What Michael Jordan has done to Jerry Krause over the last three weeks is deliberate and dishonorable. With each episode of The Last Dance, ESPN's 10-part documentary about Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls, it becomes harder to separate the entertainment and nostalgic value of the series from Jordan's agenda, from his desire to preserve his legacy, settle scores, and rub his status and greatness in the faces of his real and perceived rivals _ one, in particular.
Krause _ the Bulls' general manager for 18 years, including the eight-year period when they won six NBA championships _ has served a convenient function throughout The Last Dance. He has been the series' primary source of narrative tension, and he has been Jordan's punching bag. He insisted that the Bulls needed to be rebuilt after the 1997-98 season, and he dared to suggest that he deserved more credit for the dynasty than most people, Jordan foremost among them, were willing to give him. All these years later, even after Krause's death in 2017 and his posthumous induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Jordan apparently can't abide that Krause _ with a physique like a honey pot, with an irascible disposition, with his own opinions about how to operate an NBA team _ had any role to play at all in the Bulls' success.
So, with Jordan's production company having partnered with ESPN to deliver The Last Dance, with the documentary's pretense of balance and fairness subject to its protagonist's veto, viewers are privy to Jordan's asking Krause at practice one day, "Are those the pills you take to keep you short, or are those diet pills?" They're in the locker room after Game 6 of the 1992 NBA Finals, when Jordan, about to light a victory cigar, tells Krause, "You can't have one. It'll stunt your growth." They see Jordan patiently answering all the media's repetitive questions, and they see Krause subtly raise his middle finger while walking past a cameraman. They see Krause, instead of working to re-sign any of the players already on the Bulls' roster, traveling to Europe to negotiate a contract with draft pick Toni Kukoc, and they see Jordan's still-simmering anger about it: "He's willing to put someone in front of his actual kids."
They are served the rewarmed controversy over whether Krause said, "Players and coaches don't win championships; organizations do" or whether he said, "Players and coaches alone don't win championships." They hear Krause in a two-decade-old TV interview stuttering to say he was misquoted, and they hear Jordan's present-day response: "For him to say that is offensive to how I approached the game."
Michael Jordan, shown here speaking during the memorial ceremony for Kobe and Gianna Bryant in February, took several shots at his rivals during his Hall of Fame speech in 2009.
Well, good for you, Michael. You got in another punch after the poor kid in the schoolyard went down and would never get up again. This was never a fair fight even when Krause was alive. Jordan was always going to get the benefit of the doubt from the public and the basketball community. Just look at the two of them. Jordan was smart and sharp and handsome, the best basketball player ever, the wealthiest and most powerful athlete ever, and Krause was always the easiest of targets: defensive, insecure, overweight, his shirts always sprinkled with a fine white powder that was doughnut sugar, dandruff, or a mixture of both.
One of them was the essence of cool. One of them was the furthest thing from it. In sports, sometimes picking a side is nothing more than a popularity contest that could play out in the halls of any high school _ a contest that Krause was never going to win. Jordan called him "Crumbs." Everyone laughed.
