blackqueenswhoread's review
2.0
Although I appreciate his transparency, Scottie needs to let things go. He complained all through the book. He showed unforgiveness for EVERYONE that has ever hurt him. He strives to tell his accolades, which the sports world already knows. No need to self-validate. Just not a good read.
notsogabbygabby's review
2.0
I looked forward to reading this book for almost a year. It definitely wasn’t what I thought it would be. It felt like 75% of the book was just recapping statistics and specific plays from dozens of games. I found myself skimming through most of that. Much of what is in this book is also in the HBO doc The Last Dance. There is a lot of pettiness and shady comments in the book, and normally I would be down for that, but it just seems childish and immature at a lot of points. Also, there is almost nothing about his personal life as an adult - to the point where it seems neglectful and almost kind of weird that so much is omitted. I went into this book really rooting for Scottie Pippin and finished it with an entirely different opinion of him.
melissa_m_m's review
3.0
If you're a huge Pippen or a basketball fan, read this book. If you're not a sports person and just enjoy memoirs/or a well told personal story (me), you may want to skip this. I appreciate Pippen's seeming frankness and don't find the 90s Bulls UNinteresting, but I'm more here to learn about the person. Pippen does more explaining where his head was at, and setting the record straight, while recounting his entire professional career.
eyan_birt's review
3.0
My opinion comes from a background of knowing virtually nothing about basketball, beyond what I learned through osmosis by living in the Chicago suburbs in the 90's during the Dream Team's peak. I know Pippen received a lot of negative commentary about his bitterness, and I think bitter is a good choice of word for the feelings he expresses regarding the team and MJ. However I think he has a right to be upset, and his writing was careful to acknolwedge both sides of the situation.
I do think it's fairly glaring that he doesn't speak about his adulthood hardly at all. This is a book in response to the Last Dance docuseries, for the most part, and focuses on Pippen's career in the NBA rather than his personhood. His stories of his childhood, friendships with teammates, and continued respect for his late parents comes through as genuine and touching, and I can understand that weighed against the seeming rage and aggression shown by him in recent years those moments feel perhaps too small or too forced.
However it would be unfair to rate this book low simply because of the interpersonal drama. I'd say more like 3.5 stars because I could follow the writing, even without knowing much about basketball, and I was interested in the stories. But the omissions of the personal felt like a significant piece of the story, and I don't really know anything about Scottie Pippen that I didn't know before. "Unguarded" may be the title of his book, but there was nothing that wasn't highly calculated in the writing of this book.
I do think it's fairly glaring that he doesn't speak about his adulthood hardly at all. This is a book in response to the Last Dance docuseries, for the most part, and focuses on Pippen's career in the NBA rather than his personhood. His stories of his childhood, friendships with teammates, and continued respect for his late parents comes through as genuine and touching, and I can understand that weighed against the seeming rage and aggression shown by him in recent years those moments feel perhaps too small or too forced.
However it would be unfair to rate this book low simply because of the interpersonal drama. I'd say more like 3.5 stars because I could follow the writing, even without knowing much about basketball, and I was interested in the stories. But the omissions of the personal felt like a significant piece of the story, and I don't really know anything about Scottie Pippen that I didn't know before. "Unguarded" may be the title of his book, but there was nothing that wasn't highly calculated in the writing of this book.