Jerry Krause won, he just didn't win people over.
That's the only explanation for the chasm between his accomplishments and his accolades. Krause, who died Tuesday at age 77, was the general manager who surrounded Michael Jordan with the proper pieces to win six championships for the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s. Krause's resume ranks right up there with the front-office work of Red Auerbach (the archetype) and Jerry West (the logo), yet you never hear Krause mentioned among the all-time great executives. You also won't find him enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame, which is as unfair an exclusion as any in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The NBA is a league that makes style the equivalent of substance, which is why the basketball world never made room at the table for Krause. Then again, he didn't exactly pull back a chair and invite anyone to join him. Krause was gruff and secretive. If he were a part of another 1990s institution, he'd be George Costanza.
Only Krause was much better at his job than Costanza was for the New York Yankees on "Seinfeld." Krause put together the first Bulls three-peat team by getting Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Stacey King and Will Perdue through the draft and wheeling and dealing for Bill Cartwright, John Paxson, Craig Hodges and Trent Tucker. When Jordan came back after his one-and-three-quarter-season hiatus, Krause put together a group that won another three championships, surrounding Pippen and Jordan with the likes of Steve Kerr, Ron Harper and, most notably, Dennis Rodman. Krause pursued and brought in Toni Kukoc from Croatia when there still was doubt that European players could succeed in the NBA. It says something about Krause that even though he last worked for the Bulls in 2003, three of the players he brought in through the draft are still in the league: Jamal Crawford, Tyson Chandler and Metta World Peace (formerly Ron Artest).
Krause also gave Phil Jackson his first NBA coaching opportunity, at a time when Jackson was a Panama hat-wearing coach of the Continental Basketball Association's Albany Patroons. Who knows whether Jackson would have gone on to win the most coaching championships in NBA history if he hadn't been given a chance with that team. That goes down as Krause's greatest find.
The Bulls won 808 games during the GM's 18 seasons in Chicago, more than any other Eastern Conference team in that span.
The knock on Krause was that he inherited Michael Jordan, selected by then-GM Rod Thorn the year before Krause got the job in 1985. As if Thorn didn't have Jordan fall in his lap when the Portland Trail Blazers selected Sam Bowie one pick before the Bulls.
But just as I've always used the Bulls' 55-win season in 1993-94, the year Jordan sat out, to show that Jackson could do more than just coach stars, that season should also show how Krause could do more than just surround Jordan with the right pieces.
I covered that 1993-94 Bulls team, which meant I dealt with Krause a lot. No team executive has ever been better at returning phone calls. And no team executive has ever provided less information. Krause lived by the credo that those who know don't speak, and those who speak don't know. He wouldn't confirm anything. He created an environment of secrecy and paranoia.
I got caught in his ongoing cold war with assistant coach Johnny Bach. Krause would stare icily at Bach as the assistant regaled reporters with his war-themed quotes in the Bulls' locker room, and Phil Jackson burned capital to keep Bach on the staff until Jackson finally grew weary of the battle in '94 and gave in. When I wrote about the backroom bickering, Krause ordered the removal of every copy of that edition of the Sun-Times from the Bulls' headquarters/practice facility.
The atmosphere made for an unusual dynamic. Normally, teams win championships when there is a universal vision from the owner's suite down to the ball boys. Not with the Bulls. Jordan manufactured more fury than anyone who ever played the game, and much of his rage was directed at his own front office.
Krause resented that Jordan's singular brilliance overshadowed all of the GM's own work, and Jordan resented Krause trying to hedge in on the credit.
That's why Krause got a hefty paragraph in Jordan's scorching Hall of Fame speech.
"I don't know who invited him -- I didn't," Jordan said after pointing out Krause in the crowd. "He was a very competitive person, I was a very competitive person. He said, 'Organizations win championships.' I said, 'I didn't see organizations playing with the flu in Utah. I didn't see organizations playing with a bad ankle.' Granted, I think organizations put together a team, but then the players have to go out there and play. I think the players win the championships, and the organizations have something to do with it, don't get me wrong. But don't try to put the organization above the players, because at the end of the day, the players still got to go out there and perform. You guys gotta pay us, but I've still got to go out there and play."
But something I didn't realize until watching the speech again Tuesday was that in the midst of it, Jordan offered Krause the highest praise he's capable of delivering: "He was a very competitive person." Competition matters more than anything to Jordan, and if he calls someone competitive it means there is respect.
In a statement to the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday, Jordan called Krause "a key figure in the Chicago Bulls' dynasty of the 1990s." At long last, acknowledgement from the greatest ally/adversary Krause ever had.
Jackson, who always aligned with Jordan against Krause, called Krause's death "a sad day for the Chicago Bulls and the entire NBA community."
When I left Chicago to head to the Washington Post in 1994, Jackson called to wish me well and congratulated me for having learned how to "navigate the foibles of this organization." By foibles, he mainly meant Krause. But the fact that Krause was there, having risen from an obscure baseball scout to preside over three championships that would represent only half of his lifelong total, meant that he was doing something right.
Krause did many things right when it came to building a team, which is why even though you never hear the general managers who came into the league after him say they want to be like Jerry Krause, they all want to be like Jerry Krause.