On the hearty booing of Jerry Krause's widow

A lot of us Bulls fans apparently aren't over drafting Brad Sellers

What can I say, but, ‘real men wear black.’

It is angry outside, very January.

On Friday night the Chicago Bulls unveiled a Ring of Honor, meant to augment banners already hanging in the arena for Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Bob Love, and Jerry Sloan. Coach Phil Jackson and late longtime lead executive Jerry Krause also have banners, as does the 72-win 1995-96 team, each were honored again on Friday.

Well, Krause wasn’t honored, he was booed. As he was in every public appearance since his hiring as Bulls general manager in 1985. Booed because, I don’t know, Jerry offended Ray Meyer or something, booed before the Bulls even won a title:

“Did fans at the Stadium actually boo recently when it was announced that Bulls general manager Jerry Krause was celebrating his birthday?” This question, posed recently by Sun-Times columnist Terry Boers, appeared the same day his paper reported a Bulls victory over the Washington Bullets that “assured the Bulls of home-court advantage in the first and second rounds of the playoffs and ended the home half of their regular season on a winning note.” It was the Bulls’ 55th victory in 82 regular-season games, only the second time they’d won so many games in the history of the franchise.

Sportswriters and sports radio hosts, not often distinctive professions in Chicago, noticed the trait and always asked Krause about it among one of Krause’s routine meetings with local press. This was the shit sportswriters, award-winning, big money, top-column sportswriters, doled out:

“While it is true that Krause and [team mascot] Benny the Bull have never been seen together, I discount all rumors that they are the same creature,” Tribune columnist Bernie Lincicome once wrote. “For one thing, Benny has another suit.”

See, this is no “fat” joke, it’s a “cheap” joke.

When Lincicome left, the Chicago Tribune replaced his column with one from Skip Bayless, who couldn’t stir up rumors about Chicago’s franchise quarterback because Chicago has never had a franchise quarterback.

It wasn’t ever friendly, those boos, they were just what Bulls fans did to Jerry Krause:

“I know what they say,” says Krause, walking behind the basket as a few more players come on the court to warm up. “It’s, ‘Hey, fatty. Hey, dummy.’ They’re still mad at me for drafting Kennedy McIntosh. That was in 1971, for crying out loud. You’d think they’d forget that one.”

This is why “classless,” and “shameful” didn’t come to mind on Friday evening, not immediately, listening to Bulls fans booing Jerry Krause.

What came to mind was, this is what Bulls fans do to Jerry Krause. They’re supposed to boo him, I thought, like yelling ‘Luuuuuc’ for Luc Longley, except we actually like Luc.

Then, I saw Thelma. Ah, shit. Shouldn’t have made that joke about Luc Longley.

Thelma Krause has always been there, smiling through it all, the real-life picture of the mom from That ‘70s Show, almost as if they drew from Thelma Krause during the program’s Bulls-era casting process. Jerry smiled through the boos too, mostly because he was accepting championship rings at the time, but also because he had to, we always booed him. Not me, personally, but lots of other people, and personally.

Why? Not because of his off-court habits, but because the excitable (how dare he) Krause acted as if he’d invented stealth scouting, or valuing character while running an NBA front office. Or having a feeling about someone. It turned his colleagues, and the off-record press, off.

When the press rejected him, Krause appealed to the masses, but the masses only remember the recently drafted Will Perdue and Stacey King, not drafting Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant on the same night. Contrary to his persona as the supersleuth, no other NBA general manager was around as much as Jerry Krause, in ways unexplained by the media obsession with Michael Jordan’s ability to sell everything, including Mike’s image.

Jerry put himself out there and his neediness was transparent, explaining every move as if it were something astonishing only the Bulls could consider, something to put over the rest of the league’s GMs. Not simply the best the Bulls could do, like every other team at the market.

Krause deserved every bit of fawning sportswriter praise and probably more but because he beat the scribes to the hook — Jerry’s trench coat and obstructed view, back into his car and onto the next town by the time the other scouts finish their second drink — media didn’t play along.

Their stories revealed Krause doing lame, jock-sniffer stuff, traveling on the team bus, using the locker room bathroom before games. In a city which only tolerates silent yearning, it spun wrong.

Jerry Krause responded with The Nineties, and it wasn’t pretty. A decade-long bid to prove himself every bit as special as Michael Jordan.

It ended with this production from early summer in 1998, Jerry Reinsdorf pretending to go over the head of Krause, Krause at his saddest, asking Phil Jackson to return as head coach while hiring head coach Tim Floyd as Bulls “president,” an executive title Reinsdorf hadn’t paid for until that moment.

Floyd wouldn’t be president much longer, Jackson left Chicago days before Floyd’s hiring and wasn’t coming back, Reinsdorf and Krause and Floyd knew this, the whole press conference was a cynical, bad faith display which forever turned Krause and Reinsdorf off to the city they weren’t supposed to lie to.

Tim Floyd lying to us didn’t hurt, it was natural to Tim, like speaking. With thaaat drawl of his — John Edwards minding his third Miller Lite — it sounded like Floyd was fibbing when Tim told us two and two were four.

Floyd’s Bulls began 1999 with a rebuilding roster and won 13 out of 50 games, once scoring but 49 points in a loss. Tim Floyd enjoyed a 49-190 record in Chicago and later a 41-41 record in one season as head coach of the New Orleans Hornets, the 69-year old has not coached any basketball in six years.

Krause openly courted Floyd as future Bulls head coach in Michael Jordan’s final two seasons with Chicago, inviting Floyd’s family along with nearly every member of the Chicago Bulls organization but Phil Jackson and Phil’s wife to Krause’s daughter’s wedding weeks ahead of 1997-98, Chicago’s presumed and eventual Last Dance. Jackson and Krause’s wives were friends at one point, sitting together during games, it was real needless stuff. Jackson learned about it when Bill Cartwright’s wife called the Jackson household to ask what style dress Mrs. Jackson planned wearing to the wedding.

Krause did invite Tim Floyd and his wife, however, and every bit of this was in the press weeks ahead of Chicago’s training camp, the one where Krause said “only organizations alone win championships by themselves and I have better hair than Michael Jordan,” or whatever Jerry said.

Jerry Krause is from Chicago, he was insecure because it was always cold and really tall outside and that insecurity, along with Jerry Reinsdorf’s competitive cheapness, probably led to the premature end of the Chicago Bulls.

Very Chicago, like the Bears only earning one title out of the Monsters of the Midway, or Michael Jordan’s old Bulls acting as perhaps the least-distinguished NBA club of the 21st century, with the possible exception of the two other NBA teams Michael Jordan worked for in the 21st century.

Jerry Krause laid the structure around six NBA titles, and the way I view the game. I was and am routinely charmed by the same sorts of prospects Krause cooed over — long arms and no direction — there is a reason Bulls forward Eddie Robinson (a Krause signing, heartily cheered on by this author) is the wallpaper on my laptop.

It wasn’t all Jerry’s “pups.” Krause looked at the Bulls’ Toni Kukoc-helmed frontcourt in 1995 and bit his lip and traded for a known quantity, someone he couldn’t claim to find, Dennis Rodman. Krause somehow squeezed 7-2 out of the Timberwolves in exchange for 6-9, dealing Stacey King to Minnesota to secure starting championship pivot Luc Longley, stronger than the surf at Snapper Rocks, nearly as mobile.

Steve Kerr was a gamble. NBA teams didn’t give rotation spots, let alone roster spots, to pure shooters in 1993. Ron Harper was a bust. Luckily for the city, Jerry Krause visualized Harper flourishing in the triangle offense long before Ron Harper (who earned DNP-CDs in his first Bull season) considered the idea. By the time Harp drew notice as his team’s ostensible point guard, he’d grown into one of the NBA’s best defenders.

Jerry Krause didn’t pluck Bill Wennington because Bill could pop jumpers, he pulled Wennington because Bill Wennington frustrated Patrick Ewing more than anyone not named “Bill Cartwright” or “David Checketts.”

And because Wennington could yam, yamming the Bulls severely lacked in the frontcourt:

Jerry Krause drafted Jason Caffey over Michael Finley in 1995 because Krause didn’t like signing Chicago-area players, supposedly (Krause signed Chicago native Randy Brown the same summer), and it was a big miss. Yet Caffey saved the Bulls two large handfuls of times in 1996-97, actual playoff games, when Dennis Rodman was distracted or daffy or disabled or all three.

When Rodman and Wennington fell to injury that same spring Krause could have gone clever but instead signed Bison Dele, the league’s most obvious free agent. Dele (then: Brian Williams) was a borderline All-Star and ex-Clipper, part of the NBA’s absent middle class as a free agent in 1996, holding out until signing with Chicago in April.

[Dele], who has taken flying lessons while sitting out the first month of the season, said, “The only reason I’m here is it’s raining and you can’t fly when it’s raining, at least not safe pilots.”

Jerry Krause could have read that and said, “huh, weird” but instead Jerry said, “huh, 6-11,” and signed Dele to deliver throughout the 1997 playoff run.

Krause didn’t just draft Scottie Pippen, he cleared the backcourt for Pippen, dealing Sedale Threatt (also because Sedale and Scottie liked to party), removing Sam Vincent, ensuring Pippen would have no point guard usurpers in an era when usage was merely something you did with your 94-cent per gallon gas.

But, like, Jerry Krause also legitimately broke up Jordan’s Bulls. Barely containing delight amid the task, no championship GM before or since as anxious to clear out.

It wasn’t simply 1997. Minor resentments turned into open animosities once Chicago won its first title in 1991, and Sam Smith’s ‘Jordan Rules’ packed shelves. Jackson was allegedly chief source for that book yet, to Krause, blamed assistant coach Johnny Bach for relaying the juice. Bach fell on his sword for Jackson and left for Charlotte, later joining Doug Collins’ staffs in Detroit and Washington.

It was all the excuse Jerry needed, Krause made life miserable for Phil Jackson. Jackson (a prima donna with a penchant for coaching brilliantly and getting along as well with the league’s most important players as he does deep reserves) was barely on board by the time Jordan returned in 1995, Michael’s presumed comeback the only dangling carrot daring Phil to dive into 1994-95, the season before Jackson’s lame-duck coaching year. That, and Phil’s book deal.

Do Krause’s boo’ers know any of this? Nah, but they do accurately understand Jerry Krause broke a basketball team as much as he built it, and that Jerry Krause represents Jerry Reinsdorf, a Number One-loathsome owner in Chicago sports history.

I can’t clutch pearls, the Reinsdorfs need to stop putting him on the Jumbotron, no other team does that with their old general manager, let alone one locally-famous for being booed.

I’d stand for Jerry Krause ahead of most people in sports, he means quite a bit to me, but his decades-long quest to have his own stall among the lockers, to be on stage with the rest of the jocks, it turned off an entire city. No reason to boo him or his widow, whom fans likely did not know was there, but hardly unexpected.

Especially when delivered unexpectedly.

The Bulls did a great job with the halftime ceremony, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen didn’t attend because there would have been a fistfight, Dennis Rodman didn’t attend because it wasn’t sponsored by an energy drink. Clarence Gaines Jr. and Jim Stack, two of Krause’s three chief scouts, were also on stage among scores of old players, these are my guys.

Jerry Krause didn’t attend because he died in 2017, which sucks because I miss him and because Chicago could use him — the Sox could use him. He scouted Ron Karkovice, y’know.

Jerry Krause can’t drop a line to sports talk radio, who would goof before genuinely assuring listeners and attendees ahead of time to be on best behavior, on account of da wife. Krause can’t call K.C. Johnson or Woj for a quoted column to start the social media argument moving on his behalf. Krause left it up to us, and the Bulls, to carry his legacy onward. “The Bulls” failed him in the same way they failed him in 1998, if Krause did seek a seventh ring, refusing to pay extra millions for a dynasty comeback off limited returns from a 50-game season.

Had anyone like me, with Dumb Chicago Brain, been aware Jerry Krause’s picture would be shown on the scoreboard during the ceremony, and that Thelma Krause would be present on his behalf, then DCB would have spoke up, “uh, so we tend to boo this guy? Heads-up.”

And the Bulls should have given heads-up. Some sort of weeks-ahead press advance, some form of acknowledgement, instead of trying to weasel it in, as always, and perform martyr’s work in aftermath. The Reinsdorf family beaming Krause’s image up there, expecting a hero’s welcome in opposition to what Jerry Krause represents to Chicago fans as Jerry Reinsdorf’s chief basketball avatar, illustrates the way Jerry Reinsdorf expects to be treated.

Was this in the minds of the dozens who booed? Nah, they’re absolute idiots, they don’t know enough to mime booing as a joke or keep it to themselves. It was mostly kids, hopped up on the trash-heap myth-making of Last Dance, instigators probably wearing Golden State jerseys. The Warriors were well-represented in Jerry Reinsdorf’s arena during Friday’s win as Golden State pulled away, the visitors earning far louder cheers than Jerry Krause received boos.

None of this excuses boos but as you’ve guessed, I’m rolling my eyes. Jerry Krause also would, before telling us you’ve got to expect it, in this business.

Why the Reinsdorfs didn’t expect it, and prime the Chicago crowd for an exercise in warmth, is classless, and inexcusable, shameful, all the words Twitter used for the boos. The Bulls left Thelma Krause out to deal with the brunt of their insensitivity — you can’t surprise fans into fond feelings.

The best news? We can make it up, Chicago is good at saying “I’m sorry” in places with beer on tap.

The embarrassment should no doubt lead to a Jerry Krause Night, well-earned in this inaugural, made-up honorarium year. The Bulls haven’t really had a better general manager so schedule it, Reinsdorfs, and please address the crowd so that it may also boo you.

And because Michael Jordan wouldn’t ever show up for Jerry Krause Night, Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant will absolutely be there.

OVERJOYED

Thank you for reading!