If you lived in Chicago in the late 1990s, you remember the messaging after the Bulls had just won their sixth NBA title in 1998, their last of the Michael Jordan era.

Management said goodbye to legendary Bulls coach Phil Jackson, whose relationship with Jordan and other players seemed to be the lynchpin. In dismantling the championship team with the famed “rebuild,” the Bulls organization let superstars Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman go elsewhere.

But if you listened to the Bulls’ front office, you wouldn’t know it. Instead, the message was that things were just getting started.

I remember getting voicemails at home from the Bulls on my rinky-dink Radio Shack answering machine. Somehow, I had moved up from my low place on the season tickets waiting list as fan 23,500-something—and my number was up. The Bulls would not stop calling me.

I was in my late 20s then, living in an apartment on Clark Street that I could barely afford, about a mile south of Wrigley Field. Ramen noodles and quesadillas were dinner most nights. So, I certainly could not do Bulls season tickets, which were nearly set at 1998 NBA Championship team prices.

Meanwhile, driving around town in my rinky-dink “sports car,” a 1991 Hyundai Scoupe, I saw what everyone else saw. A barrage of patronizing billboards targeted at sports fans that read stuff like: “Bulls fans for life!” and “Through thick and thin!”

Ads featured players retained from the 1998 team, mainly point guard Ron Harper and reserve center Bill Wennington, both of whom stayed on under subsequent coach Tim Floyd during the 1998-1999 lockout-shortened season. Under Floyd’s first run, the Bulls went 13-37, before posting 17- and 15-win full seasons.

The next few years, the Bulls organization pitched “The Kids”—who were going to set things right. First, Duke University star Elton Brand, the No. 1 pick in the 1999 NBA draft, was the big ticket. Then, the Bulls brought in new “kids” such as Ron Artest (in 1999) and Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry (both in 2001).

Floyd and Bulls general manager Jerry Krause both spoke highly of the new recruits and the size of their impact. Bulls fans knew that the organization was insulting our intelligence.

It wasn't until two years after Krause’s 2003 exit as GM that the Bulls would post another winning campaign, during the 2004-2005 NBA season.

Still, more season ticket phone calls came, amidst more slighting billboards about sticking with the franchise through everything.

Soon, Jackson joined the Los Angeles Lakers, in 1999. There in southern California, the Hall of Fame coach won five more NBA Championships with the help of players like Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, while initially bringing on ex-Bulls Rodman and Harper.

Fast forward to 2024.

If you’ve heard anything about the 19-and-22 Bulls lately, it’s probably about the fans and how they booed Krause’s name. It took place during a promotional “Ring of Honor” ceremony, in which the Bulls also honored Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman, who were not present at the United Center.

For certain, Bulls fans booing Krause, especially with his wife Thelma present, was not a classy move.

Of course, because Krause passed away in 2017, there was much ire, not only from the Bulls organization but also from local press editorials and even former rival coaches such as Gregg Popovich.

But now, since the organization has had its say, and booing Bulls fans have been rightly castigated, it is worth taking a moment to understand why Bulls fans reacted the way they did. And why their reaction to the simple mention of Krause’s name is so guttural—even to this day.

Never mind that since the 1998 team’s breakup, the Bulls have not won another championship, or come even close. If we’re keeping count—the Bulls have won only their division, the NBA’s Central Division, twice.

Sure, it’s very hard to win a championship in any sport. Just as hard as it is to snag a transformational athlete such as Michael Jordan, as the Bulls did in the 1984 NBA Draft, under then-general manager Rod Thorn. Thorn stayed on as GM until the middle of 1985 when Krause took over.

Krause, who had worked in basketball in the early and mid-1970s, became a baseball scout until 1984. After his time with the Chicago White Sox, also owned by Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, Krause was brought over to the Bulls. No doubt Krause did good things.

Yet, throughout the run of six Bulls championships, two three-peats—in 1991, 1992, 1993 and then 1996, 1997, and 1998—Krause was very vocal about his position that no player or coach equaled championships.

The origin of the “organizations win championships” idea, repeated perhaps a million times throughout the media echo chamber, came, at least in Krause’s estimation, in the form of a misquote.

Legendary NBA writer David Aldridge put it this way: “Krause was famously quoted — misquoted, he insisted until the last — in 1997 as saying “players and coaches don’t win championships; organizations win championships.” (Krause said later that the reporter omitted the keyword ‘alone’ in quoting him, as in ‘players and coaches alone don’t win championships; organizations win championships.’)”

No matter how you examine the quote, the misquote, or the intention behind it, to many Bulls fans Krause will never be anything but a villain. And it’s not the quote so much that miffs diehard Bulls devotees. It’s the way Krause dismantled the NBA’s greatest team.

When Krause essentially threw out coach Phil Jackson after 1998, telling Jackson at the beginning of the 1997-1998 season that his contract would not be renewed, Krause made it clear that he didn’t much value Jackson’s contribution.

According to the 2020 ESPN documentary series, The Last Dance, Jackson was told that he could win all 82 games and another NBA title but still not be brought back. It seems apparent that Krause’s treatment of Jackson is largely why Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen were so less than celebratory of Jerry Krause—among many, many other reasons.

Meanwhile, in letting Krause unwind the team, Reinsdorf signaled that sales of number-23 Jordan Bulls jerseys and parking revenue were more important to the organization than winning.

No one wanted to play for the Bulls after that. And fans had no reason to watch anymore. For a long, long time the Bulls were a joke.

Since Jackson and Jordan left in 1998 the Bulls have gone through nine full-time coaches in 25 seasons, with an overall win percentage of .420. If it is true that organizations, not players, win championships then the Bulls, as an organization, are way off track.

To many Chicago sports fans, the Bulls have joined the likes of the Super Bowl XX champion Chicago Bears, who are going on four decades without a championship. Neither ball club seems to have a sound vision on getting back to their “organizational” ways of winning it all.

VIDEO: Jordan gives his two cents on organizations.

Back to basketball—it helps to make comparisons. In contrast, no one in Los Angeles has ever booed longtime Lakers general manager GM Jerry West. And I doubt that it is because Angelenos inherently have more class than Chicagoans.

But unlike Krause, West never tried to take credit for the massive contributions made by Hall of Fame players Magic Johnson or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Nor did West never insinuate that his four Lakers championships (1982, 1985, 1987, 1988), or the subsequent five NBA titles under his best-ever recruit, coach Phil Jackson, were West’s own work.

Even if he quietly held the same views, West never touted the whole “organizations win championships” nonsense. Instead, West let the team and coaches do what they were tasked with doing: win games and NBA titles. That means everything to Lakers fans.