Retirement
The Bulls retired Pippen's jersey number in a ceremony on December 9, 2005. The team played against the Los Angeles Lakers that night, and Pippen was reunited with Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan, Dennis Rodman, and Horace Grant during the ceremony. Pippen's 33 joined Michael Jordan's 23, Bob Love's 10, and Jerry Sloan's 4 as the only numbers retired by the Bulls.
In January 2008, Pippen made a brief comeback to professional basketball at age 42, when he made a tour of Scandinavia and played two games for top Finnish league team Torpan Pojat (ToPo), and top Swedish league team Sundsvall. In his first game, on January 4, Pippen scored 12 points in ToPo's 93–81 win over Porvoo. He registered nine points and nine rebounds in a 98–85 win over Honka on January 5. In his third game of the tour, Pippen registered 21 points, 12 rebounds, six assists and two steals in 30 minutes in a 102–74 Sundsvall Dragons win over Akropol of Rinkeby. The Dragons paid Pippen $66,000 for his appearance.
Pippen returned to the Bulls on July 15, 2010 as a team ambassador. In 2012, he was named senior advisor to Michael Reinsdorf, the Bulls' president and COO.
Read more about this topic: Scottie Pippen
Famous quotes containing the word retirement:
“Adultery itself in its principle is many times nothing but a curious inquisition after, and envy of another man’s enclosed pleasures: and there have been many who refused fairer objects that they might ravish an enclosed woman from her retirement and single possessor.”
—Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667)
“He who comes into Assemblies only to gratifie his Curiosity, and not to make a Figure, enjoys the Pleasures of Retirement in a[n] ...exquisite Degree.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)
“The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)