My NBA Free-Agent Afterflow

For whatever reason, NBA free-agents do not want to play for the Chicago Bulls. It can't be the weather, as past signings by the New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Philadelphia 76ers and Detroit Pistons have shown.

The Brooklyn Nets proved it again last Sunday.

It can't be that the Bulls lack credibility, as the legacy of their Jordan-era dynasty continues to resound across the NBA landscape.

So what is it, then?

My two cents says long-time owner Jerry Reinsdorf continues to be perceived as the guy who let unpopular general manager Jerry Krause break-up the Bulls. While this is a vast over-simplification (there was an abundance of blame to share), it remains a free-agent toxin.

Krause's actions said management is in charge here—not you.

Compounding the damage is the fact that with two hand-picked successors still making player-related decisions, this (wrongly or rightly) screams AND WE HAVEN'T CHANGED A BIT!

With his death and subsequent election to the Hall of Fame, you could say Krause has successfully rehabilitated his image. It isn't so easy for Reinsdorf. In a player's league like the twenty-first century NBA, how does an owner answer the question how could you fire Michael Jordan?

In retrospect, Reinsdorf's biggest mistake was not creating a buffer between Krause and his players. However gifted Krause was at assessing talent, he was a frequently insufferable human being with a cloying need to be one of the guys.

Despite his considerable sway within the organization, this puppy-like need for inclusion made him an easy target. It exploded into outright derision after his universally-misquoted comment about an organization's role in winning championships.

So without a popularly-accepted transformation, the Bulls remain cast as a management-heavy franchise where even a once-in-a-lifetime player like Michael Jordan was kicked to the curb to suit management's desires.

It's not accurate—or fair. But so little in life is.

So the Bulls go it alone. With a hugely-talented core of young (albeit injury-prone) players and another smart pick at number seven in Coby White, the Bulls again appear on the verge of greatness. Even without visits from Kawhi Leonard and Kevin Durant.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't care that the Bulls aren't the favored destination of big-name free agents, a la the Los Angeles Lakers. My fandom would be made immensely more comfortable if the Bulls needed only to clear cap space and wait for favored suitors.

Alas, that isn't a luxury destined to be theirs.

The Bulls have become something of a (cough) square peg. An outlier. An entity that, when confronted with a very public and very unpleasant bruhaha, held fast to the people it knew best and longest.

In other words, Jerry Krause was a longtime employee of Jerry Reinsdorf. Right or wrong, it was very unlikely he was going to throw Krause under the bus to save the skins of Johnny-come-latelys like Phil Jackson and Jordan.

If loyalty is a crime, the Bulls can give you a line-by-line itemization of the sentence.

In their stints as GMs, Jackson and Jordan have shown their criticisms of Krause to be baseless. Indefensible. Comically ignorant. Neither had (or in the case of Jordan, has) a clue.

Karma is a bitch.

And in their clunky, old-fashioned way, the Bulls' M.O. remains firmly rooted in the past. Much as my antiquated, sixties-liberal, greatest-good-for-the-greatest-number politics do.

So yes, I remain a fan.

Even when their free-agent signings amount to Thaddeus Young, Luke Kornet and Tomas Satoransky.

Lacking the sun-kissed glamor of the Lakers, their crosstown rivals the Clippers and the Miami Heat or the mega-market promotional opportunities of the Knicks and Nets, the Bulls possess just one thing: heart.

As the world of sport is increasingly subsumed by the complexities of contract management and the endless search for new revenue streams, that is something.