I certainly dont miss those ugly late 90's Heat/Knicks style games.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

In the most obvious one ever. I miss the Jordan Bulls. I was raised on Bulls basketball and it's never been the same for me. Every decade as a Bulls fan for me will always fall short to the first six seasons that I was really a Bulls fan. I was just starting to become a sports fan around the time that the Pistons/Bulls rivalry reaching it's conclusion as the Bulls were taking over.

I still love the Bulls, even though they've been almost unwatchable for about half the post Jordan years.

I'm glad I got to witness the greatest player and possibly team in history but it's a shame that it will never be as good to be a Bulls fan as it was for that time. I guess I'm spoiled.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

A credible Chicago team? I wonder if our guys are now ruined, having played miserably all this year, supposedly due to Kobe trade rumors.

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

I also will never forgive Jerry Krause for not giving the Bulls at least one more season before his "rebuilding plan". I think they all would have come back for one more run. Who knows if the Bulls were good enough to win 7 but I would have loved to see it.

It also severely hurt the NBA but it did help Jordan's legacy. The Bulls didn't pass on their popularity to any team, and Tim Duncan was not a big enough personality to take over the reigns as the top star in the league.

In a perfect world for NBA ratings, the Bulls would have eventually lost to the Shaq and Kobe Lakers similar to how the Bulls beat the Pistons.

The post Jordan NBA was boring, and I became a bigger Bears fan than Bulls fan for the first time in my life which will probably never change.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I miss Tom Chambers...

I miss the NBA on NBC theme music.

I think they would have, and they would have won. That was the lockout year, so a shorter season would have resulted in ring #7.

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I miss those exciting regular season playoff pushes of yesteryear

I disagree. Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman were clearly breaking down as evidenced by their 98 playoff run and the way other teams were able to knock them around. Jordan's knees were ailing and Pippen's back was becoming a liability...and they didn't have any capable young players who could step up and shoulder some of that burden.

Even if they could've snuck into the finals in '99, I find it hard to believe that a team led by Jordan & Pippen in their late-30s could've beaten a Spurs team that had a fresh rookie Tim Duncan and a still-dominant David Robinson. The Bulls had absolutely no matchup for either of those guys individually, let alone both guys simultaneously. Not to mention the superior supporting cast the Spurs had in comparison to the Bulls.

Not only that, but the main reason M-Jeff retired in '99 was because he sliced some ligaments in his index finger on his shooting hand while cutting a cigar on New Year's Eve, so he wouldn't have been able to play that season anyway (by the way, that index finger never healed properly). I don't buy into the "Krause broke up the team" theory.

So nobody has an opinion on what I posted above? Nobody at all?

I can't believe you said Pippen was breaking down! A dagger through the man's heart!

I tend to agree with you, I just think most people would have rather seen the situation play out rather than blowing it up

Jerry Krause was very eager to start the rebuilding phase post Jordan. Does anyone doubt that?

If so, any speculation on how good/bad the Bulls would have been the next year is moot. They should have been given one more chance to see if they could do it again. Besides the 72-10 season, I don't remember any playoffs where the Bulls seemed to be the clear *and overwhelming* favorite. Many people thought that the Jazz were the superior team and would end up beating the Bulls.

The Bulls were breaking down, but they had also figured out how to go on cruise control in the regular season and pick it up in the playoffs.

The Spurs may have beaten the Bulls in the finals, but I would still take the experience of the Bulls to beat the Spurs.

The Bulls may not have won the title that year, but Jerry Krause made sure that they wouldn't win the title that year so he gets the blame.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

You make some good points Rick.

It's true that Krause sped up the rebuilding process but while I don't disagree with the thought of rebuilding, I disagree with his execution. Personally, I think Krause should've been trying to go younger long before '99.

And while Krause was the main guy responsible for the explosion of the team, let's not forget that Phil Jackson & everybody's favorite guy M-Jeff have some accountability also.

I guess I don't share the same affinity for the '97-'98 Bulls because other than Pippen, I didn't care about the team anyway...so I wasn't particularly heartbroken when the team was dismantled. My Bulls hard-on went limp on March 19, 1995 when Jordan came out of retirement for that nationally televised game against the Pacers.

I don't agree with this thinking. You have a coach and two players who have been the cornerstone on 6 championships, including the last three. They call the shots on when it ends as long as they keep winning championships. The goal of every season is to win a championship. You have a team that has won the last three. If they want to come back, you do everything you can within reason to bring them back.

It was clear that Phil Jackson still wanted to coach, Scottie and MJ still wanted to play, and that they were still the top team in the league at the end of the season. To throw that away in order to rebuild for a couple seasons later was asinine. They got garbage for Scottie Pippen and put out a pretty poor lineup the next season.

You went from a linup of MJ, Pippen, Rodman, Harper, and Longley to a lineup of Randy Brown, Ron Harper, Brent Barry, Toni Kukoc, and Bill Wennington in order to build for the "future". By getting rid of MJ and Pippen they got Roy Rodgers for half a season and and a conditional second round pick.

How did that help them rebuild at all? Roy Rodgers and a second round pick? Was that the building blocks of the future. Basically, they made the plan to be bad. They traded a top team for next season for hopefully a top team in the next 5 years. Hindsight says that this was one of the dumbest moves in NBA history but even back then people were saying it.

This was the worst decimation of a team in NBA history and he got nothing in return.

The fact is that when you win a title, you don't get rid of your best players unless you absolutely must.

The Bulls were getting old, but if the goal is to win the NBA championship, the team that was coming back was more likely to win the title than any person they were going to draft with a second round pick and Roy Rodgers.

Now if Jerry Krause wants to come back and blow up this current team I have no problem, but Krause's idea that he was smarter than everyone else and could build a championship team with a few years of draft picks and a free agent robbed the Bulls fans of at least one more championship attempt and is something that the Bulls have never recovered from.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I miss the 90-91 Nuggets. They lost the season opener 162-158, gave up 130 a game, never held anyone under 100, and gave up 173 to Phoenix. Sure it was bad basketball, but I was amused

I miss Kid Cairo

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Seriously?

Again, Paul Westhead!

They didn't like Krause because he wanted to blow the team up. I don't blame them. You don't blow up a team that just won it's third straight championship and is still a dominant team.

I guess I'll throw some blame onto Jerry Reinsdorf then. He should have told Krause to shut his mouth and figure out a rebuilding strategy that wasn't "suck for a few years, get draft picks because you suck and not because your trades got you any value, and sign a free agent". If the choice was MJ or Krause, then Reinsdorf should have sent Krause packing.

As for Scottie being tired of being in MJ's shadow, I don't believe that. If that was the case, he was traded to the worst place in the league for that. Houston had Hakeem and Charles Barkley.

Jerry Krause's ego is the sole reason that the Bulls didn't take one more run at a title.

This is all you need to see. From wikipedia on the Jerry Krause-Phil Jackson relationship.



He forced out Phil Jackson, which in turn forced out MJ and Scottie.

What happened over the next 5 years only showed how much of a monumental screwup that it was.

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Krause is a fucking idiot and maybe the most overrated GM in recent sports memory. You dont trade a 20-10 rookie for an unknown rookie. Thats basketball retarded and Krause is the only reason the Bulls rebuilding took 7 years instead of 2 or 3.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Ultimately, Jerry Krause started to believe that he was in fact smarter than every other GM out there and that he could do no wrong because he was the reason behind the Bulls 6 titles.

It is very telling that he's never been close to getting a job as a GM for another NBA team even with his impressive resume.

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Yeah no kidding. Okur got a flagrant in game 1 that would have barely drawn a whistle 10 years ago, and the announcers were almost calling for a flagrant for his foul late in the 4th against Scola that was clearly not even close to a flagrant. Just another example of the further pussification of all professional sports, not just the NBA.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Nas,
What are you talking about? Tyson Chandler was not that good for his time here whereas Elton Brand was an All Star or a near All Star for the whole time. The production of Brand absolutely dwarfed what Chandler did in Chicago. This year is tough to compare since Brand had a serious injury but Brand has a career average of 20 points and 10 rebounds and Chandler had 12 and 12 this year. If both healthy, Brand still would have outperformed him.

The Bulls gave up years of a 20 and 10 performer to watch Tyson Chandler flounder in Chicago. That was an absolutely terrible trade even if the Bulls had kept Chandler.

The last good trade that Krause made was the Rodman trade, but that was San Antonio dumping Rodman because his act had gotten old. He was a very good GM and helped build up the Bulls, but for as good as he was in building up the Bulls he was worse at the end.

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He was the best GM in the league up until the day after he traded for Dennis Rodman. After that, it was mostly bad move after bad move.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I guess it's semantics, but while Brand is an All-Star, I'd never call him a star. 20/10 year after year on teams that have finished over .500 once? Statistically that's great for him, but at best that gets him the title of Above -Average NBA player.

It's easy in hindsight to say the Chandler-Brand trade sucked, heck a lot of people even said that at the time, but in honor of the NFL draft Krause decided to go with a "ceiling" and not a "floor." I'd say Krause was smart enough to know you need real stars to win in the NBA. Brand wasn't going to be that guy and he thought Chandler had a chance with Curry to be one of those. It turns out he was wrong of course. Obviously Krause was wrong to trade for Chandler, but I don't blame him for trading Brand for someone he thought had star potential. As Nas said, Krause, for good or bad, had guts. I want my GM to think he's the smartest man in the room.

Paxson, on the other hand, gutless. I posted it in some other NBA thread but Paxson having played with MJ and Scottie also has to know you can't win without stars in the NBA. Yet year after year of high draft picks and "bargaining chips" the Bulls have none, and don't appear to have any that are even close. How many times this season did the Bulls have the best player on the court? 10% of the time? 5% of the time? 0% of the time? I guess I'm way off-topic on the thread now, but there's no excuse for that to happen and that's why I want Paxson fired.

So Krause gets credit for trading away a player who could have ended up better than for a player who actually ended up better? The Tyrus Thomas draft pick looks much better now. Tyrus Thomas could have been great. It doesn't matter that he didn't become an All Star.

It wasn't as if he traded an average player for Tyson Chandler. He traded a 20/10 guy.

What was Tyson Chandler's celing? He would have to have become Kevin Garnett in order for it to have been a good trade. Tyson Chandler's ceiling was only slightly higher than Elton Brand's. Tyson Chandler wasn't going to become a 30/15 guy.

John Paxson didn't make moves that would have greatly improved the level of talent on the team. Jerry Krause made a move in trading for Chandler that only improves the level of talent on the team if Tyson Chandler eventually became a perennial all star. That was tons of risk, little reward. Based off of production in Chicago, the Tyson Chandler-Elton Brand trade was as bad as anything Isiah Thomas did.

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Isiah Thomas put together a team of me first players but I can't think of one trade he made that was such a steep drop off of production. Isiah was terrible, but Krause got rid of Brad Miller and Elton Brand while bringing in very poor replacements.

Here is the production that the Tyson Chandler trade cost the Bulls.
18.2 and 11.6 vs. 6.1 and 4.8
18.5 and 11.3 vs. 9.2 and 6.9
20.0 and 10.3 vs. 6.1 and 7.7
20.0 and 9.5 vs. 8.0 and 9.7
24.7 and 10.0 vs. 5.3 and 9.0

That trade made the Bulls much worse over the 5 years that Chandler was here and even if Chandler had stayed Brand still would have been more productive(besides last season when he got injured).

What was the Isiah Thomas trade that resulted in such a steep drop in production?

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Brand fell into his lap. Cleveland's GM doesn't get credit for drafting Lebron James so Krause doesn't get credit for winning the #1 pick. The Artest draft was good and getting Brad Miller was very good but what did it lead to?

He got Artest and Miller and turned them into Jalen Rose. That didn't do much either.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I said the deal for Tyson Chandler was as bad as anything that Isiah Thomas did. Isiah Thomas's body of work is much larger and he is clearly a terrible basketball mind unlike we may have ever seen.

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First and foremost Lacy, I don't know who your sources are but you should quite naturally check on them because I think you and they are eating some of those brownies. You know what I'm talking about Lacy!! Brownies. Hash!

But, quite seriously, you are misremembering the greatness of Michael Jordan. Certainly, that Spurs team was formidable but not tested in the way that myself, Scottie, Ron Harper, Luc were. Actually, I think the addition of Dickey, Brent, Rusty would have built a different structure amongst the team and provided me with some new mental challenges.

But, the cigar thing was quite honestly blown out of proportion. Certainly, Michael Jordan enjoys a good stogie. But, Michael Jordan could have played the way Michael Jordan expects Michael Jordan to play to a level of excellence achieved only by Michael Jordan. That's quite simple. I felt great physically but I wasn't challenged in a mental capacity.