3rd Time's the Charm: The Lost Bulls History of Jerry Krause

Before he was building a 6x champ, Jerry Krause had two stints with the Bulls.

Jun 03, 2020

“Some men dream of a beautiful woman. This guy dreams of a 7-foot-4 center.”

— Phoenix Suns GM Jerry Colangelo in 1971 on his new scout, Jerry Krause

The scout was 64 years old and looked out at the crowd, out at the fans.

Throughout his time as arguably the most successful person at his position in his industry, the people in those seats had sneered at him, booed him, screamed curses at him — and those were in the good times. Michael Jordan’s jersey retirement ceremony. Grant Park championship rallies. The preseason ring ceremonies. These were the marks of his greatest successes. These were the gifts he gave to those people. And he was their villain.

He was our villain.

But now a banner with his name was going up into the rafters, up to join his draftee Jerry Sloan; a man he traded for, Bob Love; the coach whose career he’d propelled, Phil Jackson; the legend he beefed and won with, Michael Jordan; and six championship banners.

The success and the animus — all was long in the past. The crowd and the players this night felt no ill will for him.

“As many of you know, I’m a native Chicagoan,” the old scout said, though it’s probable that many in the crowd did not know he was an old Chicagoan, of Albany Park, Taft High School and then Bradley University in Peoria.

“I was born here, I was raised here, and I had the opportunity to come back and be a part of a great organization here and have a lot of fun over the last 18 years,” the old scout said.

“And with every player that’s come in here, we’ve said, ‘You’re going to play for the best fans in the world in the greatest city in the world.’”

The fans applauded. The players cheered. The old scout, Jerome Richard “Jerry” Krause, seemed at peace, at ease, choked up, blessed.

The love, at last, was his.

Jerry Krause was only 35 when he told a newspaper reporter in brutal terms just how important he viewed his own work, though despite his relatively young age he was already in his 16th year in professional sports, his resume a stunning exercise in elite-level perseverance: employed at the time by at least his fourth NBA franchise, with past employment with three MLB franchises, plus seven months as the general manager of a AAA team where he was fired for what the team president called a “personality conflict.”

At this point in his career, January 1976, he was a scout for the Philadelphia 76ers, and he was in the midst of a typical week of scouting college games — typical for him, that is, though atypical for others, since no matter the insults that flew his way (a player at one of his NBA stops would describe the view of Krause in a jacuzzi as “a pig in a go-cart”), everyone agreed that he was an absolute grinder whose work ethic was unmatched in the industry.

He was in Eugene, Oregon on that night, scouting Oregon-UCLA. He’d been in New Orleans the night before. The next night, a Friday, he was headed to Berkeley for Cal-Washington, and then he would be back in Oregon Saturday for a double-header — Oregon State-UCLA in Corvallis in the afternoon, Oregon-USC in Eugene that night.

He’d had his share of misses at this point, like the time when he talked his head coach out of drafting future Hall of Famer Tiny Archibald, for instance, in favor of a player who logged in his career a quarter of the minutes Tiny had in his rookie year alone.

But that was six years and two jobs ago, and there were plenty of NBA scouts who would have loved to have his successes: Earl Monroe, Wes Unseld, Jerry Sloan, Norm Van Lier, Cliff Ray among them.

Yes, the scout was good at his job. And he took it seriously.

“You make a mistake and someone just wraps fish in it,” Krause told the reporter. “A doctor makes a mistake and they just bury the person. But if I make a mistake, that guy trots out onto the floor every night, 80 times a year, and embarrasses the hell out of me.”

I mean, is that not the perfect quote for Jerry Krause? In three lines, he shows his absolute passion for his job, the way he bleeds for it, his dedication — while simultaneously throwing his hypothetical unsuccessful draft pick under the bus AND suggesting that a physician KILLING A PATIENT is no big deal.

You can draw a direct line from “they just bury the person” to “Players and coaches alone don’t win championships. Organizations do.” These quotes are the essence of the public Jerry Krause we all came to know: a deep desire to express his passion, packaged in an over-the-top, inappropriate way.

The Last Dance gave us concentrated segments on the history of several key actors in the Bulls dynasty: Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Phil Jackson, Dennis Rodman. Even Steve Kerr received a backstory. Though Jerry Reinsdorf did not receive one, he was at least alive and able to share his perspective.

Krause did not have that advantage. And while I by no means believe that it is inappropriate to speak ill of the dead in a documentary (what was said of him on film was said to him when he was alive), a full segment on Krause’s background early in the series would have given viewers gripping insight into one of the dynasty’s five central figures. We may have had a better understanding of why Krause behaved as he did, and why Reinsdorf backed him.

We may have empathized with him. We damn sure would have been entertained, since Jerry Krause had a fascinating, rollicking career, and since empathy for Krause would be the ultimate dramatic tension as we went from cheering for him to shuddering at his misplaced hubris.

Crucially, we would have learned a great deal more about Chicago Bulls history, and how that history factored into the dynasty.

That’s because there are two huge pieces of Jerry Krause’s past that I bet many Bulls fans do not know: his first stint with the team as head scout, from 1968 to 1971, and his second stint with the team, as director of player personnel, from June to August of 1976.

This is the story of those two stints, and a look at how they shaped the dynasty, and Krause himself.

Bridge builder, bridge burner: the Jerry Krause who Jerry Reinsdorf hired

(Jerry Reinsdorf announces Jerry Krause as the new general manager of the Chicago Bulls. Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1985, photo by José Moré.)

By my count, Jerry Krause worked for at least five NBA teams and five MLB teams — some more than once — before he took the job that would define his life’s work: general manager of the eventual six-time champion Chicago Bulls.

But looking over his pre-1985 career, two stops stand out above the rest:

Chicago Bulls, head scout, 1968-1971
Chicago Bulls, director of player personnel, June-August 1976

Jerry Krause was a Chicago guy who dreamed of running a Chicago team. And every time he worked for the Bulls, he got a bit closer to the top.

He found success in that first Bulls run, but he was working under an ownership team, a general manager and alongside a head coach whom he had not hired.

In his 1976 stint, he would have a chance to hire the head coach, but he was still working underneath a general manager, and an ownership team.

So working for Jerry Reinsdorf — who led the team that bought the Bulls in 1985, and who personally made all the decisions without answering to a board of directors — would have looked like a pretty sweet deal for Krause, who hadn’t seen too many sweet deals to that point, even with his Chicago gigs.

He began his sports career with a $65-a-week position with the Cubs, worked for the NBA’s Chicago Packers/Zephrys (the franchise that would move to Baltimore and become the Bullets) and would later scout for the White Sox. That is the job that connected him with Reinsdorf, who bought the Sox three years after Krause started there.

And the reason all of this Krause history is relevant to an understanding of the dynasty is that Reinsdorf did a similar deep dive into Krause before making him his general manager.

“I asked around the league, and everybody I talked to said, ‘Don’t touch the guy’ — he had a way of alienating people,” Reinsdorf explained about 11 minutes into The Last Dance. “But I wasn’t hiring somebody to win a personality contest. I wanted somebody who truly believed in building a team the way I wanted to. And Krause was the guy.”

Among the many interesting elements of that quote is the word “everybody.” Reinsdorf and Krause already knew each other, but Reinsdorf would not necessarily know that Krause wanted to run a basketball team — by 1985, Krause was considered a “baseball guy.”

Reaching out to “everybody” would verify Krause’s hoops credentials — and “everybody” would have been for Reinsdorf an incredible list of talented people who would have such an overwhelming cascade of contrasting information that it’s no surprise Reinsdorf ultimately made his own decision on this eager would-be executive.

Indeed, here is a look at Krause’s resume through 1985, as best as I could piece it together, albeit with some holes:

1961: Chicago Cubs, described in 2016 by K.C. Johnson as a “glorified gopher”
1961-1965: Chicago Packers/Zephyrs / Baltimore Bullets, scout plus PR
June 1965: Leaves the Bullets when he quits or is fired (unclear)
Dec. ‘65 - Jun. ‘66: GM for the Portland Beavers, a AAA affiliate of the Indians (fired)
Jun. ‘67 - Jun. ‘68: Back to the Bullets
1967: Also scouting for the Indians (as seen in the photo above, scouting a Iowa state high school tournament, second from the right)
June 1968: Joins the Bulls as a scout
July 1969: Also scouting with the Orioles
Oct. ‘69: Also scouting with the Indians
May 1971: Fired as Bulls scout
June 1971: Hired as Suns scout
Sept. 1975: “Phased out” as Suns scout and eventually fired
Jan. 1976: Hired as 76ers scout
June 1, 1976: Hired as Bulls director of player personnel
Aug. 30, 1976: Basically fired by the Bulls
Oct. ‘76: Hired as Mariners scout (not sure when he left, still there as of May ‘78)
Jan. ‘77: Hired as Lakers chief scout (not sure when he left, still there as of Jan. ‘79, not there as of Nov. ‘80)
Nov. 1978: Hired as White Sox “scout at large”
Mar. 1985: Hired as Bulls GM

What Reinsdorf would have learned from discussions with “everybody” is two major themes: Krause outworks everyone, and Krause gets on everyone’s nerves.

For example, Reinsdorf would have learned about Krause’s ongoing feud with head coach Dick Motta in his first Bulls stint, or how his second Bulls stint imploded in three months following an opening week gaffe in which Krause somehow made Ray Meyer think he was offering him the Bulls head coaching job, which he either wasn’t, or shouldn’t have been.

He also would have learned that Krause tried to get the team’s GM job in 1978, but was passed over for Rod Thorn.

Every story about Krause seems to encompass every piece of him, the good and the bad. There was his firing as GM of the AAA Portland Beavers in June 1966, seven months after he took the job. Team president William Moore said that the 27-year-old Krause was dismissed for “personality conflicts,” a move that Moore said had unanimous support of the board of directors.

“Mr. Moore said there had been complaints against me, and that I swore too much,” Krause explained at the time.

Then there is the story that Suns trainer Joe Proski shared in 1982, about Krause’s time with the team in the 1970s. Published in the Arizona Republic. Proski’s story simultaneously shows Krause as bully and the bullied:

(Krause) would rip players when they left the locker room and praise them when they returned. Proski bugged a masseur’s table with a tape recorder.
In the middle of a practice, Krause laid on a table for a back massage from Proski. Proski turned on the recorder and his words came back to haunt him.
“Krause was kind of fat,” Proski said. “He used to sit in a Jacuzzi, and whenever he did, (Suns player) Lamar Green would say that he looked like a pig in a go-cart.
“One time, Green dressed himself up like some tribal warrior from Kenya. … Krause was in the Jacuzzi, and Lamar came dancing in with an oar. He stuck in oar in the Jacuzzi and started stirring it around Krause.”
Proski couldn’t remember whether Green threw in some herbs and spices. But that was probably when Krause, suddenly afraid of NBA cooking, fled to baseball.

You might be asking: wait a second, where is the “good” in these stories? Well, Krause was quite skilled at not just his job, but getting new jobs. And he did so often in the same way that he did with Reinsdorf in 1985: by winning the trust of powerful men.

There was future Hall of Famer Bob “Slick” Leonard, who was so impressed with Krause’s hustle with the Chicago Packers/Zephyrs that he told him, “Jerry, if I ever get a head coaching job, I’m taking you with me,” and followed up with that when he became Zephyrs head coach, and brought Krause with him when the franchise moved to Baltimore and became the Bullets.

Krause and Jerry Colangelo were fellow Chicagoans and scouting peers in the late 1960s with the Bullets and Bulls, respectively, and in 1971, when the Bulls fired Krause, Colangelo scooped him up.

When his time with the Suns came to an end five years later, he found work with the 76ers and his former Bulls boss Pat Williams. Jack Kent Cooke hired Krause as chief scout for the Lakers in 1977. Bill Veeck sought out Krause as a scout for the White Sox in 1978.

In all cases, Krause — despite the poor reputation that trailed him, and his sloppy interpersonal skills — wowed a singular decision maker and got his next job. And he got results:

Jerry Sloan to the Bullets (the team let Sloan leave to the Bulls in the ‘66 expansion draft while Krause was running the Beavers)
Earl Monroe and Wes Unseld to the Bullets
Norm Van Lier and Bob Love to the Bulls
Alvan Adams to the Suns
Michael Cooper to the Lakers

Krause had his misses for sure, like pushing the Suns to take Ricky Sobers over Gus Williams, or the Bulls to take Jimmy Collins over Tiny Archibald. And Bulls head honcho Dick Klein had to push a reluctant Krause to scout Van Lier.

Yet no matter how it all happened, Krause’s scouting and drafting contributed to multiple champions (‘78 Bullets, 1980s Lakers), runner-ups (‘71 Bullets, ‘75 Bullets, ‘76 Suns) and conference runner-ups (‘74 and ‘75 Bulls, ‘79 Suns).

“I was out scouting one time,” Colangelo said in 1971, after he brought Krause to the Suns, “and (I) went to a gym that had 75 seating capacity. I figured if there was one person in the world I would see there, it would be Krause. Sure enough, there he was.”

1968-1971 — “When he realized who was boss, he did the job.”

(The Chicago Bulls brain trust for Krause’s first run with the team, during the 1971 NBA Draft, from left: Krause, general manager Pat Williams, head coach Dick Motta.)

One of the most interesting quotes I’ve read about Jerry Krause came from Michael Jordan, as chronicled by Sam Smith in The Jordan Rules:

“I play golf with these general managers all summer,” Jordan told Reinsdorf in February 1991, “and they all tell me they don’t want to deal with Krause because he’s always trying to rip them off, get something for nothing.”

That was a steady critique of Krause throughout his famed run with the Bulls — that it wasn’t enough to get a great player in a trade, he also had to fleece the other guy.

“Jerry likes to get value,” Reinsdorf explained to Jordan.

His time with the Bulls starting in 1985 was the first time in his career where Krause was truly autonomous and free to make the decisions he wanted, so I have not found proof of his fleecing mentality earlier than that.

But all of Krause’s traits that led to so many problems with the Bulls in the 80s and 90s — the hero-worship that could devolve into bitter jealousy, the personal abrasiveness, the stubbornness around talent evaluations — were on full display in Krause’s first stint here, as head scout starting in 1968.

“Jerry Krause — the man who talked me out of drafting Nate Archibald,” said then-Bulls head coach Dick Motta in Bob Logan’s 1975 book The Bulls and Chicago: A Stormy Affair.

Logan was the Sam Smith of his time — a Bulls beat reporter for the Trib whose byline appears on most Bulls stories of the early Krause eras — and as he explains it, Krause almost immediately lost the confidence of the equally fiery Motta when he pushed the team to draft guard Larry Cannon sixth overall in the 1969 draft, and Cannon signed instead with a team in the ABA.

Again, like every stop in his career, his first Bulls stint was filled with examples of his troubling traits. Those include being stubborn about his player evaluations and building relationships that burn over personality strife, often because the other guy turned out to not love Krause as much as Krause loved him.

As evidenced in these quotes from Dick Klein (team founder and its first GM) and Pat Williams, (who replaced Klein as GM, and who dubbed Krause “The Sleuth”), Krause never really changed. These are certainly among the feedback Reinsdorf would have gotten from “everybody”:

Klein on Krause’s scouting: “Jerry was a good worker after I got him to follow instructions and see the players I wanted scouted. I made him change his plans and go see Norm Van Lier after he told me, ‘I know all about the guy. He can’t shoot.’ When he realized who was boss, he did the job.”
Williams, on Krause’s scouting: “Krause covered his territory relentlessly, but he tended to fall in love with players and stick to that judgment despite evidence to the contrary. Jimmy Collins (the man Krause wanted over Tiny Archibald) was a good example.”
Williams, on the Motta-Krause relationship: “The enmity between Motta and Krause was one-sided at first. Jerry idolized Dick and bragged about him around the league, but Dick had no faith in his recommendations and didn’t want him around.”

That trio — Williams, Motta, Krause — were in the unenviable spot of not just creating a winning team but saving the franchise. Klein hired Motta and Krause a month apart in 1968, and Williams was hired to replace Klein the next summer. Already there was concern that the franchise would not last, as this was the third NBA franchise in Chicago.

The Stags played four seasons here, starting in the NBA-precursor BAA and playing its last season in 1950, the first year of the NBA-proper. The next Chicago franchise played one year as the Packers in 1962, one year as the Zephyrs in 1963 and then re-located and re-branded as the Baltimore Bullets.

When the newly hired Williams made a flurry of trades, including one that brought in Chet Walker, the Tribune noted that “(Williams and Motta), along with Scout Jerry Krause, have reached the logical conclusion that the slow, listless Bull teams of the last few seasons must be brought to life if the franchise is to survive.”

By the start of the ‘69-’70 season, Jerry Sloan was the only remaining Bull from the team’s 1967 inaugural year. Sloan, who passed away May 22, was dubbed “The Original Bull,” and played a big role in giving the franchise enough success and respectability to actually remain a franchise. What’s wild to consider — and what would have made an excellent few minutes in The Last Dance — is that had Krause not left the Bullets in 1965, the franchise might not have let Sloan go to the Bulls in the ‘66 expansion draft. Krause’s impact on his hometown franchise was huge even when he was gone.

Under Williams, Motta and Krause, the Bulls were steady risers: 33 wins in 1969, 39 and a playoff berth in 1970, 51 and a seven-game loss to the mighty Lakers in 1971. Unfortunately for Krause, Motta won the NBA’s Coach of the Year award in 1971, and Williams gave him a new five-year contract with the option to pick his staff. Motta’s friend Phil Johnson was in as an assistant coach and scout, and Krause was out.

“I have nothing against Krause,” Motta said upon signing his new deal. “But I’ve been trying for three years to get Phil as my assistant. When a new coach takes over, they usually let him pick his own staff.”

Krause wasn’t out of work for long — a month, to be exact — but the end of his first Bulls stint was a major lesson in the power of being a decision maker.

“Yeah, I’m human,” he said June 2, 1976, at the start of his second Bulls stint. “It’s a good feeling to step into Motta’s job with the chance to do it the way it should be done.”

June - August, 1976: “I wanted that job so bad.”

“Former scout returns,” the Tribune’s sport section read on June 2, 1976. Below that, a proper headline:

“Krause tabbed player personnel director”

The Sleuth was back, and he’d moved up a wrung.

Since leaving the Bulls in 1971, Krause had one of his rare steady patches of employment. His friend Jerry Colangelo took him in as a scout in June of ‘71, and he held that job for the next four years. When the Suns let him go, the 76ers and his old boss Pat Williams picked him up.

And there he stayed until suddenly, his old foe Motta left the team to coach the Bullets, and the Bulls came calling.

“If it was a surprise to Pat (Williams), it was a surprise to me,” Krause told the Tribune not long after his hiring, but before his first week on the job went straight to hell. “I’ve been close to jobs like this before and been stung, so I was reluctant to get too excited this time, too. But it happened fast, and it happened so fast I guess everybody has a right to be surprised.”

In this new position, he was no longer head scout, answering to a coach, a GM and an owner. With Motta out, he would get to pick his head coach. And his bosses were different too. Arthur Wirtz had purchased a controlling interest in the team in 1970, while Krause was there, and the general manager was Jonathan Kovler. I don’t know if the brass phoned “everybody” for the word on Krause, but they did call Colangelo.

“I told them Jerry is loyal and a hard worker,” Colangelo said. “He’s been around the NBA and he knows basketball. Jerry’s made some mistakes, like all of us, but that organization needs some loyalty.”

He added: “I told them they’d get their money’s worth out of Krause.”

If they got their money’s worth out of Krause, it was pro-rated.

(Chicago Tribune, June 3, 1976)

The team had the 2nd pick on June 8. The word in the Tribune that day was that Kovler wanted center Robert Parish, head scout Ed Badger wanted small forward Scott May, while Krause, Logan wrote, “liked the ‘sleeper’ potential” of power forward Leon Douglas.

As Krause explained to the Chicago Reader in 1990, he actually wanted Parish, a man he’d scouted and touted as a potential #1 pick (along with Douglas) prior to rejoining the Bulls. The Tribune had reported immediately after Krause’s hiring that Parish was his guy.

“I wanted to bring in a young guy as head coach, and an older guy as an assistant coach to coach Parish,” Krause told Ben Joravsky in an aptly-titled piece, Nobody Cheers for Jerry Krause. “I’ve always believed in having a good teacher coach on the bench. And I thought Ray Meyer would be the right guy for Parish.”

Ah yes, Ray Meyer.

Whether Krause wanted Douglas as the Tribune suggested, or wanted Parish as he later suggested, the team did not roll with his opinion. They drafted May, out of Indiana. Within 24 hours, Krause had much bigger problems.

On June 9, the Tribune ran a big Bulls scoop at the top of the page, even above its draft coverage of May: “Bulls Want Ray Meyer as Coach.”

The word was that leading up to the draft, Krause had been picking the brain of Meyer, DePaul’s 62-year-old head men’s basketball coach, when he, Krause, offered Meyer a three-year deal at $60,000 annually to leave DePaul and coach the Bulls.

“We were talking about draft choices and possible coaches and Jerry asked, ‘Ray, how about you?’” Meyer told the Tribune. “He said I was a teaching coach, and that’s what they’re looking for.”

Meyer seemed excited, calling the opportunity a “real challenge” and a “last hurrah.”

The job offer was news to Krause’s bosses.

So Krause had to walk it back — the job offer, or at least the rumor of one — and say that, no, he had not offered Meyer a job. That night, a furious Meyer declined the rescinded job.

“Ray’s enraged because Krause offered him a three-year contract in a 1 1/2 -hour phone conversation last Sunday, and then denied it,” a family source said. “It’s been like a nightmare for Ray. If he saw Krause this minute, he’d probably punch him in the nose.”

Krause denied offering Meyer the job — and was still denying it in 1990 — but the damage was done. The team quickly stripped Krause’s of his powers, first noting that he was no longer selecting the head coach, and then not even telling him when Badger was the frontrunner.

The team hired Badger toward the end of August, and on August 30, Krause was out, citing “personal reasons” and stating that “I felt I wouldn’t be able to work effectively under the present conditions.”

“Actually, I quit,” Krause explained in 1990. “Wirtz gave me a choice: quit or be fired.”

In June ‘76, when the Bulls hired him, he called getting fired from the Suns “probably the low point of my life.”

Losing a job with the Bulls — a second time — topped it.

“That was the worst summer of my life,” he said in 1990. “I’ll never forget the feeling I had walking out of the office that day. It was complete humiliation. I was forced out of my own hometown with my tail between my legs.”

And he would stay out of the city, at least professionally, until Veeck hired him in 1978. Reinsdorf followed in ‘81, and on March 26, 1985, Reinsdorf hired Krause to run his new team.

"It was a fantasy job — a dream come true,” Krause said in 1990 about his stint in 1976 — a statement that certainly applied to his new stint in 1985. “I wanted that job so bad. I think I may have wanted it too much.”

“There are some thank you’s due,” the old scout told the fans, as his banner was minutes away from hanging in the rafters for all time. “(The) first one is for Jerry Reinsdorf, whose idea this was and who I appreciate greatly, and who is the greatest owner in sports, and who it has been a joy to work for and work with.”

Reinsdorf seemed to tear up in his booth above the court, and Krause, the old scout, continued to thank people by name, each of whom he called “special.” Al Vermeil, Karen Stack, Irwin Mandel, Joe O’Neil, Tim Hallum, John Ligmanowski. These are the people, especially Vermeil, who Krause says he wanted to acknowledge when he said “Players and coaches alone don’t win championships. Organizations do.”

He thanked his family. He thanked his children. He thanked his wife Thelma. He praised the young players standing behind him, Tyson Chandler, Eddy Curry, Jamal Crawford among them, guys who did not know about Krause the villain.

“Stick with these young people,” he told the fans. “They’re special. They’re going to win for you again. And they’re going to make you have a lot of fine nights in this building.”

“Thank you,” he told the fans. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

It was a beautiful moment. And one had to wonder, with all the hoopla surrounding Jerry Krause in 1985, with all of his success, yes, but all his controversy and burned bridges too, what did Jerry Reinsdorf see that made him stake his reputation and his ballclub on Krause?

Everything in that speech in 2003 is an indication. But there was something more.

Someone more.

Two words.

Red.

Holzman.

COMING SOON: The other Bulls triangle: Jerry Reinsdorf, Jerry Krause, Phil Jackson — and their shared devotion to Red Holzman. [UPDATE: Here ya go!]

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I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe. Thank you for reading! Much more to come.

Best,

Jack

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