It's about appreciating gradients in performance and accomplishment. Reducing it to "second round KO" is a little bit strange, when there is a lot of variance in what that could constitute.AbeVigodaLive wrote:
He lost in the 2nd round. Bottom line. We aren't holding anybody back for winning because of bad calls. So we can't give extra credit for guys on the other end of bad calls.
There is a quantitative and qualitative difference between losing in a Game 7 by a whistle, and getting swept.
Similarly, there is a quantitative and qualitative difference between losing to a team that lost the title by a fingertip, and losing to a generic 3rd seed who gets handled in the Conference Finals.
That isn't to say Pippen didn't mess up along the way, the Kukoc thing being the most obvious (also, being spotty offensively at bad times hurt the Bulls---this is where Jordan's absence was most felt that year IMO).
[Note: I think the Bulls would have gotten their ass kicked by the Rockets, so I am definitely not giving him a title mentally.]
I guess what I am saying is that while we can only observe and judge this universe of events and what actually happened, it isn't *that* hard to envision a situation where Pippen is winning a MVP or title as a lead dog. I mean, in his first time out...he did pretty darn well.
