Scottie Pippen gets very high on Jalen Williams: "I see him being better than me"

Jalen Williams is having a blast in the NBA Finals. The 24-year-old forward from the Oklahoma City Thunder shined on Monday with 40 points in the fifth-game victory against the Indiana Pacers, a triumph that tilted the series in favor of his team before the Pacers tied it 3-3 early this morning.

Williams does not occupy the main focus. In fact, he is a luxury sidekick to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, reminiscent of Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan.

According to ESPN Research, only three duos have scored more combined points in the first five games of a Finals: Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen with the Chicago Bulls in 1993, LeBron James and Kyrie Irving with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2017, and Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant with the Golden State Warriors also in 2017.

Belonging to that select group is already an honor, but Williams is being especially compared to one of those historic names. Pippen himself declared to ESPN that he sees a lot of himself in Williams. "I don't want to limit him saying he's going to be like me," he commented. "I see him being even better, if I may say so. Because of how the game is played today. They have offensive freedom now. We didn't have that. We played within a system. These kids have the freedom to shoot threes and things like that. Players today have more potential to be better than those in the past due to their shooting ability."

Pippen added, "If this guy continues to shoot threes like he is doing, I won't argue with anyone about whether we can be compared. Because we can't. He wins."

This news is an automatic translation. You can read the original news, Scottie Pippen se viene muy arriba con Jalen Williams: "Lo veo siendo mejor que yo"