General manager of the six-ring Chicago Bulls still divides opinion

To be a general manager in the NBA‘s empire of egos is like walking on hot coal. To be one on Michael Jordan‘s team, one of the greatest icons in sports history, leads to martyrdom. Jerry Krause lived between 1939 and 2017. Being deceased for nearly seven years has not earned him forgiveness from Chicago Bulls fans as seen on Friday night. Installed in controversy, the figure of Krause, despite the six NBA championship rings of the Illinois team, has not granted him immunity for episodes of the past.

A student at Bradley, his bulging physique kept him away from top-level sports competition. At less than 5’11” and weighing over 110 kilos, Krause understood that sports should be lived like a magician in the office. The trade of talent scouting was going to run his life. It didn’t matter whether it was baseball or basketball. Krause didn’t hesitate to hide behind the trees to spy on future potential stars.

When he was a scout for the Chicago White Sox baseball team in 1985, owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who had also acquired a Bulls team eaten up by shootouts and drugs, recruited him for the basketball team. It was time to build a championship team around a star.

He wanted to trade Jordan

His tension with Michael Jordan was born out of his welcome. Krause saw how the years went by and Jordan, known for scoring a lot of points, revolutionizing the industry and flying without gasoline, did not win championships. The manager had no qualms about poking the player with the performance of other stars. At the same time, Jordan felt that this charismaless man was incapable of making the necessary signings to storm the NBA, which was turning the page after the stronghold of the Lakers and Celtics.

The distance between the two was so gigantic that in 1989 Krause was willing to trade Jordan in a mega-deal with the Los Angeles Clippers. Fortunately for everyone’s physical integrity, Reinsdorf did not make the final move. If that had happened, there would have been no party in Chicago last Friday night.

His hurtful nickname and negotiations

As recounted in Sam Smith’s book ‘Jordan’s Rules,’ Jordan nicknamed Krause ‘crumbs,’ after the crumbs that were always in his locker room because of the executive’s taste for doughnuts. His detractors said it was common to see Krause with dirty clothes.

That gentleman so careless with the iron and the washing machine was in charge of the Bulls’ plans and blueprints. Once Jordan was irritated, his role seemed to be to infuriate the entire staff. One of Krause’s tactics was to negotiate contracts with a derisory first offer, in a bad cop role that was then fixed by Reinsdorf. Players would stop talking to him in single file, whether they were Pippen, Paxson or Grant, fed up with feeling cheated by the guy.

Another reason for the exclusion from Jordan’s club of friends, an exclusive circle that had only one owner, was Krause’s obsession with signing Toni Kukoc, the Croatian who could play anywhere. His campaign of seduction, including trips to Europe, upset the heads of the Chicago Bulls‘ stars. At that time, in the early 1990s, it was difficult to explain to Jordan that a Croatian was a more promising talent.

When the fires were unstoppable Jordan would go to Chief Reinsdorf’s office: “It’s either him or me”. The threats died there. Krause never signed the players Jordan wanted and rightly boasted of having ‘stolen’ Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant, key players in the Bulls’ first three titles, in the draft.

A scandalous ceremony

That find, along with the coaching hire of Phil Jackson in 1989, remain the eternal endorsements of Krause’s work on the Bulls’ titles. Success was not going to reduce the tension.

For Krause, Jordan believed “the world owes him a debt.” He spoke of the high-flyer who even changed the relationship of sports brands with players, as seen in the magnificent ‘Air’, Ben Affleck’s recent film glossing over Jordan’s hiring by Nike.

With that unwieldy power Jordan, with a tongue of seven vipers, wrung contempt for Krause from the back row of the team bus. Between cigars and beers, as recounted in ‘Michael Jordan, the definitive biography,’ Roland Lazenby’s book, the player was the champion of cruelty from his seat. “This bus was going faster without your fat ass riding on it,” he told him one day. It wasn’t the classiest thing he’d ever said to him.

The other commuters were silent or whispered without putting a verbal plug in the divo. It was Jordan’s thing, and no one dared to defend Krause, who had not been worthy of it either. Steve Kerr, a member of that team, described the star’s behavior in the book as “embarrassing”.

An unsympathetic character

In 1994, when the Bulls had won three rings and Jordan was on his way to explore baseball, the ceremony to retire Jordan’s No. 23 jersey was held at Chicago Stadium. Protocol went out the window when Jerry Krause was called out. The whistle blew in New York as his wife Thelma wept on the field.

The titles had not extinguished the flames. Between a global figure and a speck, the public chose the former. For Phil Jackson there was an explanation: “He’s an unsympathetic character. He’s been treated like he’s the mayor.” It was an unequal duel between one of the symbols of all centuries and an executive struggling with charm.

When the Bulls were already a legendary team with five rings in 1997, Jerry Krause once again demonstrated his uncanny sense of diplomacy. It was time to renew the contract of Phil Jackson, an idol in the city. The agreement was only for one year.

The executive made a point of reminding the team that it would be Jackson’s last year with the team, even though the winning record “is 82-0”. The coach was stunned to hear that sentence from the man who asked him to call him from a phone booth to circumvent possible spies.

In the process, he irritated Jordan again. The Bulls won their sixth ring. Jackson left the team, Jordan retired for the second time, before his adventure with the Bullets, and the Bulls never again reached the Finals. In the popular imagination Krause remained as the man who burst the institution’s glory bubble.

In 2003 he left the club. He had been named executive of the year twice (1988 and 1996). In 2017 he was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame. On Friday his name was booed at the United Center in Chicago. His wife Thelma wept on the court. It was another stain on Jerry Krause.