Source: TWIST/Bauer-Griffin / Getty
You may find Larsa Pippen’s relationship with Marcus Jordan to be problematic, but the couple doesn’t. Despite a 16-year age difference and the fact that The Real Housewives of Miami star was once married to her boyfriend’s father’s former teammate, Pippen says things are going well.
She appeared on The Tamron Hall Show earlier this week to discuss the relationship. Hall, apparently forgetting that her own parents have a 25-year age difference, seemed skeptical of Pippen’s assertions that her relationship with Jordan’s youngest son wasn’t causing any family problems.
A little backstory. Pippen, 48, stars on The Real Housewives of Miami. She married NBA star Scottie Pippen, 58, who she has four children with, in 1997.
So her relationship with Pippen overlapped with his NBA career and time playing with Jordan. Although the duo was one of the league’s most prolific, winning six championships together, Pippen was largely viewed as Jordan’s supporting act.
That dynamic was even more obvious after the release of the 2020 documentary The Last Dance. Produced by Jordan, it relegated Pippen (and his other Bulls teammates) to a lesser role in Jordan’s Hall of Fame career.
In his memoir, Unguarded, Pippen pushed back on that characterization, saying of Jordan “He couldn’t have been more condescending if he tried.”
Marcus Jordan, now 33, was 14 when Pippen retired from the NBA in 2004. The University of Central Florida graduate owns a sneaker store called The Trophy Room based on his father’s actual display room in their home growing up.
Marcus has made few headlines in his life so far, nor has his older brother Jeffery who runs a consulting firm or sister Jasmine, an executive with Jordan Brand who provided their father with his first grandson.
Larsa and Scottie’s divorce was finalized in 2021.
Larsa says she and Marcus ran in the same circles meeting at a party four years ago. They became friends who drew closer as time went on.
The couple went Instagram official this Valentine’s Day and recently posted together again.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CpSyp1FuzPl/?hl=en
“We’re in a really good place. I feel like a lot of people think we’ve known each other our whole lives, which we have not,” Pippen told Hall.
“Well, he’s 16 years younger than you, so that’s not possible,” Hall responded.
Though Larsa asserted that the two have things in common including both being born and raised in Chicago, Hall remained skeptical.
“Even with the age difference? I don’t wanna say that flippantly, because men are able to date people 30 years younger without judgment. But he’s 16 years younger — other than the Bulls, what do you have in common?”
Hall then doubled down, saying that most people weren’t as concerned about the age difference as they were about her ex and his father being former teammates.
“The thing is — you are a beautiful woman, Hall said. “You can date anybody you wanted to. Why would you date Michael Jordan’s son, knowing that it’s been pretty clear that Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan didn’t have this relationship people thought and certainly don’t have it now?”
Neither Scottie Pippen nor Michael Jordan has publicly commented on the couple’s relationship. When the RHOM star was asked if her ex was bothered by the relationship, she told host Andy Cohen she didn’t know and that she and Scottie had never discussed it.
Marcus was in the audience.
Larsa raised eyebrows and drew headlines when she was publicly seen with then Timberwolves star Malik Beasley, who was also younger and married. That relationship flamed out quickly when Beasley apparently returned to his wife. Beasley and his wife Montana Yao, welcomed their second child in November.
Larsa also told Cohen the families weren’t close during their time with the Bulls. She said she’d just met Marcus’ mother, Juanita, a few years back. Michael and his ex divorced in 2006.
But Hall also wanted to know whether the couple who are, remember, 33 and 48, have met each other’s parents.
“I recently have been hanging out with them,” Pippen said. She added, “I don’t really wanna talk about them. It’s not about my parents or his parents.”
Pippen reiterated most of the points she’d made with Hall on Angela Yee’s Way Up podcast as well. Marcus was with her during the taping though his face was never shown onscreen. “You know my family,” he said. “We’re private.”
They denied rumors that they were having a baby, something they said they read themselves on a gossip site.
Watch the interview below.
