Blood on the Horns: The long strange ride of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls

In 2020, my wife digitized the many cassette tapes of my interviews from 35 years of writing about pro basketball. In there was a gem I had never listened to, from an April 1991 game between the Washington Bullets and the Lakers. Jerry Krause, the Bulls GM at the time, had worked for both organizations as a scout and now some years later had come to the game in Washington in a moment of immense pride, to quietly show off a bit and perhaps even gloat.

His Bulls were playing very well that spring and seemed on the brink doing great things.

A short, odd little fat guy—Michael Jordan had famously nicknamed him ‘Crumbs’ for the evidence of his snacks often found on his shirts—Krause had spent years suffering ridicule while knocking around as a scout in pro basketball, a business of very large men.

In the 1970s, Krause had finally reached what seemed like the pinnacle when he was named GM of the Bulls, only to be fired after a few weeks on the job.

Like that, he had gone from a crowning achievement to immense public ridicule. If it seemed everybody in his hometown Chicago was laughing at him, that’s only because they were.

Yet by 1985, the Bulls were something of a laughingstock themselves, and financial whiz Jerry Reinsdorf was able to buy them for a pittance, about $14 million.

Reinsdorf promptly stunned fans by hiring Krause to be his GM, and the short, little fat guy set about rebuilding the team.

This time Krause had a vision, albeit an odd one. He wanted to hire a retired college coach, Tex Winter, who had long been the proponent of a quirky offense, the triangle, or triple-post.

More important, Krause wanted to hire a young goofball named Phil Jackson as his head coach with the idea that Winter would mentor him to greatness.

It would take a while to get Jackson in place, in part because he had written a memoir about playing for the Knicks in which he talked about taking LSD on the beach in California after New York defeated the Lakers for the 1973 NBA title.

Nobody wanted to hire a coach who took LSD, but Krause paid the matter no mind. He had known Jackson for a decade and saw his odd genius.

Krause would also become excited about several players including a relatively obscure prospect out of Central Arkansas named Scottie Pippen.

The Bulls struggled for some time to overcome the Bad Boy Pistons, but in that late April 1991 Chicago finally seemed on the way to doing that.

Thus, Krause stood alone outside the Bullets locker room that night, seemingly waiting for reporters to notice him and interview him. I recall almost feeling sorry for him standing there and recorded about five minutes with him that night as Krause spoke grandly of his own work in assembling a team around the young superstar Jordan.

It was a conversation I had frankly forgotten until a quarter century later when it literally leapt out from that newly digitized archive.

Sure enough, Krause’s instincts had been spot on. It had all fallen in place for Jordan, Pippen, Jackson, Winter and their Bulls. They would win the ’91 championship, then five more over the next seven seasons.

Listening to that tape of Krause at the brink of their greatness and knowing how it would all go from that early moment of his eager pride to a bad end, how all the happy days would evaporate in 1998 in a very public and dramatic ugliness, I was struck with an overwhelming sadness.

I later did an extensive interview with Krause on the tenth anniversary in 2008 when he told me he had videotape of every game played in the championship years.

He had not viewed them even once, he told me with great bitterness.

THAT LAST DANCE

By that 1998 season, after so much success, the Bulls were caught in the throes of a non-sensical struggle for control of the team, with Jackson, Jordan and Pippen pitted against Krause, who announced before the season began that Jackson would not be allowed to return as coach in the fall of 1998.

“This is it,” Krause had said. “Phil and I know it. We all know it.”

In announcing his move, Krause did not identify exactly what had led to Jackson’s scheduled departure, but the relationship between the coach and GM had obviously turned from love and respect to hatred.

The son of two fundamentalist preachers, Phil Jackson had been heavily influenced by the “rapture” or the idea of the end times. Thus, he always seemed to think in terms of the “last” this or that. He had dubbed the showdown with Krause “the Last Dance.” Later, as coach of the Lakers he would write a book about his battles with Kobe Bryant and call it the “Last Season.”

It was a good name for the events in Chicago in 1998.

No matter where he played, the buildings virtually sparkled for Jordan that season. Each game, as he stepped onto the floor for introductions, he was greeted by the flashes of a thousand small cameras. The phenomenon was most brilliant at the United Center in Chicago, where the introductions would build to a crescendo of noise and light until Jordan’s name was called as the fifth starter, and the arena became a pulsating strobe. Later, at the opening tip, these same lights would again flicker furiously. But they were most maddening during free throws, when Jordan went to the line, and the rows of fans behind the basket would break into a dizzying twinkle, bringing to mind a mirror ball at a junior prom.

In one of our several one-on-one interviews that season, I asked Jordan how he could possibly shoot free throws under the conditions, he smiled and replied, “I got used to that a long time ago.”

He had always been a superstar who understood and accommodated his fans. That was particularly true that spring, as indications grew that it could well be his last. The camera lights were by far the warmest measure of his popularity. Each time he made a spectacular play, Michael Jordan’s world glittered, a twinkling firmament of adulation that served as a backdrop for his every move.

Despite all the trappings of the moment, my numerous conversations with Krause revealed that the GM was eager to end the Jordan era so that he could prove that he could rebuild the team without Jordan. I thought he was crazy.

I in turn went to Jordan to ask why they all couldn’t just sit down and talk out their differences. He replied that wouldn’t be possible because Krause had gotten in the way of winning too often.

I realized then that Jordan was confident he would defeat Krause just as he had overcome the entire NBA.

Jordan was wrong, of course. He did not understand just how badly Jackson wanted to get away from Krause, that the coach would “ride off into the sunset” at the end of the season.

Jordan also couldn’t fathom that Jerry Reinsdorf—who had realized hundreds of millions in wealth with the growth of the Bulls by then—didn’t want to give Pippen a large contract, even though the forward had been underpaid for years and had been a magnificent player for the team.

As it sadly unfolded, Jackson would leave, Pippen would be traded, Jordan would retire, and Krause would fail miserably in his attempts to rebuild the team and eventually be fired.

It would indeed prove to be the Last Dance for both Krause and Jordan.

I interviewed Krause extensively again in 2012. By then he had grown to accept everything that had come to pass.

“It’s past history,” he said. “It’s done. Phil is a great coach. For a long time, he was very easy to work with. Then he was not so easy. That’s life. Things change. Phil is Phil. I’m proud I hired him.”