YouTube Gold: “He Wanted To Go Guard Him On The Bench”

Former Bulls GM Jerry Krause has never fully gotten the credit he deserved for building the Chicago Bulls into the second-greatest dynasty in basketball, behind only the Boston Celtics of the Bill Russell era, and it’s partly his own fault. He was indeed a brilliant GM, but he was also an insecure man who wanted to make sure he got credit for his work. Champions, he insisted, were built by the front office, not the players.

There’s truth to that, but it offended his players, notably Jordan, who derisively called Krause Crumbs, because he saw a bit of breakfast on Krause’s shirt one day. But while Krause got very lucky when he got Jordan, since Houston and Portland both took big men in the 1984 draft, he built around his immense talent brilliantly. Perhaps the greatest example of this was when Chicago traded for Scottie Pippen in the 1987 Draft, giving up Olden Polynice and some future draft picks.

Pippen, if you didn’t know, came out of Central Arkansas, and while he was the #5 pick, he was the furthest thing from a sure bet. How could you know? How could you be sure that a guy who spent four years off the radar at a minor NAIA school would turn out, that he could play at the NBA level and do so brilliantly?

Krause knew, and he moved decisively to get him. And in so doing, he created one of t he most devastating pairs of defenders in the history of basketball. Jordan was obviously the better player, but Pippen’s athleticism was not far behind, and when they decided that something wasn’t happening, well, it just didn’t happen.