Tyler Roby Pippen: Nine Days, One Life, and the Story Scottie Never Told

Here’s something the sports world doesn’t talk about when they roll out the championship highlight reels: Scottie Pippen had a daughter who lived for nine days, and he spent months refusing to admit she was even his.

That’s the actual story behind the name Tyler Roby Pippen. Not a career. Not a celebrity. Not a social media presence with a verified checkmark. Just a newborn girl who came into this world on July 20, 1994, drew nine breaths worth of Chicago summer air, and was gone by July 29. Her twin sister survived. Her father denied her. And somehow, thirty years later, people are still searching her name — trying to understand what her brief existence meant, and what it says about the man who shares it.

Table of Contents

Quick Bio

Detail	Info
Full Name	Tyler Roby Pippen
Date of Birth	July 20, 1994
Date of Death	July 29, 1994
Age at Death	9 days
Place of Birth	Mercy Hospital, Chicago, Illinois
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	African-American
Father	Scottie Maurice Pippen Sr.
Mother	Sonya Roby (model)
Twin Sister	Taylor Pippen
Half-Siblings	Antron Pippen (deceased), Sierra Pippen, Scotty Pippen Jr., Preston Pippen, Justin Pippen, Sophia Pippen
Cause of Death	Never publicly disclosed

The Twins Nobody Was Supposed to Know About

Let’s set the scene. It’s 1994. Scottie Pippen is untouchable. Six-time champion in the making. Michael Jordan’s right hand. Of the world’s most well-known athletes. He’s dating Sonya Roby, a model, and she’s pregnant with twins.

Then the twins were born — Taylor and Tyler — on July 20, 1994, at Mercy Hospital in Chicago. And Scottie Pippen files a paternity suit denying they’re his.

Let that sink in. Two newborn girls. One of them is fighting to stay alive. And their father is in court saying: not mine.

Tyler died nine days later. The reason for death was never disclosed. Neither Scottie nor Sonya ever addressed it openly. A baby came into this world, left it barely a week later, and the man who helped create her was busy disputing the paperwork.

Sonya Roby then did what she had to do. She pushed for a DNA test. On October 29, 1994 — three months after her daughters were born, one of them already dead — the test results came back conclusive. Scottie Pippen was the biological father.

Even then, the legal battle dragged on for months. It wasn’t until June 17, 1995 — nearly a full year after the twins’ birth — that Scottie walked into a crowded Chicago courtroom and formally admitted what a DNA test had already proven. The court ordered him to pay $15,000 in outstanding medical bills and to provide Taylor with health insurance through the NBA.

Fifteen thousand dollars. For a man making millions. To cover the medical bills of a baby he’d denied and a baby who had died.

Taylor Carries What Tyler Never Could

Here’s where the story gets complicated and honestly, kind of remarkable.

Tyler’s twin sister Taylor grew up without a father. Sonya Roby got full custody. Scottie was granted visitation rights he apparently never used. Taylor grew up in Mundelein, a suburb north of Chicago, and by all accounts, she grew up grinding.

In Illinois, she went to Carmel Catholic High School. She went to Southern Illinois University, where she became a volleyball standout — MVC First Team All-Conference, AVCA All-American Honorable Mention, MVC Scholar-Athlete. She was named a 2015 Preseason All-MVC pick. By 2016, she was playing professional volleyball in Spain, suiting up for Club Voleibol Haris in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

Then she pivoted again. She came home. She earned her accounting degree, got into banking, climbed to Vice President at JPMorgan Chase. She also serves as CFO of Fruitful Endeavors Charity, a nonprofit focused on tackling youth homelessness.

And in 2016, when a Spanish outlet asked her about her father, she didn’t sugarcoat it. “He never wanted to meet me,” Taylor said. “He decided that it would be like that, and I prefer not to think about the matter too much.”

In 2023, on a podcast, she pushed further. “I was known as Scottie Pippen’s daughter in sports,” she claimed. But I didn’t want it, therefore it strengthened my resolve to excel in athletics. All I wanted to be was Taylor Pippen.

And then: “I know that people expect a lot from me, but after all these years, I have learned that Pippen is just that — a last name.”

That last line? That’s Taylor carrying Tyler with her. That’s the weight of being the twin who lived, who grew up fielding questions about a man who chose distance over fatherhood, who had to build herself from scratch in the shadow of a name that meant everything to everyone except the man who gave it to her.

A Pattern That’s Hard to Ignore

You want to talk about Scottie Pippen’s legacy? Fine. Six rings. Hall of Fame. Greatest small forward of his era. Partnership with Michael Jordan that changed basketball forever.

But let’s not pretend the personal record is clean.

The early 1990s were messy for Scottie off the court. In January 1994, he was arrested for firearm possession — charges later dropped. Then came the domestic abuse charge from fiancée Yvette DeLeone, who accused him of grabbing and pushing her. Then came Sonya Roby’s paternity suit. Then, in 1995, Yvette DeLeone was back in court — this time because she’d given birth to Sierra Pippen, and guess what, Scottie denied that one too.

Same script, different woman. DNA test. Courtroom. Admission.

He did this twice. Two women. Two paternity denials. Two DNA tests. Two court orders. And in between all of that, Tyler Roby Pippen was born and died, and the whole story barely registered because Scottie was already denying the twins’ existence.

The encyclopedia.com entry from that era notes dryly that the paternity case “cost the athlete $10,000 despite his denial of the charge.” Ten thousand dollars. As if the real cost of that chapter could ever be measured in dollars.

The Grief Scottie Never Spoke Out Loud

Here’s what’s genuinely complicated about all of this: we don’t know what Scottie felt about Tyler’s death. He never said.

He was still in denial about paternity when she passed. Legally and publicly, she wasn’t his daughter yet. The DNA test happened three months later. So in whatever private space Scottie Pippen occupied in those nine days between July 20 and July 29, 1994 — there’s no record of what he felt or what he did.

That silence speaks. It’s not nothing. It’s a specific kind of nothing that leaves a lot of room to wonder.

What we do know is that when Scottie later lost his firstborn son Antron — also born outside of his main relationship, also connected to a complicated family chapter — he was devastated. Publicly, completely devastated. “I’m heartbroken to share that yesterday, I said goodbye to my firstborn son Antron,” he wrote on Twitter in April 2021. “A lovely soul and kind heart gone far too soon. Rest comfortable till we cross paths again; I love you, son.”

The response was enormous. Fans poured in. The Chicago Bulls posted a tribute. It became a moment of collective mourning for one of basketball’s beloved families.

Tyler got none of that. No public tribute. No social media posts. No moment of silence at the United Center. She died before her father had legally claimed her, and the story was absorbed into a legal dispute rather than a public loss.

It’s a haunting asymmetry. And you have to sit with it.

What Nine Days Means

Nine days is nothing. And it’s also everything.

Most people reading this article have lived through nine-day stretches they can barely remember — a week at work, a stretch of bad weather, a boring patch of nothing much. Tyler Roby Pippen’s entire existence fits inside that kind of forgettable window.

And yet here we are, decades later, still writing her name. Still researching her story. Still connecting dots between her nine days and the woman her twin sister became, between her birth and the legal circus surrounding it, between her death and a father who wouldn’t acknowledge her while she was alive.

That’s the peculiar power of a story with only a beginning that was ruthlessly cut short, without a middle or an end. People fill in the blanks. They wonder. They look her up at midnight because something about the story won’t let go.

Tyler never got to carry the Pippen name the way Scottie Pippen Jr. does, bouncing around NBA rosters and playing in his father’s massive shadow. She never got to build a separate identity from it the way Taylor has. She was just there for a moment. Alive, in a hospital in Chicago, in the summer when the Bulls were in between dynasty chapters and her father was busy being one of the most famous athletes in America.

The Pippen Family’s Real Legacy

You want the real Pippen family story, here it is in full:

Antron Pippen — Scottie’s oldest son with first wife Karen McCollum — loved basketball his whole life. Battled chronic asthma that kept him from reaching the NBA despite real talent. Played in the minor leagues and at Texas A&M International and South Georgia Technical College. Scottie told a reporter in 2006 that Antron was “a late bloomer, like me.” He died in April 2021 at 33 years old. His dad broke down publicly. It was genuine, unvarnished, and significant.

Scotty Pippen Jr. — born 2000, Scottie’s son with Larsa — is currently making his own mark in professional basketball. He played in the NBA Summer League, had stints with the Lakers and Memphis Grizzlies. He carries the name without the weight dragging him under.

Sophia Pippen — Scottie and Larsa’s youngest — appeared on Dancing with the Stars as a junior competitor and is carving her own path.

Sierra Pippen — the daughter Scottie also denied before a DNA test changed his position — went to the University of Iowa, dealt with her own public stumbles, and now works as an artist consultant.

And Taylor Pippen — Tyler’s twin — is, by any measure, the most quietly remarkable of all of them. Built her career without her father’s involvement, without his connections, without so much as a relationship. Just her own work ethic and probably something inherited from Sonya Roby, who did the whole thing alone.

Tyler is the missing thread in all of it. The one you don’t see, but whose absence shapes everything around her.

Final Words

Tyler Roby Pippen was nine days old. She had no career, no quote, no Instagram story. She never made a mistake in public or said something complicated in an interview. She just existed, briefly, and then she didn’t.

The reason people keep searching her name isn’t nostalgia or celebrity obsession. It’s because her story is a tiny window into something most of us don’t want to look at directly: the way famous people handle private grief, the way legal denial can erase a human being’s existence, the way a man can simultaneously be a legend and a story you don’t want to read too carefully.

Scottie Pippen deserves his championships. He was genuinely great. But greatness on a basketball court doesn’t mean greatness at being human, and the story of Tyler Roby Pippen is a reminder that what happens off the court — the denials, the courtrooms, the nine days — matters too.

Taylor Pippen figured that out. She took a last name that was supposed to open doors and turned it into something she had to escape in order to become herself. She found out that being a Pippen is just a fact, not a destiny.

Tyler never got that choice. That’s the part of this story that doesn’t resolve cleanly, and honestly, it shouldn’t.

FAQs

1. Who was Tyler Roby Pippen?

Tyler Roby Pippen was one of twin daughters born to NBA legend Scottie Pippen and model Sonya Roby on July 20, 1994, at Mercy Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. She died nine days later on July 29, 1994.

2. What was the cause of Tyler Roby Pippen’s death?

The cause of her death has never been publicly disclosed. Neither Scottie Pippen nor Sonya Roby has spoken openly about it. The family has kept this detail entirely private.

3. Did Scottie Pippen acknowledge Tyler as his daughter?

Not during her lifetime. Scottie initially denied paternity of the twins when Sonya Roby filed a lawsuit after their birth. A DNA test conducted on October 29, 1994, confirmed his fatherhood. He formally admitted paternity in a Chicago courtroom on June 17, 1995 — nearly a year after Tyler had already died.

4. Who is Tyler’s twin sister?

Taylor Pippen. Taylor grew up in the Chicago area, played volleyball at Southern Illinois University, went professional in Spain in 2016, and now works as a Vice President at JPMorgan Chase. She also serves as CFO of a nonprofit called Fruitful Endeavors Charity. She has spoken publicly about growing up without a relationship with her father.

5. What did Taylor Pippen say about Scottie Pippen?

In a 2016 interview with Spanish outlet El Mundo, Taylor said directly: “He never wanted to meet me. He decided that it would be like that, and I prefer not to think about the matter too much.” In a 2023 podcast, she also said she wanted to be known as Taylor Pippen before being known as Scottie Pippen’s daughter.

6. What did Scottie Pippen pay after the DNA test confirmed paternity?

The court ordered him to pay $15,000 in outstanding medical bills and to provide health insurance for the surviving twin, Taylor, through the NBA. Sonya Roby retained full custody of Taylor.

7. How many children does Scottie Pippen have?

Scottie Pippen had eight children in total with four different women: Antron Pippen (with Karen McCollum), Taylor and Tyler (with Sonya Roby), Sierra Pippen (with Yvette DeLeone), and Scotty Jr., Preston, Justin, and Sophia (with Larsa Pippen). Antron and Tyler have both passed away.

8. What happened to Antron Pippen?

Antron Pippen, Scottie’s firstborn son, died in April 2021 at the age of 33. He suffered from chronic asthma his entire life, which Scottie said prevented him from reaching the NBA despite real talent. Scottie publicly mourned his loss on social media in an emotional tribute.

9. Did Scottie deny paternity of any other children besides Tyler and Taylor?

Yes. He also initially denied fathering Sierra Pippen, his daughter with Yvette DeLeone. Sierra’s mother took him to court and a DNA test again proved paternity. Scottie was ordered to pay child support and other expenses in that case as well.

10. Was Tyler Roby Pippen a “celebrity” in any meaningful sense?

No. She was a newborn who never lived long enough to develop any public identity. She is known only through her connection to her famous father and through the circumstances of her birth and death.

11. Why do people still search for Tyler Roby Pippen’s name?

Because her story — nine days of life, a father who denied her, a legal battle over her existence, and a twin sister who grew up to become someone extraordinary in her own right — is genuinely compelling and emotionally heavy. It puts a human face on the less flattering chapters of a sports legend’s life.

12. Did Scottie Pippen ever publicly discuss Tyler’s death?

No. He has never spoken about Tyler directly in any public forum. His silence on this specific loss is complete, and stands in contrast to the public grief he expressed over Antron’s death in 2021.

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