I was rewatching “The Last Dance” for the fourth time the other night. (Don’t judge me, it is practically a comfort movie at this point). It got me thinking about the single most radioactive take in all of basketball history.

It is a question that makes Chicago fans physically ill. It makes the Jordan loyalists throw their phones across the room.

Would Michael Jordan still have won six rings without Scottie Pippen?

Let us just dive right in. The short answer is no. The long answer is absolutely not, and anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy world.

We have this tendency to treat Jordan like a comic book superhero who just willed his way to six championships while carrying four guys he met at a YMCA parking lot. That is the mythology. The reality is much more complicated.

Think about the late 1980s Eastern Conference. It was a bloodbath. You had the Bad Boy Pistons acting like a professional wrestling faction. You had the Celtics clinging to the end of their dynasty. You had the Knicks sharpening their elbows.

Jordan was the most terrifying scorer we have ever seen. He was a force of nature. But he was getting pulverized by Detroit. He needed someone to take the physical toll, initiate the triangle offense, and guard the other team’s best player.

Enter Scottie Pippen.

We forget how revolutionary Pippen was. Before Scottie, you did not have 6-foot-8 guys handling the ball like point guards and defending all five positions. He was the prototype for Kawhi Leonard. He was the prototype for LeBron James. He was the ultimate Swiss Army knife.

Let us play the “What If” game. Let us say Jerry Krause never makes the draft day trade for Pippen in 1987. Let us say the Bulls end up with Olden Polynice and just keep him.

Does Jordan eventually win a title? Yes. He was too psychotic not to win at least one. He would have dragged some combination of role players to the Finals by sheer force of will. He probably gets a ring in 1992 or 1993. The league was expanding, the talent pool was diluted, and Michael was simply better than everyone else.

But six? Two three-peats? Not a chance.

Think about the 1991 Finals against the Lakers. Magic Johnson was dissecting the Bulls in Game 1. Who did Phil Jackson switch onto Magic to change the entire series? It was not Michael. It was Scottie.

Think about the 1998 Eastern Conference Finals against Indiana. That series goes to a Game 7. It was an absolute rock fight. Jordan was exhausted. Pippen played 42 minutes, played elite defense, and kept the entire system from collapsing.

This is not a slight against Jordan. It is just the reality of team sports.

Let us look at the evidence from the 1993-94 season. Jordan goes to play minor league baseball. The entire world writes off the Bulls. What does Scottie Pippen do? He leads the team to 55 wins. He finishes third in MVP voting. He leads the team in scoring, rebounding, assists, steals, and blocks. He nearly took them to the Eastern Conference Finals if not for a highly questionable foul call by Hue Hollins against the Knicks.

That is not a sidekick. That is a franchise player who willingly took a back seat for the sake of winning.

It reminds me of the movie “Lethal Weapon”. Jordan is Martin Riggs. He is wild, he is unstoppable, he is taking out a helicopter with a handgun. But Riggs needs Murtaugh. He needs the guy who keeps things grounded, who handles the logistics, who covers his blind spot. Without Murtaugh, Riggs probably burns out or crashes his truck in the second act.

If you take Pippen off the Bulls, Jordan probably ends up with a career that looks more like Kobe Bryant’s early years. He wins scoring titles. He drops 60 points at Madison Square Garden. He is universally feared. But he probably burns through coaches and teammates because nobody else can meet his impossible standards.

Pippen was the buffer. Pippen was the guy who could take Jordan’s insane competitive abuse and translate it for the rest of the locker room.

If you swap Pippen out for a standard All-Star from that era, let us say a Mitch Richmond or a Chris Mullin, the Bulls still win multiple titles. The offense would be incredible. But they lose that suffocating, terrifying defensive identity that defined the second three-peat. They do not win 72 games. They do not sweep the Magic in 1996.

We are so obsessed with the “Alpha Dog” narrative that we disrespect the value of the perfect co-star.

Jordan is the greatest of all time. He owns the crown. But if you take away number 33, he finishes his career with three rings, maybe four, and we spend the next thirty years debating if he was better than Magic or Bird instead of crowning him the undisputed king.

Pippen was not just a sidekick. He was the missing piece that turned a scoring machine into a dynasty.