Doctor MJ wrote:eminence wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:.
Hey Doc, I was curious on your thoughts on the 80s Lakers in particular.
My own initial picks.
90s Bulls: Jackson
Okay so my thoughts:
90s Bulls:
Phil JacksonVery tricky here because I think Michael Jordan actually probably did more yelling than Jackson, but the team's breakthrough comes from Jackson taking the reins, changing the scheme, and empowering Scottie Pippen as a co-leader. Then there's the whole stretch where Jordan isn't there and the team still does pretty dang good despite the fact that Pippen doesn't really seem to function as an ideal leader. Given that we're fine separating out "the most valuable" from "the leader", it seems fair to give Jordan the first title and Jackson the second.
scrabbarista wrote:EDIT: Just saw OP was going for "the commander." In that case, it's Auerbach for the Russell Celtics. Riley for the Magic Lakers. Jackson for the Bulls and Lakers. Pop for the Spurs. Kerr for the Warriors. I'm not sure for Mikan's and Bird's teams. In basically every case, the best player has to let the coach command. You can say some coaches demanded or earned that more than others, but the reason I initially put the players is because that's where the true power was in every case.
So I know this conversation is from days ago, but as one of the few Bulls fans on the PC Board, I just wanted to chime in on this.
Firstly, I think Jordan was a more of a leader than some give him credit for.
For example, though he was skeptical at first, I think he bought into the triangle more than Kobe ever did - I mean, once Jordan bought in, there was a clear understanding between everyone, that he would play fully within the offense and help his teammates get involved, and then if necessary, he'd do his thing in the 4th, whereas with Kobe it felt like a constant battle to get him to trust his teammates and he didn't really get there until the Gasol years. I think Jordan's buy-in to the triangle made it easier for the coaching staff to get everyone else to go with it.
And for as much as he'd yell at his teammates, he also always wanted to win for them too. I distinctly remember him saying they needed to in 1992 for Bobby Hansen, and then in 96, that they had to win for all the guys on that team that hadn't done it(Kukoc, Kerr, Harper, Longley, etc).
But anyway, my reason for this post isn't really about MJ. The quoted posts above went with Phil Jackson, and I fully understand why, but I couldn't help but notice that there hasn't been a single mention in the thread of the man who hired Phil, Jerry Krause. If you're going to go with the management side of things, then I think there's an argument for Krause. It depends, of course, on how we're defining leader, and if the definition is the guy that inspires his soldiers to follow him, then that's not Krause. But there's something to be said for the type of leadership that makes decisions that will improve the outcomes even if they're not popular with his soldiers.
When Jerry Reinsdorf and his group purchased the Bulls in 1985, one of the first things he did was to hire Krause to run the show. As a New Yorker, Reinsdorf had been a fan of the Holtzman-era Knicks as younger man in the late 60s/early 70s, and he wanted Krause to build a team like that - with constant, fluid, unselfish ball-movement and hard-nosed defense. And that's what Krause did.
(Decisions that were unpopular in the organization or considered risky are bolded.)
He hired Tex Winter, the architect of the triangle, almost immediately in 1985, well before Phil was in the picture.
He drafted Oakley in 1985.
He hired Doug Collins and Johnny Bach(who ended up being the being the defensive architect of the dynasty) in 1986.
He traded second-string center Jawann Oldham in the fall of 1986 for a second FRP in the 1987 draft.
He then moved that FRP and a future FRP to move up in the 1987 draft.
He drafted Pippen and Grant in that draft.
He hired Phil Jackson, a former player from those Knicks teams under Holtzman, from the CBA to be an assistant under Doug Collins in 1987.
He traded Oakley for Cartwright in 1988, despite Oakley being MJ's best friend on the team. MJ wasn't happy, but it was the right move for the team.In 1989, he traded Brad Sellers, his disappointing 1986 draft pick, to Seattle to get back the 1989 FRP he'd traded away in the Pippen deal, and he ended up using that #18 pick on BJ Armstrong, who became an important piece.
In 1989, he had the balls to fire Doug Collins - despite it coming on the heels of the team's best season in ages(a 6 game ECF loss to the Pistons) and despite Jordan and Collins being close - in order to promote Phil, because Collins didn't want to use Winters' triangle.
In 1990, he draft-and-stashed Toni Kukoc in the second round of the draft before draft-and-stash was common, and in the years that followed, he made no secret of how badly he wanted Toni to come over, much to the chagrin of Jordan and Pippen.In 1991, he signed the undrafted Scott Williams who hadn't found an NBA home yet. Williams ended up being a solid role player for the Bulls and a long career, including playing decent minutes and starting a fair number of games for the Allen/Big Dog/Cassell Bucks of the early 00s.
In the 1992 offseason, after the departures of Cliff Levingston and Craig Hodges, Krause signed Trent Tucker and Rodney McCray, role players of the 80s, to fill the bench out; they both got a ring, and Tucker in particular was solid contributor.
In the 1993 offseason, he signed Steve Kerr and Bill Wennington, and finally signed Toni.
At the 1994 trade deadline, he swapped Stacey King, who would be out of the league a few years later, for Luc Longley, who ended up starting on three championship teams and being a serviceable role player for the better part of another decade.
In the 1994 offseason, he signed Ron Harper despite the reality of his post-ACL abilities.
He did the Perdue-for-Rodman deal in 1995 when few other teams wanted him.He signed Brian Williams/Bison Dele as essentially a rental for the 1997 playoffs to take the place of the injured Bill Wennington, and he ended up being sparkplug(and played well enough to get paid the following season).
Even his seeming afterthought of an acquisition of Scott Burrell in the fall of 1997 ended being a necessary 3&D depth piece on the wing when Scottie missed the first half of the season(he shot 35% from 3 that season and recorded a 1.46 D-RAPM in just under 14mpg).
I know people will remember his stand-off-ish personality and the fact that he wanted to prematurely dismantle the dynasty and all of that, but he was also one of the greatest GMs ever, and every single piece that mattered to that dynasty not named Michael Jordan was his doing. Yes, starting with rookie Michael Jordan is a great hand to be dealt, but there have been plenty of GMs that had elite talent and couldn't build a team around it(LeBron's first-stint Cavs and KG's Wolves come to mind, heck a number of Hakeem's years in Houston before his championships come to mind).
You can't call him an emotional leader, no, but I think he's worth at least discussing, considering the GMs of some of these other teams have been mentioned(Auerbach, Sharman, etc).
