Chicago fans left the late general manager’s widow in tears. They forget he was a part of creating a team that made them very happy.
Many of the Chicago Bulls’ biggest contributors were unable to attend the halftime ceremony last Friday to unveil their Ring of Honor, a pantheon reserved for their accomplishments. As the wedding of Michael Jordan’s eldest son and Scottie Pippen’s ex-wife approaches, tensions between the two men are growing. Dennis Rodman claims that bad weather caused his detour. After his death in 2017, Jerry Krause, the man behind the team’s dynasty in the 1990s, left his 80-year-old widow, Thelma, to represent him in court, with her children and grandchildren dotted around the assembly. She arrived dressed in black, which may indicate that she is still grieving over her husband. She would have been better off remaining home in retrospect.
While Thelma sat in front row center between the son of the late Hall of Fame coach Jerry Sloan (a star guard for the Bulls in the 1960s and 1970s) and longtime assistant coach Tex Winter, the architect of the triangle offense, a significant portion of the roughly 21,000 spectators at the United Center booed Krause long and lustily when his name was announced as one of the 13 inaugural inductees. Thelma broke down in tears and raised her hands, looking like she was sobbing for her uncle, but Ron Harper, the rough point guard for the Bulls during the second half of their 1990s run, comforted her. In a subsequent comment, she would tell the TV news magazine Inside Edition, “I was totally unprepared for the reaction.” I’m unable to refer to them as fans since
As swiftly as a Doberman defense, the NBA community intervened. Stacey King, the three-time champion pivot who currently calls color for Bulls games, described the jeering as “the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life” as soon as the break began. During the halftime ceremony, Steve Kerr, the legendary Bulls sharpshooter, who was in the locker room with his visiting Golden State Warriors, took offense. The Bulls lost by nine points, and he expressed his grief for Thelma and the Krause family following the game. “I think it’s really shameful that the fans who boo know who they are.” Naturally, the most oppressive was Charles Barkley. He commented on TNT, “You guys made that woman cry.” “And that was just nonsense.”
Just to be clear, nobody is advocating that fans not use their right to express their disapproval. God knows they take every opportunity. In addition to taunting the host team for their subpar performance, they also jeer at arrogant commissioners, sly mascots, off-key anthem performances, and more. When he returned to Ford Field for last Sunday’s NFC playoff game against Detroit, the team he spent his entire career as a hero before being dealt to the Rams in 2021, not even quarterback Matthew Stafford of the Los Angeles Rams could escape a nasty reception. We anticipate Philadelphia sports fans to jeer at everyone, including Santa Claus and their mother, and New York sports fans to disobey local laws.
It was believed that Chicago sports fans were a more sophisticated crowd. A few weeks ago, as quarterback Justin Fields led the Bears to victory against the Falcons, some 62,000 supporters at Chicago’s Soldier Field were shouting, “We want Fields.” Since then, campaign signs like “In Justin We Trustin” have appeared on the roads leading to the Bears’ suburban headquarters as a direct result of the show of support, which was directed at the team’s C-suiters who are presently debating whether to deal the third-year player for draft picks.
And yet: Bulls management should have known better than to serve Thelma Krause up to the nostalgic patrons who have kept the team among the league leaders in attendance through the decades. Bulls fans booed Jerry when he was alive. The bad feelings here run deep. They were stoked by a number of his fellow honorees. Short, stocky and thick with regional accent, Krause was the Rodney Dangerfield of NBA executives: the man who still gets no respect. When he was starting out in the 1960s and 70s, basketball people struggled with what to make of this scout with territories in basketball and baseball – unearthing Kirk Gibson, Ozzie Guillen and other gems.
Before the 1985–86 season, the Bulls appointed him to general manager, but few in the locker room took him seriously. Jordan dubbed the general manager “Crumbs” because he noticed the persistent donut crumbs on Krause’s lapels. He and Pippen also contributed to the widespread belief that Krause was a jock-sniffing wannabe who would take any kind of public humiliation in exchange for an all-access pass to the world’s sexiest show. His clothing from when he slept in and his general cheapness were ridiculed. As sportswriters began to credit the team’s sideline Zen Master for a greater portion of the team’s astounding success, Phil Jackson, whom Krause signed from the CBA, also began to grow resentful of the general manager.
Jerry Krause, who helped the Bulls fly, deserved better than jeers at the team.
Chicago fans left the late general manager’s widow in tears. They forget he was a part of creating a team that made them very happy.
Lawrence Andrews
@by_drew
Fri., Jan. 19, 2024, 10:00 GMT
Many of the Chicago Bulls’ biggest contributors were unable to attend the halftime ceremony last Friday to unveil their Ring of Honor, a pantheon reserved for their accomplishments. As the wedding of Michael Jordan’s eldest son and Scottie Pippen’s ex-wife approaches, tensions between the two men are growing. Dennis Rodman claims that bad weather caused his detour. The creator of the team’s dynasty in the 1990s, Jerry Krause, passed away in 2017, leaving his 80-year-old wife, Thelma, to defend him in court.
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