Jerome Richard Krause was an American sports scout and executive who was the general manager of the Chicago Bulls in the National Basketball Association from 1985 to 2003.
37 Facts About Jerry Krause
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Jerry Krause received the NBA Executive of the Year Award in 1988 and 1996.
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Jerry Krause was posthumously inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017.
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Jerry Krause was born in 1939 to a Jewish family and grew up in Chicago.
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Jerry Krause played high school baseball as a catcher at Taft High School in Chicago and attended Bradley University.
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Early on, Jerry Krause gained a reputation of being able to spot talent.
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The Bullets did not draft him, but Jerry Krause continued to keep in touch during Jackson's playing career and into his first years as a coach.
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Jerry Krause worked in the 1970s for the Cleveland Indians, Oakland Athletics, Seattle Mariners, and Chicago White Sox.
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Jerry Krause's first hire with the Bulls was longtime personal friend Tex Winter.
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Jerry Krause urged Winter to teach all of the Bulls players, especially Michael Jordan, the Triangle Offense.
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Jerry Krause fired then-head coach Doug Collins and replaced him with assistant coach Phil Jackson because Collins would not let Winter do as Jerry Krause had instructed.
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Jerry Krause made strength coach Al Vermeil one of his first hires, and the Bulls became one of the first NBA teams to embrace weight training for players.
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Jerry Krause gave scouting and management opportunities to African-Americans when this was not the norm.
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Karen Stack Umlauf, originally hired as a secretary for Jerry Krause, was writing scouting reports on potential draftees and working out players were signed for the Bulls, and eventually promoted to director of basketball operations, making her one of the few women to be deeply involved in basketball-centric duties.
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Jerry Krause made a number of moves that began building the foundation for future success.
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Jerry Krause turned over the Bulls roster and built up a collection of draft picks, although the moves in 1985 and 1986 were not particularly noteworthy.
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Jerry Krause planned to select tall forward Brad Sellers in the 1986 NBA draft.
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Sellers, Jerry Krause reasoned, handled the ball very well for a big man, and had a solid outside jumper.
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However, Jerry Krause picked Sellers anyway, and spent the summer trying to sell him to Jordan.
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In 1988, Jerry Krause traded power forward Charles Oakley to the New York Knicks for center Bill Cartwright.
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Jordan later acknowledged that Jerry Krause had made the correct move in trading Oakley for Cartwright.
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Jerry Krause was named NBA Executive of the Year in 1988.
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In 1989 and 1990, Jerry Krause added depth to the roster.
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Jerry Krause nonetheless was disliked by the entire Bulls locker room, while Jackson was enormously popular, such as Jerry Krause believed that Jackson took too much credit for the Bulls dynasty.
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Just before Jordan announced his retirement, Jerry Krause persuaded 1990 draft pick Toni Kukoc to buy himself out of his European contract and join the Bulls.
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All of the Bulls assistant coaches and their wives were invited to the wedding, as was Tim Floyd, then the head coach at Iowa State, whom Jerry Krause was openly courting as Jackson's successor.
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Jerry Krause said that he had not spoken to Jackson since.
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When Jordan was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009, Jerry Krause was not in attendance.
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Jerry Krause said he would not attend the ceremony over the Hall of Fame's refusal to induct Winter.
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Jerry Krause "believed by pulling the plug on the dynasty instead of allowing it to expire of natural causes, he could avoid the sort of malaise that has endured with the Knicks for two decades", however this meant that Jerry Krause would be better remembered as the one who dismantled the Bulls championship teams rather than its architect.
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Jerry Krause drafted another high schooler, Eddy Curry, who was hyped as a slightly smaller version of Shaquille O'Neal, with the fourth overall pick in the draft.
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Jerry Krause believed that Chandler and Curry would develop into elite players and provide the foundation for another dynasty.
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In 2003, Jerry Krause resigned from his post as general manager.
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Jerry Krause went back to his roots and worked briefly for the New York Yankees as a scout before joining the New York Mets in 2005.
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Jerry Krause was appointed by the Arizona Diamondbacks as a special assistant in its scouting department on April 1,2011.
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Jerry Krause had been struggling with health issues such as osteomyelitis.
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Jerry Krause was inducted into the 2017 Basketball Hall of Fame class posthumously.