Chicago's sad saga: the once-proud Bulls have degenerated into the theatre of the absurd, and no one associated with those champions—even those who escaped—are unscathed - basketball

Basketball Digest, Feb, 2002 by Brett Ballantini

NOT YET FOUR YEARS REMOVED from their sixth championship in eight seasons, the principals of the Chicago Bulls' rifle run are now scarred by the ugly aftermath of a dynastic reign ended prematurely. The Bulls of 1996-97 and 1997-98 put together the second-best consecutive season record ever, going 131-33 (trailing only the 1995-96/1996-97 Bulls). Yet in the very next two full seasons (1999-2000/2000-01) the Bulls had the seventh-worst NBA record ever at 32-132. No other franchise shows up on both the 10-best and 10-worst lists.

From Jerry Reinsdorf up top to Tim Floyd at the bottom--at the very bottom--the Bulls' legacy has gone from glory to gutter faster than any team ever.

JERRY REINSDORF, THE OVERSEER

Reinsdorf is continually hammered in Chicago for his perceived mishandling of his other franchise, the Chicago White Sox. However, criticism of said Sox had been tempered by an all-encompassing, "But he brought six rifles to town." And in a town like Chicago, where futility is measured not by seasons or years, but decades, that's no small recompense.

However, the taming of the Bulls has turned up the criticism of Reinsdorf several notches. Personnel failures and the Keystone-Kops incompetence of the club's scouting department aside, even Reinsdorf's marketers have slipped to desperate levels. With the Bulls needing to sell season tickets for the first time since Michael Jordan donned the red-and-black, the team conjured up a curious marketing plan. The premise--everyday fans expressing reasons they became new season ticketholders--was valid.

Two problems, however. First, some of those quoted in the team's ads weren't season ticketholders. Second--and two team owners were not shy in telling me just how desperate this tact is--the team included among its marketing angles all the (non-Bulls) superstars to come out and watch at the United Center (Allen Iverson, Shaquille O'Neal, et al.). Imagine having a team so sorry that the "smart" marketing campaign is to plug players coming to town once or twice a season rather than your own.

The worst of all Reinsdorfs gaffes was to allow Jordan to get away from the Bulls. Reinsdorf once said, "I can't conceive of anything I'd want to do with this team that doesn't involve Michael Jordan. I would like Michael Jordan to be associated with the Chicago Bulls forever." Now he'll twice yearly welcome Jordan the player-exec--of the Washington Wizards--to a United Center bearing MJ's own statue.

JERRY KRAUSE, THE REBUILDER

There is no man in the NBA as loathed as Krause. He'll go down in history as the man who dismantled a championship team before its time. Thankfully, he's got six rings to shield him from what begins as legitimate criticism and often escalates into outfight cruelty.

Krause didn't draft Jordan, Rod Thorn did. (The same Thorn, by the way, who's looking pretty sharp running the New Jersey Nets these days.) But Thorn admits he would have drafted Hakeem Olajuwon (no small consolation prize, that) ahead of Jordan, and this is the same Thorn who traded the two greatest talents of his pre-MJ tenure, Artis Gilmore and Reggie Theus, for the equivalent, impact-wise, of a bag of peanuts.

Krause bristles at the notion that because he didn't draft Jordan, he simply hitched a ride on the MJ bandwagon like so many Rodney McCrays and Bobby Hansens, propelling him to spout off a bunchy-underwear statement like, "Players don't win championships. Organizations with championships."

While Krause hasn't proved the best people person in the NBA and surely doesn't look the part of savvy salesman for the Bulls, he's been used and abused by any number of players and agents. This list is filled with heavy hitters: Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Phil Jackson, Eddie Jones, Antonio Davis, David Falk ...

What gets lost in the acrimony--which is in itself a terrible thing to have swirling around any salesman--is Krause's astute eye. He plucked Jackson from the CBA ranks, adding him to Doug Collins' Bulls staff, then took a big risk in replacing the burned-out Collins with PJ, a move even Jordan did not endorse. Turning Olden Polynice into Pippen, and coming away with both Pippen and Grant in the 1987 NBA draft, was a masterwork.

His post-championship run has been horrendous, starting when he plucked the inexperienced Tim Floyd out of the college ranks, prematurely ending the Bulls' championship run. With all the myths surrounding Krause and the Bulls today--the no-cornrows incident, the Bulls don't pay, and so on--it appears that, fair or unfair, nothing short of removing Krause from the equation will restore order.

PHIL JACKSON, THE GURU

Is Jackson dragged down into the morass that is the post-champion Bulls? Didn't he get while the getting was good? Yes. And therein lies the problem.

For all his tendencies as a hoops guru, Jackson has proven quite shallow in his dealings both in and outside of the Bulls. Jackson used his pull with his players to hold up the club on an annual basis as he "pondered" his future. Nobody picks on you if Jordan is your little bro, and that's the sort of relationship Jackson exploited in his efforts to push Krause out and take over all personnel matters with the Bulls.