Scottie Pippen is right. His Chicago Bulls would sweep the Golden State Warriors. They actually did it, so there’s no reason to think they could not again.

During the 1995-96 season, Michael Jordan, Pippen and the rest of the Bulls who posted the NBA’s best-ever single-regular-season record of 72-10 won both times they played the Warriors. Golden State was on its way to 36-46 in the second of a 12-year playoff drought.

Wait … you say Pippen wasn’t talking about an old-timers game against Tim Hardaway, Chris Mullin and the other remnants of Run TMC?

Ah, it’s that greatest team of all-time discussion again. The current Warriors are 69-9 after losing to Minnesota on Tuesday. But even if they don’t catch the Bulls don’t expect this debate to let up unless Golden State makes an early exit from the playoffs.

One source of Pippen’s arrogance could be the NBA was different in 1996. It was much more physical, including hand-checking on defense. In those days “checking” an opponent was a synonym for defending against him. You don’t hear that term used that way quite as much these days.

Kind of like the word “center,” which isn’t even on the All-Star ballot now. With few exceptions, the big bulky man in the middle has gone out of vogue, more or less in conjunction with the retirement five years ago of newly minted Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal.

The Warriors are surreal in their efficiency and pace. The Bulls were hard. What’s even harder is trying to figure out which team would adapt better to different rules.

Steve Kerr, the Warriors coach who played guard on that Bulls team, made the best of a can’t-win, can’t lose situation when asked — again — what he thought about this.

“I don’t know who ‘we’ is and who ‘they’ are. … I’ll just say: ‘If the two teams played each other, there’s no question that we could beat us and they could beat them.’ ”

He added the game would take six hours, because of all the fouls against the Bulls for hand-checking and penalties against the Warriors for illegal defenses.

“They wouldn’t call traveling in either era,” Kerr said.

Long before becoming buddies with North Korea leader Kim Jong-un, Dennis Rodman was a key to the Bulls’ dynasty who made the Hall of Fame almost purely on rebounding and defense. Asked in February to compare the teams, his answer seems to assume the hot tub time machine would take the Warriors back 20 years, rather than bring his former self and teammates back to the future.

“I’ve always said from day one, if they break the record great, thank you,” Rodman said. “You guys have a great team, but the game has changed so much. I don’t think that Golden State can even last or even come close to even playing with us in the ’90s, because back then you could actually kick people (butt), you could throw punches, you could do all the stuff like that. Now, you can’t.”

Of course it’s all moot and we’ll never know. But isn’t it fun?

Perception of what we define as quality via the eyeball test often varies drastically over time. Like the rules, our eyes can change. And then there’s memory, sometimes selective, sometimes cloudy.

One thing I’m fairly sure of is the Chicago Bulls of 20 years ago wouldn’t lose to the current Minnesota Timberwolves.

That’s just opinion. Then there are good old facts. Some that don’t really mean anything, but can be interesting.

Like this one: Dell Curry, father of Steph, scored 19 points in 28 minutes as the Charlotte Hornets beat the Chicago Bulls 98-97 on April 8, 1996.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at Hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quick-reads.