When we watch TV series and films, we not only stumble upon new words and phrases but also a lot of cultural references that often only make sense to people from a certain country, culture or generation. Currently, I'm watching the American TV series "Suits" and I noticed that this series is fully packed with cultural references (e.g. names of celebrities, quotes from TV series and films). I can understand most of them, because I'm of the same generation of some of the main characters (e.g. Harvey Specter) and fairly familiar with American culture and films. But once in a while I come across a reference I don't understand at first sight. And then it's especially interesting for me to investigate how that was translated into German. At one point, Harvey Specter, a lawyer at a big law firm, confronts his boss Jessica Pearson, to be satisfied to just be the number two in her law firm, since she lost power to a business partner due to a merger of their two law firms. In English he calls her "Scottie Pippen". In the German dubbed version he says something along the lines of "aber vielleicht genügt das" ("but maybe that's enough", disclaimer: this is not an exact quote, but paraphrased from my memory). The German subtitles don't match the dubbed version and there "Scottie Pippen" wasn't translated but just used like this. I dare say that this is a cultural reference that isn't clear to the average German of my generation, who’s not into basketball. Scottie Pippen was a famous NBA player (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottie_Pippen" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottie_Pippen</a>;) and the reference to his name means:

"<em>A great second in command or second best. Not as good as the number one, but the best possible number two</em>." (<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pippen" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pippen</a>;)

I can only guess that the actual number one was Michael Jordan who by the way is far more known in Germany than Scottie Pippen. But if I'd call a German a "Scottie Pippen", it is very unlikely that they'd understand that I'm calling them "a great number two but not quite a number one".