![]() Michael has said publicly that he will not play for a coach other than Phil. Is he worth the risk, especially if we can’t find a center and a power forward, and he and Michael have to carry the load for a new coach? I seriously doubt it.Ĭan Michael continue his greatness without a center, power forward and possibly Pippen? Could Bill Russell, the greatest team player ever, have won without great players around him? No. He wants to rightfully be paid superstar dollars. He’s had two major surgeries in two years, one of them late in the summer to purposely defy our instructions to do it earlier and not miss regular-season time. Who defends in the middle if Jordan and Pippen do come back? Who rebounds? No center, no power forward, very little (cap space) to sign anybody of any quality to replace them. Next question: Rodman? Each person in the room was concerned that Dennis’ off-court meanderings had caught up with him, that he was playing on fumes at the end of the season. Al and the doctors thought he would break down quickly. The first question I asked was how much did people think we could get out of Luc Longley, a free-agent-to-be who we’d had to rest periodically over the last few years because of unstable ankles. Phil had made his decision (to leave) eight months before the meeting. We had asked then-trainer Chip Schaefer to submit a written report on the team’s health. He had continually tested them in and out of season during the entire championship run. Vermeil knew more about the condition of the players’ bodies than even the medical people. It was attended by Jerry Reinsdorf, myself, (assistant general manager) Jim Stack, Al Vermeil, the team doctors and surgeons, (VP of finance) Irwin Mandel and (assistant to the GM) Karen Stack. I’m now going to take you to a place no Bulls outsider has ever been, a meeting in early July 1998. We had the finest coach in the game in Phil Jackson, whom the public did not know didn’t want to coach a rebuilding team and who’d informed us before the season that he wanted to ride off to Montana and take at least a year off. Or Scottie Pippen, with two operations in the previous two years, could rise to the occasion and win with Michael and a declining supporting cast. He could play without a center and a power forward for a capped team with little or no flexibility and still win by himself. We’d gotten lucky in 1990 in that most NBA people did not think that Toni Kukoc would even come to the NBA, and he’d fallen to early in the second round where we had a pick.īut to the fans and media, we had Michael Jordan and he could overcome anything. The fact that winning titles meant drafting last each year in what at the time were poor draft crops meant nothing. The lack of recovery time in the summer, where beaten-up legs could have enough time on (strength and conditioning coach) Al Vermeil’s summer program to gain back the strength they’d lost in playing far longer than any other team in the league, never struck the fans or the media. To the adoring public, the age that was showing on Dennis Rodman, the lack of movement by Luc Longley, the slowdown in efficiency after playing over 100 games per year in two of the previous three seasons, was not apparent. Up until now, as you read this, nobody outside of Jerry Reinsdorf, myself and a few select people in the Bulls organization really knows what happened in the aftermath of winning our sixth world championship in eight years.ĭid we break up the winning team so that we could satisfy our own egos and win without those players and coaches? Do you really think that people who worked for so many years to win and then win again and again would be dumb enough to let egos get in the way of trying to win again?ĭo you think that an organization built with one single purpose, from its chairman on down through the lowest-ranking member of the front office - to win championships - would easily give up that thought?ĭuring the last championship run in 1998, cracks in the foundation of the teams we’d built began to alarmingly show up at inopportune times. If I’ve heard or seen those quotes a thousand times in different publications and venues throughout America, you can be sure there were thousands of them said to which I wasn’t privy. “There’s Jerry Krause, the guy with the huge ego who wanted to build a championship team without Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson, the guy who thought he was more important than the players and coaches.” “There’s Jerry Krause, the guy who broke up the championship dynasty.” In this final excerpt from Jerry Krause's unfinished and unpublished memoir, the Bulls' general manager pulls back the curtain on the end of the dynasty. ![]()
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