Bulls Ring of Honor 1/12/2024

[Dez]

Pretty low and shameful to be booing a dead man.

[riselife]

I have a cool story about Jerry Krause I was driving on Michigan ave back in the day and saw him getting out of Jordan's steakhouse and yelled out the window hey Jerry please draft Eddy Curry I'm begging you! So yall can blame me for that lol but he was cool and just smiled and waved goodbye

[ScrantonBulls]

that's not what either of us originally meant.

I said "it's possible the Bulls win zero championships without him (Krause)". You took that as "Krause the only GM who could build a multi-championship team around Michael Jordan?" which isn't at all what I wrote.

[Luv those Knicks]

This is on whoever Bulls management decided to organize this event. From the beginning I thought this event was rather pointless. I don't understand the point of this event, what are we celebrating? There was early Bulls legends like Chet Walker, Jerry Sloan's family. There's Artist Gilmore, there's also the 95-96 team. It just felt so random, like an event that you do because it's been awhile since you do anything. Just invite Bulls legends show them to the fans. I mean even if that booing didn't happen, the Ring of Honor event still would've been forgettable.

Twitter is going crazy with the Krause booing. Half-assed event turned into a PR nightmare.

The Mets have held 25th and 30th or 50th anniversaries of championship teams when they were having bad seasons and it was fine. I'm guessing the Knicks have too, though it's kind of hard to look each of these up but I remember the Mets having them during bad seasons celebrating the 86 team which remains well liked among fans.

The most recent one, the 50 year anniversary of the knicks 72-73 was 11 months ago and it went well, but nobody is going to boo Clyde Frazier. The Knicks, following their 2 titles, 70 and 73, they did some moves that angered the fans and they did some bad management. I could see fans booing management when the wounds were still fresh, but nobody would ever boo the championship team. Clyde also knows how to work the crowd, having been a popular announcer for decades.

This is usually a good thing, but the Bulls won 6 titles so which years do you pick for an anniversary? Maybe the anniversaries of the 3-peats?. I think "honor" nights are fine. Maybe in the middle of January in Chilly Chicago isn't the best time and focus on the players, not the management. Mixing all the greats in one night does seem a bit unfocused. Focusing on an anniversary of a championship win seems better.

I've never seen one of these nights go bad before. They usually work. And because they usually work, I don't know if management should be blamed for assuming theirs would work too, but that's what's going to inevitably happen.

And Knick fans aren't the best fans. Ewing used to hate the fans sometimes and their booing. Melo's been booed. Posters here on the Knicks board have criticized the fans in the stadium. Yankee fans booed A-Rod and Aaron Judge for bad playoff performances. I think a lot of fans boo too readily. I don't think this is unique to Chicago. I've never seen an 80 year old woman booed even if what the other poster said is true and the crowd stopped boing when they showed her picture on the jumbo or something, but in stadium fans can be the worst people sometimes.

not sure you wanted to hear from a Knickfan, but this event is blowing up. It's showing up as a click-bait article all over the web. I was curious, and it does sound like it was poorly planned. I've never seen one of these where management was front and center. Maybe a coach, not a GM or GM's wife. Hindsight is 20/20 but that probably wasn't well thought out.

Knicks 50 year celebration. Short and sweet. This is how to do it, which is easy to say in hindsight. Willis Reed died a month after this.

Watch on YouTube

[Indomitable]

As a general note, last night made me question why I'm a Bulls fan. I'm from the middle of nowhere and grew up a Tar Heels fan. Followed MJ to the pros and loved the 90's ride. I love basketball. Realistically at this point, the Bulls are a cheap poorly run franchise where my only connections are long ago history and you guys.

I have no connection to the fans at the UC and last night made me feel ashamed to be associated with them. I would never follow a Philly team for this reason.

Habit Jordan marked like he marked. I despise the Reindorfs and hated how they treated the Championship teams.

[Johnston797]

coldfish wrote:
As a general note, last night made me question why I'm a Bulls fan. I'm from the middle of nowhere and grew up a Tar Heels fan. Followed MJ to the pros and loved the 90's ride. I love basketball. Realistically at this point, the Bulls are a cheap poorly run franchise where my only connections are long ago history and you guys.

I have no connection to the fans at the UC and last night made me feel ashamed to be associated with them. I would never follow a Philly team for this reason.

Similar story but I lived in Chicago when Bulls drafted MJ. Always sided with MJ/PJax vs the Jerrys and really disliked Krause as a person and as an executive even if he has some scouting chops and was willing to think outside the box. I have plenty of really old posts here arguing about Krause. I finally fired the Bulls when I saw the same broken dynamics with the team and Thibs and GarPax. I then decided that OKC was my new favorite team years ago due to an Austin connection to KD. Gotta say it’s pretty amazing to have a GM on the same page as the coach and the team while executing a sound team building strategy.

Maybe it is time to get a new team, Coldfish



Ps. Loved seeing MikeDC’s post. My old friend hit this on the nose per usual.

[Jcool0]

I just can't understand the "I get it" crowd. Holding disdain for Krause is just basketball stupidity. Let's look at the things Krause did:

Traded for Scottie
Drafted Horace
Found and hired Phil as an assistant from the Albany Patrons of the CBA
Fired Doug Collins and promoting Phil
Trading Oakley for Cartwright
Trading Will Perdue for Rodman
Signing Kerr and Harper
Drafting Kukoc

Look at that damn list. Are you kidding me? Those moves are dynamite. It's possible the Bulls win ZERO championships without him. The fact that fans harp on him for "breaking up" the team is so ridiculous. Rodman was toast, Scottie was old and getting paid, MJ severed a finger tendon in the Offseason. They weren't going to beat the Spurs team. Most of all, cheap ass Jerry Reinsdorf probably wouldn't have paid for an aging squad that would miss MJ for a significant amount of time. Reinsdorf said HIMSELF that the Bulls couldn't have won in 1999 due to MJ's injury.

Lets look at some other things he did:

Took Keith Lee at #11 over:

Karl Malone

Took Horace Grant at #10 over:

Reggie Miller

Will Purdue at #11 over:

Dan Majerle
Rod Strickland

Took Stacy King #6 over:

Mookie Blaylock
Tim Hardaway
Shawn Kemp (who he later tried to trade Pippen for)

Took Jason Caffey at #21 over:

Michael Finley

Dumped Phil Jackson for Tim Floyd even hiring him as director of basketball operations before Jackson had officially made up his mind.

Took Marcus Fizer #4 overall despite playing the exact same position as Elton Brand.

Had a team of Elton Brand, Metta World Peace, Jamal Crawford & Brad Miller and didn't think it was worth keeping together and traded them all away to get Eddie Curry and Tyson Chandler. Thinking he was getting Shaq and Garnett.

[Hangtime84]

Stacey just released a whole EP on this

https://youtu.be/jQqEdIbkIHw?si=IG0CmfPD_t10wiua

[dougthonus]

I probably wouldn't boo a dead man in general (always the Hitler exception where someone is just bad enough it doesn't matter).

However, I put most of the blame for this on the Bulls. While individual fans were shameful. The Bulls:
1: Had Jerry Reinsdorf saying asinine things to alienate Jordan before hand ("I have no idea how hard we tried to get Michael and Scottie, my only regret is Jerry's not here!"). Can't imagine that would cause people to feel a certain way at all.

2: They should have made it really clear well in advance (like a program before the event handed out at the door) that his wife was going to be accepting the award, almost certainly this cuts out the momentum of any booing if people know in advance this is what is happening, and the cheers would then outweigh them. If you aren't sure how crowds work, a lot of people are probably thinking "maybe I'll boo" but they don't feel strong enough to do it until a lot of people are doing it, then they vent it out. Putting something out in advance like "hey his widow is here, don't be a jerk" almost certainly stops that momentum from ever building.

3: If they did some research and found my idea from #2 isn't likely to work, they could have simply decided this risk is too big, let's honor Jerry and Thelma privately instead. It's not like this was some unknown possibility that no one could see coming, and not putting him on the screen and having his wife booed by a stadium and having a separate private ceremony would have been a way better result for everyone even if some questions were asked afterwards.

No one showed up to Thelma's house to boo her husband, this happened only because the Bulls wanted to create a marketing ploy to milk the dynasty one last time and did so with an incredible lack of planning and care.

[Stratmaster]

I probably wouldn't boo a dead man in general (always the Hitler exception where someone is just bad enough it doesn't matter).

However, I put most of the blame for this on the Bulls. While individual fans were shameful. The Bulls:
1: Had Jerry Reinsdorf saying asinine things to alienate Jordan before hand ("I have no idea how hard we tried to get Michael and Scottie, my only regret is Jerry's not here!"). Can't imagine that would cause people to feel a certain way at all.

2: They should have made it really clear well in advance (like a program before the event handed out at the door) that his wife was going to be accepting the award, almost certainly this cuts out the momentum of any booing if people know in advance this is what is happening, and the cheers would then outweigh them. If you aren't sure how crowds work, a lot of people are probably thinking "maybe I'll boo" but they don't feel strong enough to do it until a lot of people are doing it, then they vent it out. Putting something out in advance like "hey his widow is here, don't be a jerk" almost certainly stops that momentum from ever building.

3: If they did some research and found my idea from #2 isn't likely to work, they could have simply decided this risk is too big, let's honor Jerry and Thelma privately instead. It's not like this was some unknown possibility that no one could see coming, and not putting him on the screen and having his wife booed by a stadium and having a separate private ceremony would have been a way better result for everyone even if some questions were asked afterwards.

No one showed up to Thelma's house to boo her husband, this happened only because the Bulls wanted to create a marketing ploy to milk the dynasty one last time and did so with an incredible lack of planning and care.

So, individual bad behavior is blamed on some other entity.

It's not the guy who robbed your car's fault. You are the one who left your tools in plain sight.

I could give 100 more examples like that.

The fact is that booing anyone, for anything, is classless behavior generally conducted by entitled and ignorant meat heads. Or drunks. Or all of the above.

Booing a dead man takes it to another level.

And whether or not they understood his wife was there, they know they are on television and his family is watching from somewhere.

IDK when our society got to the point that individuals think their opinions and desires are the only important thing regardless of how they affect others. But here we are.

Sent from my SM-S911U using RealGM mobile app

[ScrantonBulls]

I just can't understand the "I get it" crowd. Holding disdain for Krause is just basketball stupidity. Let's look at the things Krause did:

Traded for Scottie
Drafted Horace
Found and hired Phil as an assistant from the Albany Patrons of the CBA
Fired Doug Collins and promoting Phil
Trading Oakley for Cartwright
Trading Will Perdue for Rodman
Signing Kerr and Harper
Drafting Kukoc

Look at that damn list. Are you kidding me? Those moves are dynamite. It's possible the Bulls win ZERO championships without him. The fact that fans harp on him for "breaking up" the team is so ridiculous. Rodman was toast, Scottie was old and getting paid, MJ severed a finger tendon in the Offseason. They weren't going to beat the Spurs team. Most of all, cheap ass Jerry Reinsdorf probably wouldn't have paid for an aging squad that would miss MJ for a significant amount of time. Reinsdorf said HIMSELF that the Bulls couldn't have won in 1999 due to MJ's injury.

Lets look at some other things he did:

Took Keith Lee at #11 over:

Karl Malone

Took Horace Grant at #10 over:

Reggie Miller

Will Purdue at #11 over:

Dan Majerle
Rod Strickland

Took Stacy King #6 over:

Mookie Blaylock
Tim Hardaway
Shawn Kemp (who he later tried to trade Pippen for)

Took Jason Caffey at #21 over:

Michael Finley

Dumped Phil Jackson for Tim Floyd even hiring him as director of basketball operations before Jackson had officially made up his mind.

Took Marcus Fizer #4 overall despite playing the exact same position as Elton Brand.

Had a team of Elton Brand, Metta World Peace, Jamal Crawford & Brad Miller and didn't think it was worth keeping together and traded them all away to get Eddie Curry and Tyson Chandler. Thinking he was getting Shaq and Garnett.

Cool story bro. Now do this for literally every GM in history.

"He didn't draft the best player available in every single one of his drafts! He sucks!!"

[dougthonus]

So, individual bad behavior is blamed on some other entity.

No, individual bad behavior is blamed on the individual. Each individual who booed should feel ashamed of themselves. I have no sympathy for them and providing them no excuses. I also don't know their names and saying "fans" doesn't mean much, lots of fans also didn't boo and are abhorred. It's just meaningless.

This also wasn't an individual, it was a massive crowd. At an event, the event planner's have a responsibility towards the crowd as a whole. There were obvious steps they could have taken that would have mitigated this, they took none of them. 25 years of reaction to Krause also made it clear this was a risk they should have considered.

It's not the guy who robbed your car's fault. You are the one who left your tools in plain sight.

I could give 100 more examples like that.

If you left all your valuable belongings in your front yard permanently, the person who stole them is responsible for stealing them, but you won't get any sympathy for being a complete moron and not providing due care for your belongings.

The fact is that booing anyone, for anything, is classless behavior generally conducted by entitled and ignorant meat heads. Or drunks. Or all of the above.

Booing a dead man takes it to another level.

And whether or not they understood his wife was there, they know they are on television and his family is watching from somewhere.

IDK when our society got to the point that individuals think their opinions and desires are the only important thing regardless of how they affect others. But here we are.

Sure, here we are. The behavior was terrible.

The organization had a responsibility to set a better atmosphere to prevent this. They could have trivially done so and should have known they would have to.

Yes, the individuals should have done better and are absolutely to blame for their actions individually, but are also faceless, impossible to track down, and this is unactionable. The org also should have done better. When you put on an event, you are responsible for things like this.

[fleet]

I probably wouldn't boo a dead man in general (always the Hitler exception where someone is just bad enough it doesn't matter).

However, I put most of the blame for this on the Bulls. While individual fans were shameful. The Bulls:
1: Had Jerry Reinsdorf saying asinine things to alienate Jordan before hand ("I have no idea how hard we tried to get Michael and Scottie, my only regret is Jerry's not here!"). Can't imagine that would cause people to feel a certain way at all.

2: They should have made it really clear well in advance (like a program before the event handed out at the door) that his wife was going to be accepting the award, almost certainly this cuts out the momentum of any booing if people know in advance this is what is happening, and the cheers would then outweigh them. If you aren't sure how crowds work, a lot of people are probably thinking "maybe I'll boo" but they don't feel strong enough to do it until a lot of people are doing it, then they vent it out. Putting something out in advance like "hey his widow is here, don't be a jerk" almost certainly stops that momentum from ever building.

3: If they did some research and found my idea from #2 isn't likely to work, they could have simply decided this risk is too big, let's honor Jerry and Thelma privately instead. It's not like this was some unknown possibility that no one could see coming, and not putting him on the screen and having his wife booed by a stadium and having a separate private ceremony would have been a way better result for everyone even if some questions were asked afterwards.

No one showed up to Thelma's house to boo her husband, this happened only because the Bulls wanted to create a marketing ploy to milk the dynasty one last time and did so with an incredible lack of planning and care.

I would not be surprised to learn that MJ didn't want to do this with all the Krause stuff there included. So he decided not to come. In that case, as usual, JR would rather do what he always wants to do about that subject rather than have MJ there in person for a proper event. Either you want to do what it takes for the thing to work, or you don't, and then you get what we saw. It's JR's fault this happened,

[fleet]

I probably wouldn't boo a dead man in general (always the Hitler exception where someone is just bad enough it doesn't matter).

However, I put most of the blame for this on the Bulls. While individual fans were shameful. The Bulls:
1: Had Jerry Reinsdorf saying asinine things to alienate Jordan before hand ("I have no idea how hard we tried to get Michael and Scottie, my only regret is Jerry's not here!"). Can't imagine that would cause people to feel a certain way at all.

2: They should have made it really clear well in advance (like a program before the event handed out at the door) that his wife was going to be accepting the award, almost certainly this cuts out the momentum of any booing if people know in advance this is what is happening, and the cheers would then outweigh them. If you aren't sure how crowds work, a lot of people are probably thinking "maybe I'll boo" but they don't feel strong enough to do it until a lot of people are doing it, then they vent it out. Putting something out in advance like "hey his widow is here, don't be a jerk" almost certainly stops that momentum from ever building.

3: If they did some research and found my idea from #2 isn't likely to work, they could have simply decided this risk is too big, let's honor Jerry and Thelma privately instead. It's not like this was some unknown possibility that no one could see coming, and not putting him on the screen and having his wife booed by a stadium and having a separate private ceremony would have been a way better result for everyone even if some questions were asked afterwards.

No one showed up to Thelma's house to boo her husband, this happened only because the Bulls wanted to create a marketing ploy to milk the dynasty one last time and did so with an incredible lack of planning and care.

So, individual bad behavior is blamed on some other entity.

It's not the guy who robbed your car's fault. You are the one who left your tools in plain sight.

I could give 100 more examples like that.

The fact is that booing anyone, for anything, is classless behavior generally conducted by entitled and ignorant meat heads. Or drunks. Or all of the above.

Booing a dead man takes it to another level.

And whether or not they understood his wife was there, they know they are on television and his family is watching from somewhere.

IDK when our society got to the point that individuals think their opinions and desires are the only important thing regardless of how they affect others. But here we are.

Sent from my SM-S911U using RealGM mobile app

You're trying to make a character judgment on what people *should* be doing, rather than look at the chess pieces and asses them for what they are capable of doing on the board. The Bulls wanted more from people than they were capable, and decided to do what they wanted to do anyway. The Bulls failed the fans/participants, Not the other way around. Or alternately, instead of willfull callousness and arrogance, the Bulls just half-assed their time effort devoted, and didn’t direct enough thought energy at it in order to create a competent plan for the event.

[Dan Z]

I just can't understand the "I get it" crowd. Holding disdain for Krause is just basketball stupidity. Let's look at the things Krause did:

Traded for Scottie
Drafted Horace
Found and hired Phil as an assistant from the Albany Patrons of the CBA
Fired Doug Collins and promoting Phil
Trading Oakley for Cartwright
Trading Will Perdue for Rodman
Signing Kerr and Harper
Drafting Kukoc

Look at that damn list. Are you kidding me? Those moves are dynamite. It's possible the Bulls win ZERO championships without him. The fact that fans harp on him for "breaking up" the team is so ridiculous. Rodman was toast, Scottie was old and getting paid, MJ severed a finger tendon in the Offseason. They weren't going to beat the Spurs team. Most of all, cheap ass Jerry Reinsdorf probably wouldn't have paid for an aging squad that would miss MJ for a significant amount of time. Reinsdorf said HIMSELF that the Bulls couldn't have won in 1999 due to MJ's injury.

Lets look at some other things he did:

Took Keith Lee at #11 over:

Karl Malone

Took Horace Grant at #10 over:

Reggie Miller

Will Purdue at #11 over:

Dan Majerle
Rod Strickland

Took Stacy King #6 over:

Mookie Blaylock
Tim Hardaway
Shawn Kemp (who he later tried to trade Pippen for)

Took Jason Caffey at #21 over:

Michael Finley

Dumped Phil Jackson for Tim Floyd even hiring him as director of basketball operations before Jackson had officially made up his mind.

Took Marcus Fizer #4 overall despite playing the exact same position as Elton Brand.

Had a team of Elton Brand, Metta World Peace, Jamal Crawford & Brad Miller and didn't think it was worth keeping together and traded them all away to get Eddie Curry and Tyson Chandler. Thinking he was getting Shaq and Garnett.

The Caffey pick was odd. Finely was a local guy who knew Jordan a bit (I think they played against each other when FInley was in HS...?). I guess Krause did it because he was thinking about position instead of best player available?

The Bulls then trade Caffey in his third year for David Vaughan (who only played three games for the Bulls) and two 2nd round picks.

[kyrv]

Obviously marred what should have been a cool night. I've been reluctant to suggest whe other fans should and shouldn't do, but man glad I wasn't there.

Krause plucked a coach out of the cba and assembled perhaps the greatest coaching staff of all time. So good that Phil took that staff for his next job. Krause put together 3-peats around MJ and Scottie not once but twice. That's insane.

I could give some good will and appreciation once in my life for that.

Doug and fleet, the Bulls could have maybe anticipated embarrassing fans. I personally didn't think a dead guy and his widow would get booed, but that's me

But I agree with Strat, the fault of the booing is on the people doing the booing.

[kyrv]

I just can't understand the "I get it" crowd. Holding disdain for Krause is just basketball stupidity. Let's look at the things Krause did:

Traded for Scottie
Drafted Horace
Found and hired Phil as an assistant from the Albany Patrons of the CBA
Fired Doug Collins and promoting Phil
Trading Oakley for Cartwright
Trading Will Perdue for Rodman
Signing Kerr and Harper
Drafting Kukoc

Look at that damn list. Are you kidding me? Those moves are dynamite. It's possible the Bulls win ZERO championships without him. The fact that fans harp on him for "breaking up" the team is so ridiculous. Rodman was toast, Scottie was old and getting paid, MJ severed a finger tendon in the Offseason. They weren't going to beat the Spurs team. Most of all, cheap ass Jerry Reinsdorf probably wouldn't have paid for an aging squad that would miss MJ for a significant amount of time. Reinsdorf said HIMSELF that the Bulls couldn't have won in 1999 due to MJ's injury.

Lets look at some other things he did:

Took Keith Lee at #11 over:

Karl Malone

Took Horace Grant at #10 over:

Reggie Miller

Will Purdue at #11 over:

Dan Majerle
Rod Strickland

Took Stacy King #6 over:

Mookie Blaylock
Tim Hardaway
Shawn Kemp (who he later tried to trade Pippen for)

Took Jason Caffey at #21 over:

Michael Finley

Dumped Phil Jackson for Tim Floyd even hiring him as director of basketball operations before Jackson had officially made up his mind.

Took Marcus Fizer #4 overall despite playing the exact same position as Elton Brand.

Had a team of Elton Brand, Metta World Peace, Jamal Crawford & Brad Miller and didn't think it was worth keeping together and traded them all away to get Eddie Curry and Tyson Chandler. Thinking he was getting Shaq and Garnett.

Cool story bro. Now do this for literally every GM in history.

"He didn't draft the best player available in every single one of his drafts! He sucks!!"

Stole my thunder, and I was going to limit it to GMs that won a title and/or are in the HoF.

I do miss all the Miller/Brand/wack job dynasty.

[kodo]

Krause gets credit for putting the team around MJ, but he was also stopped from making huge mistakes that would have torn it down prematurely.

1994: Almost traded Pippen for Shawn Kemp, Seattle killed the deal.
Kemp was still in his prime but turned into Cleveland Kemp in 97. Would the Bulls still have won with Kemp instead of Pip? Debatable, but I think most would say no. So this move would have cost us 3 championships, maybe.
Source: Shawn Kemp

1997: Almost traded Pippen for McGrady. MJ went to Reinsdorf over Krause's head to kill the deal.
This would have cost us 1 title 100%, as McGrady was your typical 18 year old kid his rookie year.
Source: McGrady

Those are just the deals we know about, who knows what other things he wanted to do.

He also got lucky in that Pippen took the lowball offer Krause made in 91, which had to be lowballed because Krause was saving money to sign Kukoc, who ultimately made almost twice as much as Pip per year. It's been reported that Scottie's agents advised him to turn down the Bulls and sign elsewhere, but Pippen wanted to continue winning with MJ. But a smarter Pippen would have gotten another competitive offer, and either joined another team or forced Krause to use Kukoc's money to sign Scottie. For a guy whose most significant career move was Scottie, he spent most of the time alienating and trying to dump Scottie.

The Chicago hatred for Krause did not really start with the end of last threepeat or the last dance season, it was before that as all the above was well known by the fans during that time. Krause took heat because he was trying his best to break up the Bulls well before their last title; he just wasn't able to.

[HINrichPolice]

Question. Are GMs usually included in these ring of honor things? If not, this was clearly not well conceived as a Jerry Reinsdorf production. Michael Reinsdorf nonetheless. It just dawned on me. Did MJ know about the Krause part, and that was the reason for the video level participation? At some point as a franchise, if you want the thing to come off properly, you need to make do with the people involved, and act accordingly.

I think it's more likely he didn't want to deal with Pippen potentially being there.

Pippen didn't want to deal with MJ.

So their inability to remedy the tension like adults resulted in the fans losing. Which is pretty sad.

[fleet]

Question. Are GMs usually included in these ring of honor things? If not, this was clearly not well conceived as a Jerry Reinsdorf production. Michael Reinsdorf nonetheless. It just dawned on me. Did MJ know about the Krause part, and that was the reason for the video level participation? At some point as a franchise, if you want the thing to come off properly, you need to make do with the people involved, and act accordingly.

I think it's more likely he didn't want to deal with Pippen potentially being there.

Pippen didn't want to deal with MJ.

So their inability to remedy the tension like adults resulted in the fans losing. Which is pretty sad.

maybe a perfect storm. You would THINK, that the Bulls would make sure to gather intel, and get everything sorted out instead of ramming it through with fingers crossed