role on the Houston Rockets.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You’ve been watching all year. Maybe you can tell me.”

I can tell him this: Michael Jordan or Larry Bird or Magic Johnson would never have felt the need to ask a columnist for such clarification.

And maybe that has been the problem. That we have been blinded by Pippen’s glittering collection of NBA championship jewelry earned in his years with the Chicago Bulls and Jordan, and expected him to do too much upon arrival.

Pippen came to Houston with the papers as one of the NBA’s 50 greatest players but without a pedigree as the horse who can pull the wagon.

Maybe we chose to overlook that in all of those Chicago title runs, it was Jordan, John Paxson, Toni Kukoc and Steve Kerr who stepped up to make those memorable game-winning plays. Not Pippen.

Perhaps we forgot that when Jordan was off chasing curveballs for the 1993-94 season and most of ‘94-95, the Bulls did not advance to the NBA finals, and the most memorable image of Pippen was his petulant refusal to get off the bench for the last 1.8 seconds of a playoff game against the Knicks.

Now, his Game 1 shot at Charles Barkley is a bookend of non-responsibility.

The Rockets expected a leader. What they have gotten is a fragile ego who would prefer simply to kick in the chorus line.

Nobody’s stock has plummeted like Pippen’s in a season-long soap opera of ambivalence and discontent.