The "The Last Dance" Thread

Krause’s utter refusal to keep running it back until they lost and his denial of Phil’s greatness are his greatest failures. I do give him huge credit for getting Pippen; Scottie was amazing even at Central Arkansas in those highlights. I loved hearing MH’s reverence for Scottie. Pippen though took the sure thing 7yrs/$18m and cant really fault Bulls for being underpaid.

 

Gotta admit, MJ’s swing looks much better when he was younger.

Oh and seeing him go for 49 then 63 at the Garden against the ‘86 Celtics, the best Bird team, was a nice reminder of his early greatness.

 

Yeah... Krause is an easy target -- and certainly a deserving one -- but he was really, really good at his job. Getting the rights to Pippen (in a trade for Olden Polynice) and Horace Grant in the same draft? That's nicely done. He consistently made really smart moves to build that team. And while everyone hates him for the Pippen contract, that's on Pippen. It was not a smart deal for him from the start.

Krause may very well have been right that the championship run was over. That team was old and on the downhill. Still.. you gotta run it back and let it fail, or let Jordan walk away on his own terms. Forcing it the way he did was incredibly foolish and arrogant.

 

Krause was very good in the build, but he was horrible in the takedown. Giving up a solid big like Jason Caffey for nothing was bad before the 97-98 season. Then he gave up Pippen for Roy Rogers and a fucking second-round pick. He just wanted to strip the roster bare and predictably bad luck followed. He had Elton Brand and Ron Artest but couldn't build around them and then tried to build around Jay Williams, Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry and that didn't work.

 

True. It probably was the end of the run anyway, but it’s still so insane that a pro sports franchise would blow up a team that won three consecutive titles and had the reigning MVP. To not have Phil return to keep MJ playing is an insanely poor business decision and ownership should have gotten involved.

 

Especially since the next season turned into a lockout shortened one. It's very conceivable if they brought everyone back they'd have a really good chance to win it all again.

It's pretty safe to say the run would have ended in 1999-00 against the Lakers, but it would have been fun to see that series happen

 

Krause did a couple things well, but was in no way perfect.

Drafting Pippen was the crown jewel. Trading off all the coke heads was another wise decision. He got Oakley for Keith Lee. He moved Oakley for Cartwright. Got Pippen and Grant, great pick, on same day. He was great at getting pieces like Kerr, Rodman and other veterans to fill in around Jordan and Pippen.

But let’s face it... he wanted to blow up the team because he missed on so many draft picks. He drafted so many average players and never got the complementary all stars or future all stars who could take Jordan into the sunset, that he needed to restart.

 

Few dynasties survive rebuilding. But Kraus had the United Center to show for it.

 

To be fair, he was drafting last or damn close to it every year. Go back through those drafts -- it's not like he was missing on good players.

 

Simmons and Russillo did a redraft of the 2000 draft on their pod a couple of weeks back ... I mean, Stromile Swift was the No. 2 overall pick. Brutal.

The NBA draft is really a crapshoot outside of the top five or six picks most years. If you're drafting 30th or 31st, in those days, you're taking a chance on a fringe college guy or an international player that nobody knows anything about.

 

Exactly right. And even within the top five or six picks there are usually one or two guys who turn out to be stiffs.