I know Thelma Krause, a kind and decent woman. And if I worked for the Bulls, I would have told her Friday to be prepared for boos ringing out at the mention of late husband Jerry’s name.
The event was the Bulls’ inaugural Ring of Honor induction, and there were 21,153 people at the United Center. Some were going to boo. The Bulls should have been prepared for it. When alive, Jerry Krause had been booed at Bulls events before.
Would his death in 2017 change anything? Likely not. Not in this era.
It’s hard to say how many fans booed. It might have been only a vocal few. But there were enough to make the sound clear and disturbing.
Thelma, seated on the floor with other honorees, started to cry and wave her hands, as if to stop the booing. Now it’s said she just wanted the cameras to stop aiming at her.
No matter. It was a terrible look — and sound — for the Bulls and their supporters. But it was indicative of much more than the small world of basketball.
Rudeness and a lack of civility have burgeoned in society generally. When U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene booed and yelled, ‘‘Liar!’’ during a State of the Union speech last year, the bar for civility lowered commensurately.
Still, nasty crowd responses long have been a part of sports competition, if for no other reason than sporting events are one of the few places where large crowds of Americans routinely come together.
Steve Kerr, the coach of the Warriors — the team the Bulls were playing Friday — and also a Ring of Honor inductee, called the booing ‘‘shameful, absolutely shameful. . . . I’m devastated for Thelma.’’
Of course, Kerr would be sensitive to the crudeness. Back when he played at Arizona, he was taunted by Arizona State fans after his father, Malcolm, a college professor in Lebanon, was assassinated by Middle Eastern terrorists.
The ugly act of booing someone — particularly someone such as Krause, who was being honored posthumously by a franchise you respect — is an odd way of showing your feelings. Again, where is the civility?
But booing umpires, referees, opposing star players and even a foe’s mascot is a routine part of the fabric of fandom. The idea is this: I paid my money, so I get to scream whatever I feel.
If we analyze the genesis of the Krause boos, we get to a much deeper issue with the Bulls. We see the displeasure is rooted in the complexity of a team that soared to one championship after another — six in an eight-year span — while being led on the court by a virtual genius/madman.
That person, we all know, was Michael Jordan. There were so many other greats around him — Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, coach Phil Jackson, to name a few — but it was always Jordan who sucked the air out of the room, who refused to lose, who made love to drama, ferocity and vindictiveness, who forced the world to pay attention.
And because Jordan didn’t like Krause, fans didn’t like Krause. It’s an axiom: My hero’s enemy is my enemy.
It started with Jordan’s broken foot in 1985 and Krause’s refusal to let him play more than what doctors prescribed. It continued through trades Jordan didn’t like, to the breaking up of the 1998 team, to the basic conflict of egos and claiming of credit for on-court success the likes of which we’ll never see again in Chicago.
Conflict is the price we pay for greatness. Pippen’s and Jordan’s animosity — and absence from the event — is also a slice of the storm.
Expecting victory and then graciousness is a dream seldom filled. Jordan never forgives or forgets. That’s him. He never forgot Sports Illustrated printing on its cover that he and the White Sox were ‘‘embarrassing’’ baseball. That was 30 years ago. He hasn’t spoken with SI since.
Krause, great scout and talent appraiser that he was, was short and rotund and had a rather abrupt and abrasive personality. He was an ill fit with lean, tall, primarily Black athletes, whom he insisted on being around. I once described him as a golf ball amid 2-irons.
Yet he, in his way, was a genius, too. Nowadays, more young people seem to want to be general managers than they do players. Someday, Krause might be cheered nearly as much as Jordan.
That day would be an interesting — and welcome — one.
