How long have you been a Bulls fan? Well, when I think back, my memory pulls things back from around 1984, when I was about 8 years old. I remember the Bulls drafted this guy that was supposed to be pretty good out of North Carolina. I remember hearing about how great this rookie was. I remember when this kid broke his ankle, and was to miss most of the season. I remember the 63 points in Boston; I think it was from that point on, that I really started zoning in on this team. Yes, I grew as a Bulls fan; the rate at which I grew was propelled by this “super food”… Michael Jordan. When it was all said and done, he brought us 6 titles; he is the greatest basketball player to ever lace them up. He is #1 within the Chicago sports world (Payton 1A). He was, like the commercials said, who everybody wanted to be like. Maybe you weren’t as lucky as me… but, you saw The Last Dance right?
For me, The Last Dance was a tremendous walk down memory lane; this guy, this team that I grew up with, was now shown to everyone, of all ages, across the country. Our guy was THE guy; our team was forever put on the worldwide map, and now, everybody was given a history lesson on how this happened. I remembered most of it; some of it I hadn’t recalled. I did remember a lot of animosity towards Jerry Krause; this documentary only furthered that fact. In fact, to strip it down to one statement, you could say… Krause was responsible for the breaking up of the Bulls dynasty; HE was the reason MJ left. How does that feel? Let me tell you… not so great. It makes perfect sense, if you believe that statement to be valid, regardless of all the GOOD things he did, for folks to hate Jerry Krause… still to this day. And if you’re still with me, then you understand the reaction in the UC on Friday night’s Ring of Honor when Jerry Krause was honored; when his name was put on the scoreboard in front of 20,000 people taking another stroll down memory lane.
It was a setup. Do I feel bad for his widow, who broke down when the crowd booed? Of course. Looking at it through that lens, it looked horrible; as Stacey, Adam, and many people on Twitter reacted, they absolutely ripped the fans for this. Well, everyone, let’s not forget how we got here; I don’t blame the 20K combination of die-hards, newbies, randos, and whoever else was part of “the mob”; how did you think we’d react??? I blame the Bulls. When you put the person’s name who was responsible for the breakup of the Bulls, who by the way, haven’t won another title since then, on the big screen, and honor him… we will “honor him” our own way, period. So yeah, the Bulls set that up on a tee for us; they should have known better. They should have tried to give us a cheeseburger… presented Krause in a way that dissuaded us from that reaction; still haven’t figured out what that should have been, but… something… there was some way the Bulls could have done that to avoid the inevitable, right? Maybe this was just another example of how the Bulls brass just doesn’t get it… just don’t blame us…
You want somebody else to blame? Blame the players, who came out after this overall really nice thing at halftime, and shit the bed. You know what I think happened? I think Kerr poked the bear; talk about the setup. I think he went into the locker room after the ceremony and asked the Warriors which team they thought was better… the 72-10 Bulls team who was just honored or the 73-9 Warriors team. We all know the answer, because one of us choked in the Finals. But the Warriors, at the very least, the guys on the current team that were on that Warriors team, took it personal; Curry and Klay went off in the 2nd half and took us out… one of their young players did OK too. Problem for us… we didn’t have Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman coming out of the locker room after the half; that would have been a different story. In fact, none of them were in the house for this shindig; that was disappointing. Why weren’t they there? Did it have something to do with Krause? Maybe that’s a stretch, but for us, we were just left with the current squad, who although they have shown life over the past few weeks, especially without Zach, is just a team; we’re not going anywhere, this year, or any time in the near future… and now, maybe it makes sense. Maybe YOU can understand why things went down the way they did. So anybody/everybody, get off our backs; be mad at the Bulls organization… for allowing this man to break up the team, for the Bulls forcing MJ out, for the Bulls failing to win a title since then, for the Bulls running back the same sorry ass squad from the last few years, for the Bulls being too stupid to realize what would happen when they put Jerry Krause’s name in front of 20K of the faithful, for the Bulls hanging his widow out to dry… don’t be mad at the fans. All we wanted is another title; greedy, maybe… but since MJ and the squad wasn’t left together to raise #7, certainly there was a plan to get us another one, right? At least, you know, sometime over the past 26 years…
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