Blood on the Horns

by Roland Lazenby

  “That may be what they consider a long-term offer,” Jackson said. “But it wasn’t clear. I said I think I’ve coached a couple of years too long actually for the kind of stress that this puts a person under. And (too long) for my own health, personal and mental and physical.”

  Jackson ultimately agreed to a one-year deal for the 1996-97 season, but his relationship with Krause suffered heavy damage. “He was offered a much longer contract,” Krause recalled. “We said, ‘If you’re not gonna be here to rebuild, we’ve gotta move on.’ It was very simple.”

  Just how badly the relationship had deteriorated became apparent with the meetings the coaching staff and general manager hold with each Bulls player shortly after the end of each season. These sessions were essential, Jackson said, because the coaching staff uses them to bring “closure” to the season, discussing with each player his accomplishments and his plans for offseason conditioning and his role on the team for the upcoming campaign. For example, it was during the 1995 meetings that guard Ron Harper and the coaches discussed his pivotal role for the 1995-96 season, a role that was a key factor in the Bulls winning their fourth title.

  “We had a day off after the win,” Jackson said of the 1996 end of year sessions, “and then we go into our team meetings where we debrief the players. We got into that thing. It was just a certain amount of rhythm. There’s a half hour for each player. You bring them in and talk. Some players only go 15 minutes. But they have the team meeting.”

  The time is also used to give each player his share of playoff bonus money.

  “Jerry wasn’t there to start it out at 9 o’clock,” Jackson recalled. “He was in his office and couldn’t get there. So all of a sudden, it was 9:30, 10 o’clock, and we had three players backed up now. And I hate to have that happen to the players. They come in early to get it done. So we started doing players in a hurry, and started just cutting through what we normally would do with young players. I realized that he didn’t care about this session.

  “In between the sessions, Jerry was like cold,” Jackson said. “We couldn’t get a conversation going on. I didn’t try. I mean I was just kind of feeling it out. Then suddenly he had to disappear at a certain time, and he took another 45 minutes off. We had more guys come through. I finally went to his door and said, ‘Jerry, you gotta come and finish this off, or else cancel it. One way or another we cannot do this to people. You can’t just not do it.’”

  It was obvious that the general manager wasn’t eager to work with him, and that had an effect on the quality of the sessions, Jackson said. “And all of a sudden they were like meaningless.”

  “Were we cold with one another?” Krause asked. “Of course we were. Because I was fed up with him.”

  Some employees in the organization suggested that Jackson was trying to manipulate the situation to take over as general manager. “The scariest thing would be if Krause weren’t there and Phil had the power,” said one employee who worked with both men. “Very scary.”

  Jackson’s substantial ego grinds against Krause’s numerous insecurities, the employee added. “Phil is a master manipulator. You’re talking about the media, the players, the staff, everybody. But the one thing Phil will never be able to manipulate is the title of general manager. He’ll never get that as long as he’s with the Bulls.”

  Another employee said he thought the tension between Krause and Jackson actually was one very big factor in the Bulls’ success. “Although neither one of them would admit it,” the employee said. “There’s that friction, but that friction makes things work. You got two polar opposites. But things are so fragile.”

  “There’s no way that Phil could be right all the time, or Jerry could be right all the time,” agreed Chip Schaefer, who was often caught between the two. “So when they have differences of opinion, it’s probably healthy. Sometimes coaches and GMs have different agendas. I’m not sure how a guy can do both jobs, because you’re wearing two hats. That’s why leaders, whether they’re presidents or kings or whatever, have staffs or people who advise them, that they can bounce ideas off of, because if one person makes all the decisions, that’s too much responsibility.”

  Krause loyalists in the organization had suggested that Jackson had become arrogant. Asked about arrogance, Jackson said, “I’ve tried to be really fair and tried to stay on base and on cue and not get insulted by questions that keep coming back through the media. I’ve done the little things that I think have kept everything on the square with the team. But that might be their view, that I’m arrogant.”

  As for his ambition to be general manager, Jackson said he was the person best suited to handle relationships between management and the players. “I’m the kind of person to handle both those kinds of things and find solutions for those things,” he said.

  But did that translate into a hunger for power? Jackson said not. “I’ve never gone behind Jerry’s back to the owner,” the coach said. “I’ve never done anything to get power.”

  Jackson did admit that money was a big factor in his dispute with Krause. He said that was partly because the pay for coaches had inflated, exemplified by the huge contracts and power given to coaches such as John Calipari with the New Jersey Nets and Rick Pitino with the Boston Celtics. “Kind of the pay-off structure for coaches has been destroyed by John Calipari getting the kind of money he’s getting in New Jersey,” Jackson said. “So there’s precedence. Here’s guys that hadn’t won at any level who are coming into the game because some team thought they were valuable at this level.

  “Jerry’s got a salary that hasn’t done this same thing,” Jackson said of Krause. “General managers’ salaries didn’t move up. Coaches make more than general managers. You look at it, and you say this is real tough for a guy like Jerry to negotiate. He’s looking at it like, ‘This guy’s more valuable to the organization than I am.’ I know all the personal things that must be going through his head as he’s negotiating it. So it’s very difficult for him to do it.

  “That was my argument with Jerry Krause eight years ago,” Jackson said. “I told him, ‘Coaches’ salaries are gonna go over a million dollars. They’re gonna get paid what players are getting paid, Jerry.’ He said, ‘That is never gonna happen. I tell you this: It’ll never happen with this organization.’ And I said, ‘Well, that may be true with this organization, but you know better than anybody else, this is something you should root for, because as general manager you’re gonna make money on top of it, too, because of that.’

  “You could see the wave coming, that this is what was going to happen,” Jackson said. “Now, guys like Jerry Krause are becoming, you know, like an oddity in a way in this league. Because teams are giving total control to coaches in places like Portland and around the country. In New Jersey and Boston, you just keep seeing these teams are now making this whole-hearted venture into a coach who’s gonna be president and general manager. There must be seven or eight of them by now. Houston. And Miami.”

  The fact that Pat Riley, his rival in Miami, had that power, income and control was particularly galling to Jackson.

  The coach pointed out that Krause and Reinsdorf didn’t want to give him the money he asked for in his last contract negotiations because other coaches he compared himself with were also being paid as GMs. “That actually became kind of a marketing chip against me in the last contract negotiations,” Jackson said, “which I kind of laughed about because I said, ‘That’s not a chip. They hired these guys to be coaches, and they can employ a personnel guy for $300,000 to do the job of general manager.’ That’s an argument against Jerry Krause is what that is.”

  The ugly process started all over again when the Bulls defeated Utah for the 1997 title and Jordan stepped to the microphone to issue a plea that he, Jackson, Pippen and Rodman be allowed to return for the 1997-98 season a shot at a sixth championship. Krause wanted to terminate Jackson’s relationship with
the team after the 1997 season, but Reinsdorf wouldn’t let him, the coach said. Certainly Jackson was a big question, but no bigger than Pippen. An unrestricted free agent at the end of the 1998 season, Pippen would have to be traded, or the team would risk losing him without getting compensation for his immense talent.

  Eventually all the details would be worked out to keep the team and Pippen intact, but not without another bloody round of negotiations.

  Because the deals couldn’t be worked out immediately, Jackson’s status with the team was in limbo on draft day 1997. At the time, Reinsdorf and Krause were trying to decide whether to trade Pippen. Both Jackson and Jordan had said they would not return to the Bulls if Pippen was traded.

  Usually Jackson and his staff made themselves available for Krause and his assistants on draft day. But when Jackson arrived at the Berto Center that day, Krause informed him his presence wasn’t required.

  “He just said, ‘You’re not needed here,’” Jackson recalled.

  Soon word leaked out on sports talk radio that Jackson had been “sent home.”

  “Jerry has a definite sense of respect for me,” the coach explained later. “It wasn’t like he sent me home. He said, ‘Phil, until we make a decision on this ballclub, as long as we’re seeing what the trade is for Scottie Pippen, whenever that’s gonna be, and because of your desire not to come back if Scottie doesn’t come back, there’s no need for you to come in if we go in another direction, if we trade Scottie and you’re not gonna be the coach. Today, you might as well let the coaching staff out.’ That was made known to me a couple of times during the draft time. If they were going in another direction, if they were going to get a draft pick in a trade for Scottie Pippen, these were the guys who were gonna come in. And I wasn’t going to be a part of the judging of the talent.”

  Krause’s response was particularly jolting for Jackson, who realized that his dismissal on draft day might just be the last day in his long, successful relationship with the team. While it wasn’t a disrespectful situation, the coach said it had the air of a brusque ending. “It was purely business,” he said. “I was doing a piecemeal job. I was doing a job of handling this group of professional athletes only. That was okay with me. I understood exactly what I was asked to do. The word got out. I don’t know how. I didn’t try to make it public. I tried to correct it. Other people may be dismayed, annoyed, thinking that I’m not rationally handling a snubbing situation, but I’m not snubbed at all. I’m not bewildered at all. This is what my job has come down to. If I’m not on ‘their team,’ then I’m out. I’m basically out.”

  The situation resulted in the coaching staff canceling plans to hold the Bulls’ annual end-of-season meetings with the players. As a result there was no sense of closure after the 1997 season, Jackson said.

  Draft day 1997 passed without the trading of Pippen, and contract negotiations with Jackson became one of the team’s priorities.

  At first, talks went surprisingly well.

  “The structure that was set up for it was that Jerry is Mr. Reinsdorf’s agent, Todd Musburger is my agent,” Jackson said. “And so it went pretty well for a while, and then it was just explosive. It got explosive between Mr. Reinsdorf and Todd. Jerry Krause had a license from Mr. Reinsdorf to malign Todd Musburger and as a consequence was totally disrespectful and unfair.”

  When the negotiations stalled, Krause released detailed information stating that the team had offered Jackson the highest-paying contract for a coach who wasn’t also a general manager. The tactic infuriated Jackson.

  “He aggravated the situation entirely,” the coach said of Krause, “and then it became a public issue in the community. They put a spin on it that made us look really negative, that I’d been offered the highest-paid pure coaching job in the NBA. It was really distorting. It’s hard to sit still when those things are done and not come back at them.”

  The talks had begun while Jackson was in Montana taking care of family business. “On a Sunday afternoon while I was in Montana, Todd stepped into Jerry’s office,” the coach said. “There was no one there but Todd and Jerry. Todd went through a half an hour, saying, ‘Jerry, you know there’s a lot of praise for everybody in this organization. We know that you’ve had a big part. The responsibility has fallen on your shoulders for five championship teams. Phil’s had a big part, and Michael’s had a great part. Michael’s really the one.’ Todd had a whole build up about it.”

  Then came the part where the agent informed the general manager of Jackson’s asking price. “As soon as he went to the salary we were asking for, he was (thrown) out of the office,” Jackson said. “Threw him out of the office. Todd had to sit out in the hallway by the aquarium. Jerry Krause said, ‘You gotta get out of the office. I’m gonna make a call. I can’t believe that you’re actually asking for this. I can’t believe what you’re thinking and what you’re trying to do.’ So he put him out of the office, and 20 minutes later he comes out and says, ‘You’ll have to leave. I’ll talk to you again next week, and you’ll have to come back with an offer that’s better.’ That was it. No counter offer. We said, ‘Okay, it’s gonna be negotiations. They started out, and there’s gonna be negotiations.’ But it came down to, ‘This is our offer, and this is it. This is what our offer is.’ And the next thing was purely business. It was not personal. It was over the phone, and it was totally dragging him through the mud. He tried to cross Todd.

  “Jerry just spent three minutes cussing Todd out on the phone,” Jackson said, “just threw all the invective and spiteful things he could say. Just cussed him out. And when he was through cussing him out, Todd said, ‘Jerry, did you get it all said? Because I hope you’ve gotten it all said.’ Todd tried to remain as calm as he could. And Jerry went through another litany of things that he said to him. The kind of things he said to him really was the final bridge for my agent. To that time, he was dealing pretty well with an uphill situation, and that just kind of put him over the edge.”

  It was then, Jackson said, that he realized that he was going to have to enter the fight. He told his agent, “Todd, listen. It didn’t work out. I’m sorry it didn’t work out. They’re not gonna use you obviously. They’re gonna try to disregard you. They want to negotiate with me. They want me at some level, because this is what they do. They tear it apart. They make it tough. They try to win contracts. They can’t stand it. But I can deal with it. I’ve been able to deal with it.”

  “I have a good relationship with Mr. Reinsdorf,” Jackson said. “In a way, I respect a lot of the things he does. That, I don’t respect. That part I don’t respect.”

  What particularly angered the coach were management’s public assertions that he was trying to duck dealing with Reinsdorf during the ‘97 negotiations, that he was going out of his way to keep from meeting with the team chairman.

  “I was traveling,” Jackson said. “I was in Idaho picking up my mother, who’s in a situation where she has to be in a wheelchair. She’s in a walker. She’s at a senior facility. So I was overnight on the road, and this kind of boiled over. And I didn’t check with my agent that night. Then I came back to Montana in the late afternoon, and it’s out in the media that I didn’t call the owner in 24 hours. He wanted to hear from you. I didn’t have any problem with getting ahold of him. I didn’t dodge him or anything else. Unfortunately, when I talked about Mr. Reinsdorf having a good organizational sense, they didn’t try to take it out on me. They tried to take it out on Todd.

  “I don’t think it needs to get like that,” Jackson said.

  Jackson and Reinsdorf finally began talks in mid-July. The coach said he told the team chairman that he no longer wanted to work with Krause, which Krause and Reinsdorf would later claim was not true. It was emphasized to Jackson that the contract for the 1997-98 season would be his last with the team, Krause said. “We said, ‘If we do this, this is the last one.’ He said, ‘This is my last o
ne.’ We had agreed. Phil is Phil. All we said was, when we did the deal last summer, ‘Okay, we’ll do a one-year deal, and that’s gonna be it, because you’re not gonna stay here to rebuild this thing.”

  “We’ve got to rebuild because we got an older team,” Krause explained later in a private interview. “We got nine free agents at the end of the season. There has to be a point where you start rebuilding. You can’t keep Michael Jordan at 33 years of age. You can’t keep Scottie Pippen at 30 years of age. You can’t keep all of these players in the years where they’re best. People get old. Players get old. You cannot keep teams together. They get old. When the Yankees lost DiMaggio, they got Mantle.”

  On July 23, the Bulls announced that Jackson had signed a one-year contract worth nearly $6 million. “I wasn’t looking to do anything that would be outrageous,” Jackson said. “I wanted to be fair, and I think Jerry Reinsdorf wanted to be fair. And it got to a fair point in this thing that was good.”

  Yet the negotiations had left Jackson’s relationship with Krause in complete shreds. That became apparent when the general manager called a news conference to announce Jackson’s signing. Krause emphasized that no matter what, even if the team went “82-0,” the 1997-98 season was definitely Jackson’s last with the Bulls.

  “The announcement that came out of my signing was negative,” Jackson said. “It was very negative. Rather than saying, ‘We’re gonna be able to pull this year together. We started it out by signing Phil. And now Michael and Dennis are the next two to sign, and we’ve begun to rebuild the championship team and allow this team to go on.’ Instead of something positive like that, it started out with a negative thing: ‘This is going to be the last year that Phil’s going to come back and coach.’”