Pippen Blames Media For Printing His Words

The Chicago Tribune's Sam Smith had an odd column this morning. He tells us Scottie Pippen is upset about some quotes attributed to him in a companion piece to last week's Smith attempt to jump-start Pippen's coaching career. If you'll remember, the piece had some hilarious and slightly nasty comments from Pippen regarding various Bulls. Pippen says now those comments were taken out of context, that he was speaking in general terms and Smith made the leap in assigning the sentiment to current Bulls. Smith, for whatever reason, gives Pippen a free pass in today's column.

As a reminder, he are a few choice quotes Smith printed last week. You tell me if they could have been misconstrued.

[On Tyrus Thomas] He's athletic, but he doesn't know how to play the game. He's great from the neck down. ...

[On Ben Gordon] He's out there shooting for a contract. ...

[On Kirk Hinrich] Let him run the offense. But you can't have midgets running your backcourt.

Either Smith printed made-up quotes, or Pippen's talking about specific Bulls and not the broad terms Pippen now claims. Since Smith doesn't admit to plagiarism in today's column, I assume we can assume Pippen's covering his ass. (Why? The players didn't seem to mind.)