Maybe he was an asshole teammate at Chicago but he made Scottie Pippin much better just by being in the lineup and I think you can say that about a lot of his teammates. I grew up watching the Celtics and Russell was fantastic but his Celtic teams were loaded with stars like Bob Cousy, KC and Sam Jones (neither of whom were starters for years so deep were the Celtics), Havlicek, Tom Heinsohn, Bill Sharman. Pippin, Rodman, Cartwright et al were all good players but without MJ, those Bulls teams are mediocre at best. True, Russell was the final piece of the puzzle as the Celtics needed defense, but it was the Russell to Cousy engineered fast breaks that made the Celtics unbeatable.

I think MJ's the greatest basketball player of all time. Period. Would be curious to know exactly what makes him a lousy human being.