There were references to his marital difficulties with longtime wife June, plus snide and unkind remarks about Krause (Jackson said he considered giving him the book Any Idiot Can Manage. “But in the end I didn’t give him anything because I couldn’t find it in myself to give him something of value.”) The passages also included what came across as egotistical ramblings about other teams. Jackson seemed to be blatantly campaigning to take over as coach of the Lakers and Knicks, teams that already had coaches. It was quite outrageous. Even worse, the comments provided the first real opening for Krause to attack Jackson.
The next issue of ESPN magazine bore a second installment of the Jackson diaries which proved mostly to be an apology and retraction of things said in the first installment. Even the magazine itself lampooned Jackson in a subsequent spoof comparing the Last Run of the Bulls to the final episode of the long-running “Seinfeld” series. Each of the Bulls’ primary figures was projected as a member of the TV cast, with Jackson designated as the strange and daffy Kramer.
Krause was understandably angry about the publishing of the diary but kept his anger behind the scenes. “As far as me being sensitive to this issue, I don’t know that I’ve been overly sensitive,” the GM said in a private interview for this book. “I think I know where things are coming from. When you know where the gun’s being aimed from, you really don’t worry about the result of the bullet.”
Krause also met with new Tribune columnist Skip Bayless and outlined his complaints against Jackson, according to one team source. Days later, Jackson sat down with Bayless in what the coach thought was a courtesy introduction. But the columnist launched into a series of inflammatory questions about Jackson’s relationship with Krause. “Bayless used Krause’s comments to get Phil going,” said the source.
Jackson responded to Krause’s comments. “I’m not gonna let that be the final word,” the coach explained at the time. Yet when Bayless’ column appeared, there was little use of Krause’s comments, only Jackson’s angry response on issues, another situation where the coach appeared to be on the attack.
Bayless subsequently weighed in on Jackson during the playoffs as an egotist desperately seeking to take control of the team and maintain his image of being vital to the Bulls’ success. “You have to wonder about Phil Jackson’s motives,” Bayless wrote. “You have to question why he says he’ll suggest to Michael Jordan that No. 23 retire. Love and respect? Or revenge and insecurity? Has a vial of self-importance transformed Dr. Jackson into a wild-haired coach Hyde? Zen Master or Spin Master?
“Is Jackson trying to influence Jordan to retire prematurely in order to wreak revenge on Jerrys Reinsdorf and Krause?” the columnist asked. “Jackson despises General Manager Krause. Jackson blames Chairman Reinsdorf for sticking with Krause, who has stuck it to Jackson during contract negotiations.”
The net result of the ESPN article and the Bayless columns left Jackson despondent and played a major role in his ultimate decision to leave the team. “It has not been healthy for me to be here because I have gotten a reputation now as being a backbiter, as being devious, as being ungrateful,” the coach said in a private interview as the season wound down. “There have been a lot of things that I’ve had to suffer about my character that I’ve been very upset about. It’s not right. I think it’s a spin on the other side to portray me as that, or as worthy of being let go. I went to Mr. Reinsdorf and said I won’t have my character blotted. You know this is a situation that’s changing, and we can go through this without having to spoil a person’s being or character or reputation. That’s been my feeling, and yet it’s been allowed to happen. I don’t know if people seeded it.
“I may be responsible for seeding some bad things about Jerry Krause in the ESPN article, which I am sorry ever came out,” Jackson said. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that, although I did write it down, and it was in my diary. The diary was in the hands of a writer. His responsibility was to let me edit it, which he didn’t. It got out of my control. So there has been some rebuttal because of that. As a result, it has been a situation in which to come back would be almost unthinkable, almost an impossibility.”
Tex Winter said he didn’t in any form believe Jackson was the egotist portrayed by Bayless, “but I can see from the way things have come down that some people might read it that way. It’s unfortunate that things came down the way they did. On the other hand, when you come out in a story, particularly one that’s taken out of a diary … I think the mistake was that he allowed somebody to be privy to his situation and thoughts. And Phil didn’t really intend that at all. That’s what really hurt Phil. But those were his personal thoughts.”
The assistant coach acknowledged that Jackson’s ESPN comments had hurt and angered Krause. “I like ‘em both, sure,” Winter said. “I ride the fence. I’m a double agent. I find out what one side’s thinking. Then I’m on the other side, find out what they’re thinking. And I still don’t know what either one of them is thinking.”
A GREAT PUSS
In the wake of the New Jersey series, Krause granted an interview in his Berto Center office. His lung infections had given him fits all season, necessitating treatment with steroids. The steroids, in turn, had kept him awake most nights coming and going to the bathroom. The illness had combined with the fan anger over the impending breakup of the team to make it a very difficult year. Was it the worst of all his years in Chicago? he was asked.
“On me personally? Oh yeah, this year’s been the toughest,” the GM said. “The first year (1985) was so damn tough because I didn’t know. I knew we were gonna do some things, but I didn’t know how we were gonna do ‘em. The first year was pretty bad. Jesus. We had Quintin (Dailey) go off in a drunk tank, and had all those injuries.”
Asked if he could envision a day where Pippen’s number would be retired by the team, Krause replied, “I don’t know. First of all, I don’t retire numbers. Scottie Pippen has been a great player here. I have no complaints with him. Obviously we’ve had some contractual things, and some of that comes from other people who are involved with it. Not Scottie or not me. But those people have inflamed both sides.”
Told that Jackson had said Pippen would be the linchpin in keeping the dynasty going, Krause said, “We’ll see what happens. I’m not gonna make any decisions until the end of the season. But this thing has gotten so big that it’s been overblown unbelievably. Unbelievably. This is not the end of the earth. We’re not having the end of the earth. The mountains will not come down on us. We’ll all live tomorrow, no matter what happens. When Auerbach lost Russell, it wasn’t the end of the earth, either. He found a way to somehow get back up there. Teams can be rebuilt in this league.
“There’s a point here where we’re just gonna have to make some decisions about this team,” he said. “And we will. But what I’m saying to you is, that I don’t want to break up this team. Nature, nature breaks up teams. Nature and the monetary nature of things in the sense that there are certain guys that you just say, ‘Well, at this age and at this point in his career, we can’t do that.’ And nature makes guys older. Guys don’t stay young.”
Krause was asked to envision another title, more champagne, another moment with Jordan at the microphone. “That would be great with me,” he said. “I got no problem with that. Six is important to me. We kept it together to win six.”
Indeed, after the season he had suffered through, to not win another title would have been misery. As with the Bulls’ other key figures, Krause’s competitiveness was one of the elements of their success. His credo was to “hire good people, step back, let ‘em do their jobs.
“The game for me is the game of scouting, the game of evaluation,” he said. “The things that I do best. The building, that’s the fun. The fun is putting it together, putting an organization together. That’s what it’s all about for me. That’s different. They get their nuts off out there playing. I get my
nuts off out here.” He pointed to the administrative setting around him, the charts for player evaluations, the mountains of game tape, the personnel craft that Freddie Hassleman, that old Yankee scout, had taught him years before.
“Freddie was a beautiful little man,” Krause said. “I would be driving a car for him later on in his life. He was so old he couldn’t drive, and we’d go scouting.
“Freddie used to see things. He’d say, ‘That guy’s got a good face.’ He’d call it ‘a good puss. That guy’s got a good puss.’ ‘What’s a good pus, Freddie?’ ‘I can’t tell you. But you’ll know when you see one.’ A few years later, one day I called him. I was in a ballpark someplace, and I said, ‘Freddie, I saw a good puss. I know what you’re talking about now. That guy’s got the face. You couldn’t tell me what it was. I had to see it.’ When you sit at the feet of guys like that…”
An interviewer pointed out Jerry West’s wisdom that a scout can see what players can do athletically, but a scout can’t read players’ hearts, can’t see what they’re made of.
“You better get to know their hearts,” Krause replied. He said that he later did a study of Hasselman’s puss theory. Krause asked himself, who was the best competitor in baseball? Pete Rose. In basketball? Jerry Sloan. In football? Dick Butkus. It occurred to him the puss might have something to do with it. He said he went into a newspaper reference room and looked into back issues to find profile shots of Rose, Butkus and Sloan at age 22. “Same face,” he said. “Same chin. Same nose. Jaw out. Same profile face. Then I walked in a ballpark in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and I took one look and I said, ‘Oh shit, number 4.’ It was Kirk Gibson. So you can’t tell me that there ain’t certain kinds of faces.”
Did all the master competitors make a habit of teasing and humiliating their general managers on the team bus? Jordan had only done that to him three or four times, Krause said. “Who cares? He’s drunk every time. He hadn’t been sober yet when he’s done it. It’s a young man’s mistakes. He was drunk. I can live with that fine. I can live with what Scottie did. I know why he did it. It doesn’t bother me.”
He said he once sat on the bus with a championship baseball team and watched that team’s star and general manager go at each other.
Experience suggested Krause was right. Great competitors weren’t always the nicest of guys, or the friendliest. George Mikan and Jim Pollard won six pro basketball titles together (one in the old National League, five in the NBA) as the core of the old Minneapolis Lakers, and they endured icy relations with one another to accomplish it. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson also endured their strained relationship with the newer version of the Lakers. As did West and Showtime coach Pat Riley.
“Do you think Riley and West liked each other about the last four years they worked together?” Krause asked. “They hated one another. Hate. There’s nothing like that hatred. Out and out hatred.”
Riley, in fact, told associates that West had a “toxic” envy for him.
Kevin McHale and Larry Bird rarely spoke off the court, yet on it they won three championships together as the heart of the ‘80s Celtics. In the NBA, it seemed, success often bred envy, dislike and distrust.
“People’s true character is tested as much by winning as it is by losing,” the general manager observed.
Krause said he thought of Karen Stack, his assistant, like a daughter and also had strong feelings for his other two assistants, Jim Stack and Clarence Gaines. The GM said that if anyone tried to harm Karen Stack, he’d go after them. “But there’s certain people in this organization I wouldn’t do that for,” he said. “We’ll leave it at that.”
Asked about the comment of a Bulls staff member that the friction between the coach and general manager had actually benefited the team, Krause said, “Phil and I think very differently in a lot of ways. We go at each other. It’s competitive all the time. I want the scouts to stand up and fight. I want the coaches to stand up and fight. I don’t mind that. I’m gonna sit and make a decision on what people tell me and what my own instincts tell me. But I’m gonna listen to everybody and try to think every thought they express in a meeting. Somebody has to pull the trigger.”
Despite their difficulties, Krause said Jackson had never tried to take his power or oust him as general manager. Instead, a turf war developed over smaller chores. “I let Phil handle the plane arrangements and hotel rooms,” Krause said. “Phil got crazy about it. The more I gave him to do, the more he wanted.”
“There’s never been a power struggle,” Reinsdorf agreed later. “Phil never asked for Krause to be removed. It never happened. Phil never told me he thought we were a house divided. He said it was difficult to work with Jerry Krause but not impossible. Phil never ever said that. He did express the fact that it was very strained.”
If it was a house divided, it was Jackson who divided it, Krause said. “It was always ‘us’ and ‘they.’ Jerry and I were always ‘they.’”
Krause blamed much of the strife on agent Todd Musburger. “That guy had a lot to do with it,” the GM said. “The next coach we have here will never have an agent.”
Of Jackson, Krause said, “I think we’ve had a professional relationship that’s been basically good. We’ve been very successful as a team. There haven’t been too many other combinations that have been that successful. I respect Phil as a good basketball coach. We have our differences. We will probably have our differences the rest of our lives. But that’s life, that’s gonna happen.”
Krause and former Bulls coach Dick Motta had long hated each other, Krause pointed out. “I didn’t ever think I could sit down with Dick Motta, but I did. At a surprise birthday party for Brad Davis. Brad’s wife and I threw a party for him.”
The party was held in a downtown Chicago restaurant. “I wound up sitting next to Motta, and we kind of hashed it out some things,” Krause said. “For years we didn’t speak to one another. I couldn’t stand the man.”
As for the current Bulls team, Krause said, “I’m not sure that we realize what we’ve done. It doesn’t hit you right away first of all. It hits you later in life. With me, I’ve been so busy doing it that I haven’t had the chance to sit back and smell the roses. Jerry (Reinsdorf) always tells me, ‘C’mon and sit back and smell the roses. They’re blooming.’ I think as I get older I will, but I gotta figure out a way to win next year.
“I’ve got great family. This game has been very good to me. Very good. Not a beef in the world. I’ve come to a place in my life where I can pretty much live the way I want to,” Krause said, pointing out that his parents had needed to work their entire lives.
“I think I have a pretty good idea of what we’ve accomplished. But you know something? I’m gonna be working for a while now. So I’ve gotta figure out a way to do it again.”
His phone rang. It was St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, in town for a series with the Cubs. They chatted, and upon hanging up, Krause said, “The good life is right here, with a call from Tony from the clubhouse at Wrigley Field. That’s what the good life is. Tony LaRussa calls me. We’re gonna get together. I knew he’d call me. Here’s a guy, Tony’s ego has not changed one bit since I met him in 1978. He was a kid working in the White Sox organization, a double A manager. Tony is one of the best people I’ve ever met in my life.”
In regards to his career, Krause acknowledged that his toughest days could well be ahead of him. “Obviously the team has to be rebuilt one time or another,” he said. “That’s a necessity. As the years go on, Jerry will make decisions. And I’ll make decisions, and we’ll see where we are. I’ve had some thoughts about what I want to do with my life. And there’ll come a point where I’ll walk away too. Jerry and I’ve discussed where we want to finish some day.”
He was asked again about his relationship with Pippen. “No question” he’s come a long way, the GM said.
He was asked agai
n if he would retire Pippen’s jersey number. He responded by mentioning Bulls great Chet Walker, like Krause a Bradley alum. Walker and Krause had a history of feuding, including the Bulls 1991 championship party where Walker claimed that Krause denied him admittance. “I get people who send me stuff about Chet Walker’s number being retired, and all that crap,” Krause said. “The numbers don’t mean anything.”
“It does to Scottie,” his interviewer said.
“I shouldn’t say it doesn’t mean anything,” Krause said. “It doesn’t mean as much to me as it does to those players, okay? That’s fine. I’ve gotta be concerned about the next team!
“Besides, we put all the numbers on the banners,” he said, pointing out that the numbers of all the players are on the team’s championship banners. And the team does more important things for players after they leave, he said, citing the fact that the Bulls had found throat surgeons to correct Bill Cartwright’s voice problems.
It was mentioned that his role model, Red Auerbach, had made a point of retiring his players’ numbers, of honoring them as special contributors to the team’s championships, a situation that helped create the Celtic Pride spirit.
“I hope eventually we’ll have that here,” he replied. “But you gotta remember, too, it’s a different breed of athlete than it was when the Boston group was in. It’s a different breed of cat. You’re talking about guys who made $100,000 a year. And they couldn’t have free agency. And there were no agents. It was much easier to do it then, believe me. Obviously there’s a difference.”
And a much different breed of general managers, it would seem.
He was asked if the differences between him and Pippen and Jackson and Jordan would ever be settled. “Who knows in future years what’s gonna happen here?” he replied. “We will try to do what we have to do. There’s a challenge here.”
Blood on the Horns Page 33