Chicago Bulls fans rejoice!! Krause resigns!

[Clarkmeister]

I haven't been this happy in a long time.

[marbles]

That's sweet. Does this mean he's no longer the greatest eye for basketball talent in NBA history?

[IrishHand]

He never was. Where'd you get that idea?

[IrishHand]

The funny thing is that I came to the forum intending to post a thread entitled "Clarkmeister rejoice!"

If Reinsdorf has ANY sense at all, he comes up with the most enticing package imaginable to hand the reigns of the team over to Jordan (ownership stake, nice salary and necessary power). That would immediately fix Chicago's credibility problem with free agents, as well as return the Almighty to his proper throne. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

[marbles]

"He never was. Where'd you get that idea?"

--Ack, I can't tell if my sarcastic comment has been countered by further sarcasm.

Seriously, though, you don't recall the media's adoration of that fat slob back in the day? I know it's been a few years, but I can't help but to recall him being called "architect of a dynasty."

[Clarkmeister]

He did enlighten us all to the fact that "Players don't win championships, organizations do."

[IrishHand]

i don't think there was any more adoration for him than their would have been for the GM of any 3-peat. Other than trading for Pippen and likewise getting Horace Grant and Rodman, he didn't do a heck of a lot to get excited about. His drafting in particular was atrocious - regardless of whether he had the 29th pick or the 1st.

Jerry West will always be the greatest GM in history, at least from a talent analysis perspective. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

[adios]

Maybe Krause hasn't performed well the last several years. However, his resume appears enviable to me:

Bulls won 6 NBA titles during his tenure as GM

Put together team by bringing in players to complement MJ.

Drafted Scotty Pippen.

Fired Doug Collins a coach with a winning record and gave assisstant Phil Jackson, a man with no prior experience as a head coach of an NBA team, the job.

Bulls start selling out every game.

New arena built due to Bulls popularity.


That seems like a tough act to follow to me.

[marbles]

"i don't think there was any more adoration for him than their would have been for the GM of any 3-peat."

--You may be right, but it seemed pretty loud from my perspective in the 'burbs at the time. If anything, he was a below average GM, as evidenced by the train wreck he's put on the court for the past half-decade.

[IrishHand]

Bulls won 6 NBA titles during his tenure as GM
Primarily attributable to Jordan, who Krause had nothing to do with acquiring or retaining - as evidenced by the fact that Jordan left the team not once, but twice due to reasons which can be attributed at least in part to the organization (eg. Krause and Reinsdorf).

Put together team by bringing in players to complement MJ.
Yes he did, but other than Pippen, Grant, then Rodman, he added a pile of shlock. Other than Pippen - and 1 find in over a dozen years hardly makes you a great GM, I'd say that another GM would probably have done just as well if not better.

Drafted Scotty Pippen.
Umm...no he didn't. He acquired Pippen from the Sonics, who drafted him.

Fired Doug Collins a coach with a winning record and gave assisstant Phil Jackson, a man with no prior experience as a head coach of an NBA team, the job.
Again, this was as much because of Jordan as anything Krause came up with. Jordan had no use for Collins at the time, and wasn't especially shy about this fact. When you have the greatest player in history and he doesn't like your coach, it's not that tough to fire him.

Bulls start selling out every game.
Hmm...think the fans come to see the players Krause assembled or the ones (or one) there beforehand?

New arena built due to Bulls popularity.
That explains all the other new arenas that have been built around the league during the same time span. Those Atlanta Hawks are a testament to popularity.

That seems like a tough act to follow to me.
Nobody else seems to think so. That job is probably the 2nd or 3rd mosts coveted GM job in the NBA (after the Lakers and maybe the Celtics).

[B-Man]

Yes he did, but other than Pippen, Grant, then Rodman, he added a pile of shlock. Other than Pippen - and 1 find in over a dozen years hardly makes you a great GM, I'd say that another GM would probably have done just as well if not better.

As long as that GM was not named "Pitino" or "Wallace," you may be right. He should get credit for Pippen (major credit), Grant, the trade that brought them Bill Cartwright, Rodman... other than that he didn't have to do much as long as he had Jordan, so it is tough to argue that he did a bad job or a great job. He did do what was required to win 6 titles, so he should get credit for that.

Fired Doug Collins a coach with a winning record and gave assisstant Phil Jackson, a man with no prior experience as a head coach of an NBA team, the job.

Phil Jackson may or may not be a great coach, but he is without question the luckiest coach in the history of the NBA. He had the good fortune of getting the Bulls job right as Jordan and Pippen were entering their primes, then he got the Lakers job when they had Shaq in their prime and rising star Kobe. Maybe he would be a great coach in another city... but I don't think we'll ever know unless he takes a job without having the best player in the league (note that the Bulls made the playoffs, but didn't win anything during Jordan's retirement).

[adios]

"Phil Jackson may or may not be a great coach,"

To paraphrase Shaq, "You don't win an NBA championship with bad players."

The first pre-requisite is having the talent and the second pre-requisite is getting the talent to produce on the court. I'd argue that the Kings have more talent than the Lakers top to bottom but couldn't pull it out last year. Anyway for me Jackson's record speaks for itself.

[B-Man]

He is certainly not a bad coach, at a minimum he is good. I'm just not sure he is as great as his reputation.

[adios]

"He is certainly not a bad coach, at a minimum he is good. I'm just not sure he is as great as his reputation."

Probably not /forums/images/icons/smile.gif. My point was that Doug Collins did have a modicum of success as an NBA coach. Replacing Collins with Jackson, a man with no previous head coaching experience, was perhaps a gutty and shrewed move. Whether of not Collins would have had as much success is hard to say.

[Daliman]

Um, don't know whether you noticed this, but the Wizards SUCK, even with Jordan playing well, they'll likely miss the playoffs in the woeful east, where there is a possibility of no team winning 50 games(slight), while the west has possibly 7 teams that will win 50. Name me ONE thing Jordan has done as GM of the Wizards that has helped them become a better team, and don't say play for them, because he has completely stunted their growth by playing big minutes and taking all the big shots. He was totally pantsed in the Stackhouse/Hamilton trade, and the Pistons are one of the best teams in the weak east for it. The bulls, meanwhile, have the best young talent in the East. Krause picked Co-rookie of the year Elton Brand, who he traded for the Chandler pick, wh is rounding out VERY nicely, thank you. Kwame Brown is light-years behind both Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler(hell, maybe even Jay Williams, for that matter) because of Jordan's expert "tutelage". Jordan was a great player, one of the greatest of all time,(Chamberlain figures in and Kobe WILL have a say in the matter), but his GM skills make Krause look even more like the intelligent GM he was. Krause was just a bad PR guy. Tell ya what, Irish; if Jordan stays with the Wizards, I will bet you $1000 that the bulls will win more games over the next 3 years than the Wizards. Krause's main problem was that he didn't kiss Jordan's ass, and Jordan needs Ass-kissing. Jordan never missed an opportunity to make Krause look bad, starting with the taken-out-of-context,"Organizations win championships, not players" comment,(besides the fact that it's true). Yes, Krause has made his PR mistakes, but he was always unfairly treated in the press and by the players. If Jordan was so great, then why didn't the Bulls win the first year he came back? Don't give me that,"he was rusty" crap either. He dropped 55 on the knicks like 4 games back, so that's crap. He didn't have a guy to do the dirty work, like Horace Grant did. SO what did that Jerk Krause do? Well, he got Dennis Rodman from the Spurs for WILL PER-FREAKIN-DUE! Rodman was only the ABSOLUTE PERFECT FIT for the Bulls at the time, a player who will dive after every loose ball, get every rebound, and never complain about not getting shots, but does Krause get credit for that? Not a chance. Jordan never wins another title w/o Rodman or a similar great role player, and thats fact. Leave Krause alone, unless you have another former GM laying around with 6 titles to canonize.

[IrishHand]

For a team that sucks, they spent an awful lot of this season in the playoff hunt. Looking at W/L records, it's fair to say that had Jordan been healthy all last year, they could have made the playoffs then as well.

Name me ONE thing Jordan has done as GM of the Wizards that has helped them become a better team
Trading Juwan Howard. Trading for Jerry Stackhouse. Signing Larry Hughes for next-to-nothing.Trading for Brendan Haywood. Signing Charles Oakley.

Basically, he took one of the most hopeless situations in the league and manged to dump millions of dead weight while assembling a respectable core of young players (Brown, Hughes, Haywood, Jeffries) and a pile of cap dollars to toss at free agents this offseason. And...unlike Chicago...Jordan did this while doing all he could to maintain a semblance of respectability on the floor despite a dearth of NBA-quality talent - especially the past couple of years. I would be the first to admit that the Wiz have underachieved this year - but even while underachieving, they were in the playoff hunt until the last couple weeks of the year.

He was totally pantsed in the Stackhouse/Hamilton trade
By what measure? Stackhouse has outperformed Hamilton in nearly every measurable way. Hamilton is a jump shooter - Stackhouse is a shooter, a slasher, a rebounder and a passer. (Neither really plays defense.) If you're relying on team records - Detroit was a vastly superior team last year, and they remain so this year. At best, you can claim that the trade had no effect on either team. Realistically, you can attribute much of the Pistons continued stellar performance to their acquisition of Chauncey Billiups, who was a huge upgrade over Atkins and the other stiffs paraded out there last year by the Pistons.

The bulls, meanwhile, have the best young talent in the East.
So - the Wizards "SUCK" and the Bulls have the best young talent in the East. Hmm...let's see. Wizards underachieve to 36-42, Bulls overachieve to 28-51 to continue what is the worst post-Championship streak in the history of the NBA. Yeah - Krause has done a great job with his 3-year rebuilding plan (going on 5 years now).

Kwame Brown is light-years behind both Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler
That explains why, by all accounts, Curry was offered by the Bulls to the Wiz for Brown this season and were rebuffed. You seem to forget that Krause is even more enamored of Brown than Jordan. Has Brown had a rough ride these past two years? Absolutely. So did Jermaine O'Neal, and he's not doing too badly now. Chandler is a fine player so long as you don't mind a 7'1" player who thinks he's a SF and has no post-up game. I grant you he's better than Brown right now, but any time you draft a high schooler, it's a much bigger gamble than a 4-year college guy. It's tough to know when and if they'll work out.

If Jordan was so great, then why didn't the Bulls win the first year he came back? Don't give me that,"he was rusty" crap either. He dropped 55 on the knicks like 4 games back, so that's crap.
I forget the exact number, but he shot well under 50% on that game against the Knicks. Of course, that's irrelevant. The Bulls didn't win that year because Jordan showed up with 1/4 of the season to go and no team can jell in that time. NBA playoffs are about defense - individual and team. The Bulls were lacking in the latter that year. Seems to me that with a little time together, that team did ok the next three years.

Krause was a competent GM - he made a some moves that worked out great (Pippen, Grant, Rodman), and some moves that worked out horribly (big deals for Ron Harper, Ron Mercer, Eddie Robinson, the majority of his draft picks, keeping his players happy - and not just Jordan - the rest were also in a hurry to leave, his personal choice to replace Phil - Tim Floyd - yeah!). Overall...like I said, he was a good GM. Nothing special, but good. Jerry West is a special GM.

Yes, Jordan is largely an unproven quantity as a GM. However, he understands what it takes to win championships; he is on good terms with nearly every top player in the game and is revered by the younger players; and he would be a financial boon (again) for the Bulls if he renewed his association with them. Based on what he's said, he'd surely grab Paxson as his assistant GM and I'm confident the two of them would do far better in the long run than Krause. Chicago had developed into a place that nobody wanted to play - and that was 100% due to Krause. Even with gobs of cap room, the only way Krause could get free agents to come to Chicago was to dramatically overpay for them.

Krause is gone, and the Bulls organization is far better for it.