The Chicago Bulls are NBA royalty.
The Bulls have won the most NBA championships among teams from the first expansion era, which began with the Bulls first season in 1966-67. Only the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers have won more titles. The Golden State Warriors have won six titles like the Bulls with a title as the Philadelphia Warriors in 1956. The Warriors also claim a 1947 title in the BBA before the NBA was officially formed.
The Bulls can claim the player generally regarded as the best in NBA history, Michael Jordan, and the coach who has led teams to the most championships in NBA history, Phil Jackson. The Bulls 1995-96 championship team that dominated the NBA with a 72-10 record and then began the playoffs with 14 wins in its first 15 games on the way to the NBA title is widely regarded on most unbiased lists as the most dominant and best team in NBA history.
The Bulls essentially invented the in stadium NBA experience, and the team’s iconic introductory throbbing sequence featuring Sirius with the Alan Parsons Project has been the model in American sports and the most recognizable around the world. The Bulls logo has become one of the most identifiable around the world and turns up everywhere in popular culture from the office of the stars of the long running Law and Order TV series to in the private residences of world leaders. American tourists will report seeing Bulls hats and paraphernalia whenever they travel around the world.
The Space Jam movie and Last Dance documentary featuring Jordan and the Bulls were some of the most popular in the entertainment field.
So it’s special to be enshrined in the Chicago Bulls Ring of Honor. It’s been long in coming and here’s a look at the first class.
Michael Jordan
He’s the greatest. But don’t take our word for it. Any discussion of the GOAT -Greatest of All Time - in sports begins with Michael Jordan. He doesn’t have the most championships as a player, which was Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics. And he hasn’t scored the most points in the NBA, which is LeBron James lately of the Los Angeles Lakers. But no one influenced the game itself and the world well beyond basketball more that Michael Jordan. The high-flying, tongue-wagging, power dunking Jordan is likely the most popular athlete in American sports history, filling stadiums with his presence and avoiding the minefields of divisive debate. His universal appeal is something people can agree about. Jordan is the NBA’s all-time average per game scoring leader barely ahead of the legendary Wilt Chamberlain. The 6-6 Jordan has his share of awards from six Finals MVPs—every time he was there—five regular season MVPs, Defensive Player of the Year, Slam Dunk winner, his playing grace and panache hardly duplicated. But his model also changed the world from sneakers becoming fashion to men proudly being bald and wearing earrings. Everyone wanted to and still wants to be like Mike.
Scottie Pippen
He was Jordan’s sidekick through the run of six championships in the 1990s, part of a legendary pairing that suggests classic duos from the worlds of entertainment, government and history. Pippen’s backstory is one of the most remarkable in sports, the product of a rural environment and one of 12 children growing up in a two-room house, not offered any college scholarships and attending small Central Arkansas University on a work-study grant where as a freshman he did team laundry and handed out towels to players in the locker room. Four years later, the spidery 6-8 forward was an NBA first round draft selection and on the way to becoming what most around basketball consider the greatest defensive small forward in NBA history and the primary playmaker for those six championship Bulls teams. Pippen was a nine-time NBA all-defensive player and when he was on the fabulous 1992 Olympic Dream Team Pippen was called by coach Chuck Daly the best player after Jordan.
Phil Jackson
The iconoclastic lanky backup forward from the championship New York Knicks teams of the early 1970s became the most successful championship coach in NBA history, guiding the 1990s Bulls to six championships with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen and then the early 2000s Los Angeles Lakers to three championships with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. And then yet recalibrating to guide the Lakers to two more titles with Bryant and Pau Gasol. Known as the Zen Master for his embrace of Eastern philosophies and creative coaching methods, Jackson was as much a student of the game in taking Red Holzman’s pressure defense and unselfish offensive principles and in an alchemy with Tex Winter’s triangle offense both in Chicago and Los Angeles produced teams that dominated the NBA for more than two decades and became the legends of the game. Jackson’s roots were equally humble and unexpected, a product of the upper Midwest Dakotas who was virtually out of coaching and pro basketball working for the Albany Patroons of the defunct Continental Basketball Association and summers coaching in Puerto Rico when Bulls executive Jerry Krause brought him to the Bulls as an assistant coach and advance scout. Four years later, Jackson led the Bulls and Jordan to the franchise’s first NBA championships and six in eight years, interrupted only by Jordan’s hiatus to play professional basketball for two years.
Jerry Sloan
Michael Jordan is the name most synonymous with the Bulls, but Jerry Sloan personified the franchise and the city more than anyone who ever played for the team. The team logo could have been Sloan’s visage instead of the angry Bull because the original intent of the logo was to demonstrate something the original chief executive wanted to represent of being mean, aggressive and strong. Certainly mean to opponents, if not teammates and the community. Sloan was the guard who couldn’t score who terrified the NBA’s stars. Hall of Famers Jerry West, Walt Frazier, Rick Barry, Billy Cunningham and JoJo White famously complained constantly about how rough and physically Jerry played them. Jerry would simply say they were more talented than he was so he just had to work harder than everyone else, citizen of broad shoulders. Forget a chip on the shoulder; Jerry’s was a two by four. He was a shy, small town kid from southern Illinois who walked 16 miles to grade school and who always led with his jutting jaw. He was recruited to play at the University of Illinois. But he left because Champaign-Urbana was too big for him, as was Carbondale when he left Southern Illinois University. Hew decided to go back home and work on an rig in the local oil fields. But his girlfriend persuaded him to give Evansville University a try. He starred with his gritty game and was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets, who’d left Chicago in 1963 as the Packers/Zephyrs. He didn’t play much and was left available in the expansion draft for the Bulls. And became their inspiration as a 6-5 guard routinely among the leading guards in rebounding while still averaging about 15 points and six times all-defense playing through injuries that would have most mortals in traction. He led the 1966-67 expansion Bulls to the playoffs, still the only NBA expansion team ever to make the post season tournament. He coached the Bulls briefly after his playing career and went on to a Hall of Fame coaching career with the Utah Jazz. His No. 4 was the first jersey retired in Bulls franchise history.
Bob Love
Smooth as butter, the scoring forward known as Butterbean teamed with Chet Walker to become the most potent forward pair in the NBA in the team’s early 1970s run of averaging more than 50 wins over a five-year period culminating in a bitter seventh game loss in the 1975 conference finals. The ambidextrous Love became one of the premier scorers in the NBA, averaging almost 25 points per game over a six-year run that left him at the time among points producers trailing only legends like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Elvin Hayes, Dave Bing, John Havlicek, Pete Maravich and Tiny Archibald. Love battled a serious speech impediment for years that likely set back his early career years, though he would eventually triumph there, too, and become a motivational speaker for the Bulls. He started at a HBCU, Southern University and was a fourth round draft choice of the then powerful Cincinnati Royals. He couldn’t stick and went to the minor league Eastern League for $50 per game, eventually working his way back to Milwaukee in the expansion draft and then traded to Chicago where he was greeted by boos because he was traded for fan favorite Flynn Robinson. The Bulls traded for Bob Kauffman to take the place of the former overlooked Love. But the determined 6-8 forward with his transition game play won the job and became an all-league defensive team player three times, multiple All-Star and iron man who played at least 81 games four of his first five seasons with the Bulls and three times all 82.
Jerry Krause
Nobody had a second act quite like the famously rumpled one-time scout known as the sleuth for his clandestine ways that made him perhaps the most famous general manager of his era in assembling the personnel to support Michael Jordan and the Bulls to their six NBA championships. Chicago native Krause was first a scout for the 1961-63 Packers/Zephyrs franchise that moved to Baltimore and now is in Washington. He then scouted for the Bulls and worked his way to personnel director before losing his job in a confused supposed coaching recruitment of DePaul’s Ray Meyer. Krause returned to baseball scouting, his first love, and was working for the Chicago White Sox as a scout when the Jerry Reinsdorf group purchased the franchise in 1985. Krause prepared a plan for the Bulls, who had recently drafted Michael Jordan. It surreptitiously was basically a long term rebuild without portfolio. It created friction between he and Jordan because Jordan was committed to compete for titles immediately. Krause knew the talent wasn’t there and second line veterans couldn’t match a powerful Eastern Conference dominated by Larry Bird and the Celtics, Moses Malone and Julius Erving and the 76ers and Isiah Thomas and the Pistons. So Krause accumulated draft picks, not as popular a strategy at the time as it is now. It landed Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant, and the veteran trade for Bill Cartwright for another draft pick, Charles Oakley, produced the first championship in franchise history in 1991. Krause from year to year subtly replaced players around Jordan and Scottie Pippen to maintain the dynasty through the 1990s and twice was voted Executive of the Year by his peers
Johnny “Red” Kerr
The first coach of the expansion Bulls in 1966 directed the team to the playoffs, a feat no coach in the NBA has done before or since. He was named NBA Coach of the Year. But Kerr was much more than a coach. A multiple All-Star and NBA champion as a player after the Chicago native starred at the University of Illinois, Kerr was the NBA’s original iron man, playing in 844 consecutive games until his final season in the NBA when his coach, even though he was not injured, benched Kerr because the coach decided the streak was getting too much publicity. Kerr was among the first NBA players to accumulate more than 10,000 points and 10,000 rebounds and was a three-time All-Star while playing in the same conference as Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell. Kerr was an executive with the ABA franchise that first signed Julius Erving and George Gervin and left to join the Bulls front office in 1975. He became a broadcasting color man shortly thereafter and the face of the Bulls on television, in public and in the broadcast booth for the next 35 years, a close friend with Michael Jordan who wrote a book about Jordan and who engaged with Jordan in his colorful pregame rituals. Kerr was one of the NBA’s most popular speakers and called upon by the league and the Bulls frequently as a toastmaster and host and league representative for his good humor and wit.
Chet Walker
He represented the renaissance of the original Bulls from an expansion curiosity to a serious championship contender and one of the most feared teams in the NBA with the Jerry Sloan/Norm Van Lier backcourt, Walker and Bob Love at forward and assists-minded Tom Boerwinkle at high post center. Walker was a main part of one of the great teams in NBA history, the 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers who set the record with 68 wins and broke the record championship winning streak of the Boston Celtics. The 6-7 forward in Philadelphia was a multiple All-Star and scoring sidekick for Wilt Chamberlain out of Bradley U. Though called Chet the Jet, Walker’s scoring style was deliberate with multiple fakes that rivaled that of Elgin Baylor. Trades and management changes ended the 76ers run, and when Pat Williams became Bulls general manager his first priority was to trade for Walker. Walker led a cellar-dwelling Bulls team after the initial expansion era excitement to respectability and excellence with his scoring. He became the team's closer and big shot maker. Only Jordan has more higher scoring games in franchise history than Walker’s 56. Walker was born in Mississippi, the 11th child of a sharecropper family who migrated to Michigan for auto industry work. He lived as a social champion working with Martin Luther King and retiring prematurely in a dispute over his right to have a say in his future. He was a part of the group that fought for NBA free agency in the Oscar Robinson suit. He moved to Los Angeles where he became an actor and Emmy award winning movie producer who worked on films with Muhammad Ali.
Artis Gilmore
Often regarded as the league’s strongest man, the taciturn 7-2 center came to the Bulls as the No. 1 pick in the ABA dispersal draft and was four times an All-Star in his six Bulls seasons. He was part of the team that coined the phrase the Madhouse on Madison Street for the run of the 1976-77 team that lost to the eventual champion Portland Trailblazers in the playoffs. Portland star center Bill Walton often said the Bulls series was their toughest on the way to the title. Facing the segregation and discrimination in the South, Gilmore attended junior college and then went to Jacksonville U., where they shocked the nation in the NCAA tournament before losing to John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty in the final game. Gilmore then basically provided credibility for the fledgling ABA in becoming the first true big man to play in the league that had bene populated by mostly smaller forwards. He was immediately ABA Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player over Julius Erving. He was an ABA All-Star game MVP, playoffs MVP and multiple times leader in rebounding and shooting. He led his Kentucky team to the 1975 ABA title. Two other times they lost in their finals. Gilmore was traded by the Bulls to San Antonio and twice was an All-Star with the Spurs before finishing his career in Europe where he again was an All-Star in Italy.
Dennis Rodman
No one has gone faster from a community’s Public Enemy No. 1 to America’s Sweetheart than Dennis Rodman with Chicago. Talk about a guy who wormed himself into their hearts. Like the transformational purity of putting on a wedding dress. The Detroit Pistons Bad Boy rebounding machine was a fierce rival of the charging pre-championship Bulls. And when the Bulls finally concluded a sweep of the dreaded Pistons in the 1991 playoffs, it was the 6-7 Rodman throwing Scottie Pippen into the stands, a fitting scene as the Bulls turned the other cheek and the defeated bullies slinked away in shame. Four years later amidst the tumult of Michael Jordan’s retirement and return and Rodman's seeming banishment from the game in San Antonio, it was Rodman saving the Bulls championship run. The lack of a power forward when Jordan returned doomed the Bulls until they acquired Rodman, who finished off seven consecutive seasons leading the league in rebounding for the three-time 1996-98 Bulls NBA champions. It further established Rodman as one of the greatest retrievers in basketball history. Previously a two-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year with the champion Pistons, Rodman was seven times first team all-defense including in 1996 with the Bulls. The Bulls and Rodman were a match made in basketball heaven since they needed one another so badly, the Bulls for Rodman’s floor ferocity and memorable defensive stands in the playoffs against Shaquille O’Neal and Karl Malone and Rodman the welcoming family he lost with his departure from Detroit and separation from coach Chuck Daly. The flamboyant Rodman who captivated the media and fans with his antics from professional wrestling to relationships with Hollywood stars was at heart a shy kid who needed a welcoming hug. The Bulls and coach Phil Jackson were there to provide it and Rodman reciprocated with the toughness and rebounding of a champion.
Toni Kukoč
The invaluable sixth man and frequent replacement for injured or suspended Dennis Rodman with the three-time champion Bulls from 1996 through 1998 arguably was the most talented player ever to come to the NBA from Europe. But after winning basically every Europe league award and multiple times with championships and MVPs of the regular season and playoffs and finals, the seven footer who was a magician with the ball joined a Bulls team that with Michael Jordan’s return had no starting jobs available. Before Jordan’s return, Kukoč even led the NBA as a rookie in game winning shots. And in Kukoč’s sophomore Bulls season, he was second behind Pippen as the team leader in scoring, rebounds and assists. But with no starting position and a need for a power forward, the point forward known as the waiter for the way he delivered to teammates sacrificed for the betterment of the Bulls and was a vital contributor to the championships and winner of the NBA Sixth Man award. Though in those three championship seasons Kukoč started almost 100 games for the Bulls and 22 playoff games. His playing style and abilities were similar to that of current Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic. But Kukoč was needed by the Bulls as a rebounder and spot and clutch shooter. Phil Jackson once said Kukoč was the only player at times he regretted not giving the last shot even when Jordan was playing. Kukoč was part of 11 championship teams in Europe and most valuable player in most of those leagues and tournaments. He was traded by the Bulls to the Philadelphia 76ers, where he was on the way to what seemed like the Finals in 2001 as the scoring mate for Allen Iverson before an injury to another 76ers player forced another trade that season to Atlanta. He finished his career playing in Milwaukee and became a Bulls franchise ambassador.
Tex Winter
Winter, GM Jerry Krause’s first hire when he became the Bulls chief basketball executive in 1985, was the premier practitioner of the triangle offense that Phil Jackson used and massaged to lead the Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers to 11 championships with Winter by his side for the first nine. The coaching centric Winter was a basketball savant for decades before that playing at USC with future championship coaches Alex Hannum and Bill Sharman where they studied the famed offense under originator Sam Barry. Then as Tex was an all-American pole vaulter at USC and previously an Olympics rival of the famed Bob Richards in 1944 before the war cancelled those games. Even in high school Winter worked for celebrated coach Pete Newell. Winter became a Navy test pilot and then became the youngest college head coach in the nation at 24 at Marquette and later a strategic genius at Kansas State where his less regarded team knocked out Oscar Robertson and mighty Cincinnati in the NCAA tournament and in a famed rival in-state game for when only one conference team went to the tournament denied Kansas and Wilt Chamberlain a chance to go, thus helping lead to Chamberlain’s eventual decision to leave college early. Winter also coached the University of Washington, Long Beach State, Northwestern and the Houston Rockets before joining the Bulls. Winter was such a serious student of the game that in one famous incident when the Bulls team plane hit a pocket and dived and the oxygen masks were deployed, Winter kept pushing his mask to the side since it blocked the screen where he was studying opponent plays.
Dick Klein
Klein was basically the inventor of the Bulls and the incubator for the fighting spirit the franchise came to represent and produce in its infancy as Klein from the start described the team he envisioned—and eventually named—as tough, physical, and unrelenting, transcending its expectations much like he did as a small town kid from southeast Iowa. The size of an offensive lineman, Klein was a natural athlete who was one of the Big 10’s leading scorers playing basketball at Northwestern while at the same time dabbling in professional baseball as a pitcher in the Cleveland Indians organization. After serving in World War II, he played basketball professionally for the Chicago American Gears of the ABL and minor league baseball. When the basketball league folded and George Mikan was gone from Chicago, Klein set up a successful sales promotion business. But his dream was the NBA. He tried to purchase the Packers/Zephyrs in 1963, but they moved to Baltimore. The NBA wasn’t particularly sanguine about Chicago with the demise of the American Gears, then the Chicago Stags and the Packers/Zephrys escaping Chicago after two seasons because of continued fan disinterest. Klein persisted even as the NBA remained reluctant to give Chicago another chance. Klein with his Chicago business contacts recruited a group of investors who were some of the wealthiest people in the nation like Dan Searle, and Lamar Hunt. Recognizing the possibilities, the NBA tripled the proposed expansion price from about $500,000 to $1.6 million. Klein still met it and beat out offers from Pittsburgh and Cleveland. The league’s board of governors agreed in a January, 1966 session to add Chicago. Klein first tried to lure Ray Meyer from DePaul before hiring Tilden High School’s Johnny Kerr as coach. Klein also hired for marketing a former Illinois basketball player, Jerry Colangelo. Klein being a basketball junkie named himself general manager like Jerry Jones is with the Dallas Cowboys these days. Though Klein was not the majority owner of the team. Klein hired Weber State U. coach Dick Motta to replace Kerr, and Motta eventually led a revolt with the owners to push out Klein and become general manager and coach. Klein eventually scouted in Phoenix for his former staffer, Colangelo.
1995-96 Team
The 1995-96 Bulls were the greatest sports team in American history. This is frequently debated and impossible to verify or prove with candidates ranging from the Boston Celtics with 11 titles in 13 years, the 1980s Larry Bird Celtics and Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Los Angeles Lakers, Philadelphia 76ers teams in 1983 and 1967 or a 33-wins-straight Lakers teams. Not mentioning New York Knicks of the 1970s and San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat of recent vintage. But no team in NBA history, if not all of sports and perhaps even worldwide, captured the public consciousness like that nearly unbeatable 1995-96 Bulls team. Forget even the record 72-10 and then steaming through the playoffs as it did to start at 14-1 with the only loss in overtime. The Bulls eased off the pedal then to finish the inevitable Finals in six games. But there never was anything like it nor will there ever be for public acclaim and fascination with the player most widely regarded as the game’s greatest and the figure often deemed the most bizarre and mystifying. This was more than a basketball team. It was a must-see happening. No team ever has drawn stares and attention like that Bulls team. There was the unique conjunction of Michael Jordan’s fame, Scottie Pippen’s flair and Dennis Rodman’s fatuity. They were a cultural touchstone in the original definition of transcending all that came before. And to sprinkle into that mix some of the spicy ingredients like the man to become the winningest coach ever, Phil Jackson, with the penchant for unconventional methods of coaching and motivation. There was also Toni Kukoč, regarded as one of the most talented and celebrated players ever to come out of Europe, and a pastiche of handymen to help shoot, rebound and help produce the greatest show in sneakers.
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