Jerry Krause: I wonder sometimes when Jordan became a GM, he would now think we were right

I don't think you can say Krause made bad decisions always. He clearly built a good team, he initially promoted Phil Jackson because Phil was Tex Winter guy. He made a lot of good trades and signings.

But he did decide to try and blow up and rebuild too soon. No reason not to try for another one even without Scottie. When you have an actual generational player, why is he pushing out Phil? who even without Michael was a decently good coach. Especially for Tim Floyd who was a OK college coach.

Not reason other than Hubris

Didn’t Phil Jackson even say that he basically has a rule that after 7 years or whatever that players start tuning a coach out and so he’d rather leave after that length of time anyway? Maybe Krause felt the same way and thought things were getting kind of stale.

I mean, think about it... they won 6 championships in 8 years and just won 3 in a row. It might have been smart to blow it up while the iron is still hot from a public perception standpoint, and set your franchise up for another long stretch of greatness for years to come.

After winning 6, it becomes easier to potentially trade 1 more possible championship for a shot at many more championships in the future.

IMO, while The Last Dance has obviously shined a negative light on Jerry Krause, I think Reinsdorf looks just as bad if not worse.

I find it funny that a billionaire owner of teams in two major professional sports, one of which was THE premier sports franchise of the 1990s, tries to paint himself as a passive, impartial observer to the events that led to the dismantling of the Bulls dynasty.

I love how Reinsdorf tries to act like he was some brick in the wall Director of Marketing employee or something of that nature when he talks about Jerry Krause executing "his plan" and breaking up the team, as if he was powerless in the matter. Imagine someone like Robert Kraft trying to claim he wanted to re-sign Brady but he had no say in the matter.

Reinsdorf could've put Krause back in his cage or outright removed him if it was a decision between Krause or Jackson/Jordan. Don't let his posturing on TLD overshadow the fact that he's incredibly cheap and wanted to cut payroll.

I also don't believe for a second that he told Pippen he shouldn't sign his longterm deal, or any of the other self-aggrandizing claims of being some altruistic force in his players' lives.

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The Last Dance has obviously shined a negative light on Jerry Krause

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Let's also remember that the only way a guy like MJ is okaying any of this is if he has final say. MJ agreed to do this after the Cavs championship because he saw it as an opportunity to push his narrative. I love the series, but everything we are seeing and how it is portrayed is 100% to make it look like MJ was the hero, Krause was the villain, and Pippen was good but not good enough without Michael.

The Ringer has a good, nuanced view of TLD's villainization of Krause, with an appropriate shot at Reinsdorf for his underscored role in the demise of the Bulls.

The Legacy of Jerry Krause, the Villain of 'The Last Dance'

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But Krause wasn’t just responsible for throwing away a great hand. While he’s certainly to blame for the Bulls’ unnecessary destruction, he also was instrumental in the team’s miraculous assemblage. Krause—who was twice named NBA Executive of the Year and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017—surrounded Jordan with the complementary pieces needed to win three straight titles from 1991 to 1993, then got rid of many of those pieces and surrounded Jordan with a different set of teammates for another threepeat. While The Last Dance shows the Bulls team that drafted Jordan in 1984 as a hopeless “cocaine circus” and explains how Jordan’s costars were often found in obscure basketball backwaters, it never clues in on Krause as the person who found the necessary cogs to turn that circus into a champion.

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I get why The Last Dance doesn’t spend much time celebrating Krause’s successes. This is a documentary about the greatest basketball player of all time and the larger-than-life personality traits that made him singular. It is not a documentary about a suit who made savvy trades and handed out team-friendly contracts. The past 20 years have seen the sports universe drastically change its perception of front office figures, to the point that an Oscar-nominated movie features Brad Freakin’ Pitt playing an analytically-minded general manager trying to assemble a winning roster for a penny-pinching employer. There are fan bases that lionize their GMs over their team’s actual stars, and I appreciate The Last Dance resetting that conversation. That Pippen, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, signed a seven-year, $18 million contract, might today be written about as a coup that allowed a franchise to better structure its salary cap. The Last Dance correctly portrays Pippen’s meager salary in comparison to his massive on-court contributions as a sports tragedy.

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Krause doesn’t get a chance to defend himself in the series, as he died in 2017. (At the time of his death, Jordan offered some acknowledgement that Krause played a pivotal role in the Bulls’ dynasty.) The few instances when we hear Krause’s voice in The Last Dance come from archival footage. The documentary also fails to sufficiently criticize one of the main architects of the Bulls’ demise: owner Jerry Reinsdorf, whose tenure has been marked by high profit margins and low salaries. Reinsdorf, who has publicly stated that he cares more about owning the White Sox than the Bulls, was happy to avoid paying Jordan and Pippen after they left town; Krause may have simply been doing his bidding. Krause left the Bulls in 2003, but the franchise has kept faltering in ways that reflect poorly on its owner.

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They should’ve held it together another 1-2 years.

Could see them passing the torch to the Lakers in 2000.

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If you notice every time Reinsdorf is interviewed he puts himself on the right side of history

"I told scottie not to take that contract"
"I told the owners locking the players out was a bad move"

There's a few others I'm forgetting. Even encouraging MJ to play baseball was a no brainer for him "ah I can pay you much less and still make a killing off of you? Oh yeah go play baseball man"

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Well this whole thing doesn't get green lit without his approval, so zero chance in hell he's going to be allow himself to be viewed as culpable for the breakup.

This isn't really a documentary. Too much manipulation by Jordan and Reinsdorf.

Well if you believe the 93 narrative, after the three pete Jordan was burned out and left. Other pieces were moved. It was over. The GM was right to assume this would happen again in 98 and wanted to get ahead of it. He knew the pieces only worked with Jordan. He saw it in 1994 and 1995. Particularly 1995 team that was bad before 45 came back. Krause was right to unload when he did.

Yeah, Reinsdorf is every (((stereotype))), especially when you learn how he initially made his fortune