my entry for the scottie pippen essay contest

Why do we celebrate Scottie Pippen’s birthday?

A birthday is the celebration of another year of life. It is also a celestial event. On Scottie Pippen’s birthday, the earth is in the same position relative to the sun as it was on that fateful day forty-one years ago. That day, September 25, 1965, brought us one of the NBA’s greatest players. Today we gather to celebrate that day.

Scottie Maurice Pippen rose from the backwoods of Hamburg, Arkansas to greatness on and off the basketball court. But why do we, as Cornell graduate students, worlds away from the hardwood of the United Center, commemorate the birth of Scottie Pippen?

It is an opportunity to honor the sidekick. The second banana. The Robin. The man who lived in the shadow of greatness for years before he himself emerged from it a champion in his own right.

It is an opportunity to celebrate an original member of the 1992 Dream Team that dominated in Barcelona, and the 1996 team that killed the competition in Atlanta. A man who has more championship rings than fingers on his right hand. But as we all know, Scottie’s greatness did not end on the basketball court.

It is an opportunity to honor a man who is down to earth, and faces the same problems that we all do. When he had one too many beers before driving and ran a red light, he was held accountable for his actions. He was cooperative with the police and later the charges were dropped for insufficient evidence. Scottie was not above the law, he was the law.

It is an opportunity to celebrate a man who pays only for the services he receives. When service at a bar is not up to his high standards, he is not afraid to make himself known. The name “No Tippin’ Pippen” is a moniker he wears with pride.

This man is the quintessential human being. He has excelled on and off the court. The question, then, should not be “Why do we celebrate Scottie Pippen’s birthday?”, but instead “How can we not celebrate Scottie Pippen’s birthday?”

To conclude, I will cite another basketball great, the great Sir Charles Barkley. "Scottie Pippen is a role model. If all the kids grew up to be like Scottie, the world would be a better place." To all present I say let these words ring in your minds tonight and for the rest of the year, until next September 25, when we will convene again, to bask in greatness.

Also, fuck Toni Kukoc.