Johnny Red Kerr

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Bulls.com

CHICAGO – Today, the Chicago Bulls named the inaugural class for the organization’s new Ring of Honor, which will recognize and celebrate past players, coaches and front office staff who made outstanding contributions and helped define the organization throughout its history. The Bulls will celebrate the first class, which includes 13 individuals and the 1995-96 team, with several events in January including a halftime presentation during the Bulls game against the Golden State Warriors on January 12 and a private gala at the United Center on January 11, both proudly presented by Magellan Corporation. Fans will be able to engage with the Ring of Honor through a United Center atrium experience that will be open to the public from January 10 through January 12, as well as a website that will launch in early January.&nbsp;

“The Chicago Bulls Ring of Honor will be a first-of-its-kind celebration honoring many of the legends who have helped shaped our organization over the past 57 years,” said Michael Reinsdorf, president and chief executive officer. “They have deep connections to our fans and community and represent a spirit of competition, hard work, and toughness.&nbsp; This January, we look forward to cementing their legacy in Bulls history and inspiring the future of our organization.”&nbsp;&nbsp;

The Bulls will add to the Ring of Honor every two years with the next class being inducted in 2026.&nbsp;

The inaugural class includes 13 individual Bulls legends and one team: Artis Gilmore, Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan, Johnny “Red” Kerr, Dick Klein, Jerry Krause, Toni Kukoc, Bob Love, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Jerry Sloan, Chet Walker, Tex Winter, and the 1995-96 team, which went 72-10 and won the 1996 NBA Championship.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The Bulls will honor the following players, coaches and staff from the 1995-96 team:&nbsp;&nbsp;

Chicago Bulls Ring of Honor Selection Criteria&nbsp;&nbsp;

Chicago Bulls Ring of Honor honorees must all meet a set of criteria:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

For the first class, in addition to the general evaluation criteria, all individual players have been honored by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame or have had their retirement banners raised at the United Center.&nbsp;&nbsp;

To learn more and sign up for updates, please visit Bulls.com/RingofHonor. To buy tickets for the January 12 game, please visit Bulls.com/tickets.&nbsp;&nbsp;

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Chicago Bulls Launch Ring of Honor and Announce Inaugural Class

chidmoriarty

It was the day Chicago died; Chicago basketball, anyway.

It was 10 years ago today, February 26, when Johnny Kerr and Norm Van Lier died the same day, Kerr after a mostly suffering-on-the-inside extended battle with cancer and Van Lier, paradoxically the man with the biggest heart, suddenly from heart failure. They were never basketball champions here, perhaps other than Kerr in his prep days at Tilden Technical High School. They really weren’t the most identified with Chicago basketball like Michael Jordan for the Bulls championships along with Phil Jackson, and even Jerry Sloan for his blue collar ethic.

Though perhaps what distinguished Kerr and Van Lier more than any was the way they never left, unlike so many others who flourished and succeeded here and then moved on. Look, Chicago is not the greatest city. It’s a city we love, but it’s a tough city, which perhaps is why we treasure it so much more. Heck, even on the best day of its reputation it’s only moved up to Second City.

Chicago is cold and unforgiving, a shoulders back and head down trudge into an unrelenting storm that’s only sometimes weather related. They called Van Lier, Stormin’, and he was like that, similarly unwelcoming and inexorable when it came to opponents. He was bundled up against the cold rejection of outsiders and the disappointments we all faced and yet kept moving straight ahead. Norm wasn’t that highly regarded, but no one wanted to upset him. Sort of the way we feel here. Overlook us; but beware about ignoring us.

Johnny was our lighter side, easy going and welcoming, but endlessly reliable and as broad shouldered as he was soft of heart. Johnny as the original ironman of basketball, establishing the first serious games played streak of 844 consecutive regular season that extended basically his entire career. That in an era when, forget first class, sometimes they couldn’t even afford the airplane and rode trains. Sure it was hard, but you punched the time clock because that was your responsibility to yourself, your family and your community. That, too, was John and Norm.

Life, as we often learn painfully, keeps rolling by like the farmscapes outside those railroad windows John and his teammates often watched. It can be relentless and cruel. It often was for both Johnny and Norm, tragic family fatalities, Johnny having to shed the tears of a clown, crying only when no one was around, Norm’s a life long struggle against the forces of hate, denial and class without ever losing the song in his soul. That they died on the same day mirrors in some sense American’s loss of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams dying on the same day, exactly 50 years to the day after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

It was a symbolic loss for the young United States. The death of Johnny and Norm the same day in 2009 was, similarly, a marker for the first generation of Chicago basketball.

It didn’t start with Jordan. It started with Kerr and matured with Van Lier because they embodied the city as well as the game with their commitment and loyalty. Johnny played here in high school, Downstate in college and around the NBA for a dozen years until returning to midwife Chicago’s NBA history that was given up as stillborn. His 1966 expansion Bulls remain the only such team ever to make the playoffs with John coach of the year. The runner-up was the coach who led his team to the then record most wins in a season, Alex Hannum with the 76ers who were 68-13. Big Red, as he was affectionally known, would go on to work as a Bulls executive and then a beloved team broadcaster and virtual face of the franchise for three decades. Norm would similarly work as a broadcaster after a frenzied decade as an All-Star point guard and the Sugar Ray Robinson of the NBA, the toughest pound for pound. Maybe, like Chicago, others were more accomplished and famous. But few as respected.

Chicago really is about staying with it, absorbing the defeat and not so much accepting it, but fighting back against it and despite all of those saying to quit, to leave, you know the weather and all that other stuff, to stand right there and take another whack at it. That’s what Johnny and Norm were about.

Perhaps one day they’ll be immortalized among those banners that speak about winners. Maybe when the All-Stars alight in Chicago next year, though they’ll always be the highest in our regard.

Norm Van Lier and Johnny Kerr didn’t hold up championship trophies here; they lifted up a city and its game.

Norm Van Lier - NBA all-defense 8x, top 10 in assists 8x, top 10 in steals 3x

You knew Norm was a football player growing up. He came from that fierce steel and coal mining area of western Pennsylvania, the home of the likes of Mike Ditka, George Blanda, Johnny Lujack, Joe Namath, Dan Marino, Joe Montana and Johnny Unitas. It was colloquially known as the Cradle of Quarterbacks. Norm played safety and quarterback; he also played baseball and basketball and was good enough to be scouted by the pros in all three sports. Football was first there, and he had scholarships offers. He insisted he play his best position, quarterback; no, defense, he was told. Black kids were not considered bright enough for quarterback in those days. The heck with you then. Norm, whose business card could have read “Take this Job and Shove it,” went to play basketball at St. Francis College in Loretto, Pa.

Norm was barely six feet tall and maybe 165 pounds, all full court dive and chest to chest defense. A quirky Bulls scout who liked to hang out at those small college gyms named Jerry Krause found Van Lier and the Bulls drafted him in the third round in 1969. The Bulls shipped him off to Cincinnati for a big man, Walt Wesley, and Norm went on to lead the league in assists in 1971. But the Royals got future Hall of Famer Nate Archibald and had some other guards like John Mengelt and Matt Guokas. So the Bulls quickly recognized their mistake and reacquired Van Lier early in the 1971-72 season. Van Lier went on to team with Jerry Sloan as if not the most celebrated — and each did make multiple All-Star teams — the most feared backcourt in the NBA.

The Bulls talked about doberman defense in the title years. Sports Illustrated was calling Norm a doberman in the 70s. The bites of Sloan and Van Lier were often more literal.

They actually asked Sloan first before the Bulls required Van Lier since the two had already had a few fights, and some more even after Van Lier again became a teammate. Sloan said anyone who played that hard was his kind of teammate.

Sloan often delighted in the story of the time some fans threw aerosol cans at he and Norm at a road game. Sloan said he and Norm went into the stands and explained that wasn’t something they particularly appreciated. That never occurred again. Norm in one notorious incident became famous for chasing Sidney Wicks, then with Portland and throwing some mean elbows, around the arena with a chair. Bulls coach Dick Motta had said afterward he knew once Norm grabbed the chair it wasn’t going to be for sitting. Norm didn’t make contact, but no one would mess with him after that. The league’s celebrated guards, Walt Frazier and Jerry West, long complained how much they resented playing against the Chicago ruffians. Didn’t you know who they were? Norm, instead, taunted West and Gail Goodrich as the Hollywood stars who didn’t care to face the Midwestern chill.

Though Norm was more than a human floor burn. His game could rock and roll and he was a fixture in the Chicago music scene, at times a guest disc jockey and a Rolling Stones favorite who knew the blues as well as any. It was the other side of his life, an anti-war, black activist in an era when that was not only unpopular, but demeaned as just being an “angry back man.” Norm played defense, but refused to just be on defense in life. His game was defense, but he took offense to the slights, shuns and snubs. And he said so. Not to diminish the social activism of players in this era, for everyone should claim their equal rights at any time. But Norm did so at risk of his livelihood, and he insisted it remained the obstacle to a coaching career he long was denied.

He made three All-Stars teams for the Bulls in that wonderful and unfulfilled early 1970s run of averaging 50 wins over five years, and a hiccup of near immortality in 1977 when they had the eventual champion Trailblazers on the ropes and almost out in the first round playoff series. Bill Walton always said they knew they’d win the title once they got past those Bulls.

Norm wasn’t the big scorer. That was left for Chet Walker and Bob Love in Motta’s unconventional forward dominated offense. But it was Norm with 28 points and what was believed to be a record 10 steals before it was an official statistic when the Bulls were seconds away from taking out Wilt’s Lakers in the 1973 playoffs. Wilt later said Norm’s play was as tough as he’d ever seen in that fiery environment.

Norm was NBA all-defense eight times, top 10 in assists eight times, top 10 in steals three times, and only because the six or seven times he also would have been it wasn’t a statistic. He was wearing Bulls on his sleeve long before anyone thought to wear it across their chest. He could have been considered for the Hall of Fame if he played closer to Springfield.

Norm played Rush Street as fiercely. With charges taken and loose balls retrieved, Norm was on the floor more than the Bulls logo. The Bulls had to add furniture repair to a trainer for all the scorers’ tables Norm damaged flying into the stands. Painkillers were handed out like Skittles then to keep the players in the game, Norm averaging about 78 games per season and missing games only after a preseason salary holdout.

Norm didn’t miss games or a chance to fight for what was equitable.

It probably kept him out of coaching when teammates like Weiss, Guokas and Sloan all became NBA head coaches with sometimes limited results. Norm didn’t hesitate; they were white, he noted. But Norm’s anger and bitterness mixed with a welcoming and cheerful personality. He was the first guy to knock you down and the first to invite you to the party.

He left Chicago for a few years in the 80s after a few stints in minor league and prep coaching, kicking around the West with some constriction and sales work before landing back in Chicago as a radio and TV and pre and post game host on Bulls games. Long before the TV show Cheers, Chicago knew well the greeting of “Norm!” He was welcome in everyone’s home, where everyone knew his name.

Norm’s demands for “48 minutes of intensity” became legendary, like when Miami’s James Posey took cheap shot at Kirk Hinrich in a  playoff game and it was Norm the broadcaster who went after him to fight.

You don’t get away with going after one of ours.

Johnny Red Kerr - Player, All-Star, Coach, General Manager, Broadcaster

Johnny Kerr is mostly known as the gregarious toastmaster of Chicago basketball, the man famously calling Michael Jordan’s 1989 game winner in Cleveland, fending off Jordan’s pregame resin spray and if you’ve ever been to charity summer golf tournaments or on the El to Comiskey’s Guaranteed Rate Park, you knew the big guy with the formerly red hair, the NBA’s first iron man with the cotton candy heart.

Johnny also is arguably the most overlooked for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and one of the great winners of the game. Johnny was a Chicago kid, 67th and Racine, 16-inch softball at Ogden Park, a round of beers and the hopes of getting a job in a foundry. John’s humor was self deprecating. He said they asked him about getting to know Chaucer when he got to the U. of Illinois. He said he hadn’t yet, but assumed he’d meet him at a frat party.

John played neighborhood soccer until well into high school when they noticed he was kind of tall. He took to basketball quickly enough to lead Tilden to the public league title, then Illinois to the Final Four and in his rookie season in the NBA the Syracuse Nationals to the NBA title. He made the All-Star team three times even playing in the same conference with Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell. He was an All-Star playing almost a third of his games each season against probably the game’s best centers.

Johnny at 6-9 was a unique big man ball handler for that era, his behind the back, between the legs passes a center version of Bob Cousy in his team’s motion game with him at the high post. He never missed a game until his final season when traded to Baltimore, getting a DNP from the coach despite not being injured. The coach said the streak was a distraction.

Johnny became one of the few players in the first 50 years of the NBA to average a double/double and have more than 10,000 points and 10,000 rebounds to not be in the Hall of Fame. What a party that would be, he’d say about getting the recognition.

Like Norm, like the Second City, Johnny, too, often was overlooked, though not without a quip and a smile and a welcome for everyone. There never was a bad day around Johnny Kerr.

They asked him how he would have guarded Kareem. Breathe on his goggles, Johnny explained, Abdul-Jabbar then wearing goggles after being poked in the eyes so often in an era of somewhat unrestrained physical play. Johnny said he’d call his biography, 12 years in the post without the ball. He said he was so slow they called three seconds on him when he was driving for a layup. He said he was proud when he set the record for most consecutive games. And then he said a friend called to tell him he was just 1,286 games behind Gehrig. The poorest teams in each conference used to have a coin flip for the top draft pick. Johnny was coaching the Phoenix Suns at the time with his then former administrative assistant with the Bulls, Jerry Colangelo. The No. 1 pick was to be Abdul-Jabbar. No. 2 would be Neal Walk. The Suns lost the flip and Colangelo slumped, head in hands. Maybe they’ll pick Walk, Johnny suggested brightly.

But life, as we know, isn’t one sunny day, and Johnny experienced the clouds and storms perhaps as intense as any.

When John was three, his father, a meatpacker in the stockyards from Scotland, died. John’s son, Jay, died at three years old of meningitis. He and his wife, Betsy, were next of kin for Betsy’s sister’s children. Betsy’s sister and her husband died and John and Betsy took in the three children with their five. It was the true eight is not enough.

John was the first Bulls coach in 1966, taking a team from the city known as the graveyard of pro basketball and helping make it a community shrine. John moved onto Phoenix and then the ABA in Virginia, where as general manager he picked up a couple of talented kids the NBA had ignored, Julius Erving and George Gervin. John came back to the Bulls as business manager after Pat Williams was forced out by Motta, who also wanted to be general manager. And then John got on TV and never stopped talking and smiling and rooting for the Bulls.

No one ever suggested John Kerr was two faced, but life is never just a party.

John never spoke about it much, but when the All-Star game was in Chicago in 1988, Johnny was doing the radio broadcast and we talked about those difficult times after the death of his son.

"It really hit us hard,” he related then. “I didn't know what I wanted to do. Should I quit basketball? You always pick up the paper and read 'Boy, 3, falls out of window' and you say, 'That's terrible,' and you wet your thumb and turn the page and say that'll never happen to you. And then one day you're one of those people, and I wish I could say you grow up in a hurry, but you don't. It's something I can talk about now. But I couldn't for a long time. Alex Hannum was our coach at the time, and we had some strong conversations. He said: 'What are you going to do with your life? Are you going to be a man and a father or quit, be a coward?' I told him he couldn't talk to me in my house like that. To step outside.

"But the key was to go on for the other kids,” Johnny said then. “I think somewhere along the line it helped Betsy and me solidify the bond we had. It made our love for each other stronger. Sure, I've gone through a lot of things in my life, and I guess there's a little of the Pagliacci there. People sometimes expect for you to have a smile on your face. 'Hey, Red, tell us a story.' Don't get me wrong. I'm a gregarious person, and I love people.  But sometimes you have problems. I'll tell someone I really hurt my arm today. And he'll tell me a story about some friend who broke his collarbone. And I'll tell someone about getting my car door hit in the parking lot, and he'll tell me about a friend of his who was in a head-on collision. Sometimes you just want to say: 'Pay attention to me. Listen to my problems.' “

We miss Johnny and Norm because of who they were. But also because of who we are in Chicago, committed to the game and to the team. It’s not easy and often not satisfying. The glamour isn’t as common as the task. They’re guys who showed up less for the parade than the project. They were about loyalty, passion, stamina, resilience, from a city more known for its response to a great conflagration than great excess. We all cried. It was the day Chicago basketball died. But it also was a day to remember two men who never would let up because they never could. They were the best of Chicago.

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Johnny "Red" Kerr & Norm Van Lier - Loyalty, Passion, Stamina, Resilience

Coaches come in all shapes, sizes, dispositions and backgrounds. Some are ex-players who never wanted to leave the game, while others might not have been great athletes, yet make-up wise they are as competitive as any 10-time All-Star.

Over the years the Chicago Bulls have hired all kinds of coaches. Current headmaster Fred Hoiberg is the team's 19th head coach since the franchise's inception dating to the start of the 1966-67 season.

In this series, we'll take a look at each of the men who have served as Head Coach of the Chicago Bulls.

John Graham "Red" Kerr was born on July 17, 1932 in Chicago. An affable ginger-haired Scotsman, Kerr grew to be 6'9" and approximately 230 pounds in his prime. He was a three-time NBA All-Star during a stellar 12-year playing career that included one of the longest consecutive-game streaks in the history of professional sports. As a coach he guided the first Bulls team, twice led the club to the playoffs and was named the NBA's Coach of the Year in 1967. He later became the first Head Coach of the Phoenix Suns, and eventually he was a radio and TV broadcaster for both the Suns and the Bulls. But despite a lifetime of basketball achievement, Kerr is probably remembered least for his wins and losses than for his remarkable wit and funny one-liners.

For example, on the topic of superstitions: "When you coach expansion teams how superstitious can you get?" he once said. "I used to like to tell people, ‘I'm wearing my lucky suit today. Why is it lucky? Well, we lost by only six points the last time I had it on.'"

Kerr was not only quick with a quip but quick with success when it came to basketball. He won titles in his first year of playing at every level: high school, college, and pro. At Chicago's Tilden Tech, he grew eight inches in his senior year, switched from playing soccer to basketball, and led his team to the city championship. At the University of Illinois, he helped the Fighting Illini win the Big Ten Conference Championship in 1952 (unfortunately the Illini eventually lost to St. John's at the NCAA Final Four).

The Syracuse Nationals selected Kerr in the first round of the 1954 NBA Draft. In his rookie season he joined future Hall of Famers Dolph Schayes and Earl Lloyd, as well as perennial All-Stars Paul Seymour and Ephraim "Red" Rocha to lead the team the league's Eastern Division crown. The Nats then rolled over the Boston Celtics and the Fort Wayne Pistons to capture the Nats' only NBA Championship while calling Syracuse home (the Nationals later became the Philadelphia 76ers in 1963).

Kerr spent 11 of his 12 pro seasons with the franchise — nine in Syracuse, two in Philadelphia — before playing his final year with the Baltimore Bullets.

Often overshadowed by the more prolific Schayes, Kerr, in truth, was the Nats' steadiest of forces. He averaged double figures in scoring for 10 straight seasons, beginning with his rookie campaign. He also pulled down more than 12 rebounds per game in eight straight seasons (1956-1964), with a high of 14.7 boards per game in 1961-62.

The one remarkable aspect of his otherwise workmanlike career was his ownership of the most blue-collar of all records, most consecutive games played. For 11 straight years, Johnny Kerr played in every single game. He never even missed a playoff contest, either, although those games didn't figure into his official ironman tally. In his final pro season, at the age 33 — ancient by early NBA standards — Johnny finally failed to take to the hardwood one evening, snapping a consecutive-games streak of 844. What's more remarkable than the length of that streak is the way it ended.

Syracuse Nats' Johnny Kerr soars towards the basket

In his final season with Baltimore, he was being coached by one of his former teammates with the Champion Nats, Paul Seymour. Seymour decided on his own that Kerr's consecutive-games streak was a distraction to his team (the Bullets were 3-7 at the time), so he benched Johnny for a night. So, in truth, there was no reason Kerr couldn't have started and played in that November 5, 1965, game against Boston for which he got his first ever DNP-CD. The streak did not have to end, and rightfully could have stretched throughout the rest of the season, ending at 914 straight games. Essentially Johnny Kerr could have ended a highly successful playing career having pitched a perfect game, playing in every contest for a dozen straight seasons.

Afterwards Kerr claimed he didn't have any regrets about the streak, saying only that he "hated to have it broken that way." In fact it was his lovely wife, Betsy Kerr, who had nursed Johnny through any number of breaks, bruises and dings all those years, who was most furious.

"Oh boy! I had to hold her back. Betsy wanted to punch Seymour right in the nose," Kerr use to joke of his late wife.

The Bulls entered the NBA at the start of the 1966-67 season after Chicago had experienced decades of disappointment with a number of other professional basketball teams.

"Chicago use to be home to the Stags, the American Gears, the Packers and the Zephyrs," Kerr reminisced years later. "So after Dick Klein (the Bulls original team owner) was allowed by the league to start the Bulls, he felt he needed to hire a Chicago legend to coach — and that "legend" wasn't me. He went after Ray Meyer. But Ray didn't have any interest in leaving DePaul for something as iffy as an NBA expansion franchise. Thank god for that because afterwards Klein then called me.

Shown from left to right: Dick Klein, Al Bianchi, and Johnny Kerr

"I thought my interview went pretty good. Klein asked what kind of team I wanted to coach, and I told him I wanted one that could run up and down the court and play defense. I thought that sounded pretty smart — besides what coach doesn't want a team that can run and play defense?"

Kerr, who had been making $30,000 a year as a player in his final season wanted the Bulls job so much he agreed to accept a base salary of $15,000, which could go up to $20,000 if the team won 25 games, and $25,000 if they won 30.

"It definitely was a gamble," Kerr admitted. "I had a wife and four young kids at home. We were also trying hard to sell the idea that the Bulls were something different, something better, to a city that didn't seem to care at all."

After Kerr was tabbed to be Chicago's first head coach, he hired close friend Al Bianchi to be his assistant. Longtime friend and fellow former Fighting Illini Jerry Colangelo was also part of the team's front office that year. Together, Colangelo and Kerr played pickup games during the summer against some of the Bulls' top draft choices and weren't all that encouraged by the results.

"Johnny and I didn't lose a game," Colangelo, who currently is a special advisor to the Philadelphia 76ers as well as the Managing Director of the United States Men's Basketball Team (Team USA) and Chairman of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, recently recalled with a chuckle. "We knew we were in trouble."

Kerr struggled through the bumpy days of an expansion team in his typical outgoing style. In the midst of a long losing streak, he attempted to pump up his team with a pregame speech. He told forward Bob Boozer to pretend that night that he was the NBA's best scorer. He then turned his attention to guard Jerry Sloan and instructed him to pretend he was the best defensive player the NBA had ever seen. He then said to Guy Rodgers he needed to pretend he was the NBA's top point guard and that nobody could stop him. Lastly he told Chicago's undersized starting center, Erwin Mueller, to pretend he was a rebounding machine and that Bill Russell, Boston's future Hall of Fame pivot, needed to take lessons from Mueller on how to play the position.

"That night we played the Celtics at the Boston Garden — giant green banners hanging everywhere — and we lost by 17 points," Kerr recalled many years later. "I was down and pacing around the locker room afterward, trying to figure out what to say to the guys when Mueller walked up to me, put his arm around my shoulder and said to everyone in the locker room, ‘Don't worry about it, coach. Just pretend we won.'"

As the season went on Kerr didn't always have to pretend, as the Bulls fought their way to a respectable 33-48 regular-season record, earning a berth to the playoffs. He was then named the league's Coach of the Year. His work that season also helped establish a sturdy foundation for a fledgling franchise that would eventually wind up being one of the NBA's very best.

The following year Kerr had to coach without the help of his friend, Al Bianchi, because Bianchi jumped at the opportunity to be the first head coach of the expansion Seattle SuperSonics. He also had to do without Guy Rodgers, who had been an All-Star with the Bulls that first season. Klein was under great deal of financial pressure from his partners, so in an effort to cut expenses he traded Rodgers to Cincinnati during the opening week of the season. Chicago's inaugural starting small forward, Don Kojis, was also out of the picture as the Bulls lost him to the San Diego Rockets in the expansion draft.

The Bulls went on to lose 15 of their first 16 games that second season, which certainly didn't help at the gate. Crowds consisted of as little as 1,000 fans inside the team's new home, the 18,000 seat Chicago Stadium. The small turnouts and the lack of a rabid fan base also made some members of Klein's ownership group even more nervous, and soon some began to talk about cutting their losses and selling the team, which led to a great deal of friction. Kerr and Klein were also seemingly at odds a lot at that time, as Klein often would draw up plays during games and pass them along to Kerr on the bench. Yet somehow the team rebounded and began to turn things around, winning seven of 10 during a stretch in late November to lift themselves back into the playoff race. Boozer led the Bulls in scoring that season, averaging 21.5 points and was named to the All-Star team. Chicago ended the year with a 29-53 mark, and believe it or not, made it back to the playoffs, thanks largely to the presence of the league's two new expansion teams (Seattle and San Diego).

The Bulls drew the Lakers in the opening round and kept the first two games respectable, dropping Game 1 in LA, 109-101, and Game 2, 111-106. They then came back home and posted the franchise's first ever playoff victory, 104-98, behind 41 points from Flynn Robinson, the player the Bulls received from Cincinnati for Rodgers earlier that season.

The Lakers then switched future Hall of Famer Jerry West onto Robinson for the next two contests, shutting down him down, and went on to win 93-87 and 122-99 to claim the series in five games.

The opportunity then presented itself for Kerr and Klein to agree to part ways, with Kerr deciding to join Colangelo in helping start up another new NBA franchise — the Phoenix Suns in 1968.

Phoenix staggered to a 16-66 record in their first season, and if that wasn't enough aggravation, they also lost a coin flip to the Milwaukee Bucks for the No. 1 overall pick and the opportunity to draft Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). After starting 15-23 the following year, Colangelo felt pressure from ownership to relieve Kerr from his coaching duties and take over the Suns' reins himself.

Michael Jordan jumps on top of the table where Johnny Kerr is announcing the game from

Kerr eventually found his true calling as a broadcaster, beginning a lengthy career as a radio and TV color analyst, first with the Suns and then after a couple of brief stints running the rival ABA Virginia Squires, and rejoining the Bulls as the team's business manager. By the start of the 1977-78 season, Kerr was back on the air for good where he became as much a Chicago staple as the teams he covered. In fact he called every single game of franchise icon Michael Jordan's career, and would continue to working the mic all the way through the end of the 2007-08 season.

In 2009, during a halftime ceremony celebrating Kerr's life and tenure with the team, the Bulls unveiled a bust of Kerr that currently stands inside the United Center. During that same ceremony, Kerr was also presented with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame's prestigious John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award by his old friend, Jerry Colangelo.

A couple of weeks later, on February 26, 2009, Johnny Kerr passed away due to prostate cancer, just a few hours after it had been announced earlier that day that fellow Bulls legend, Norm Van Lier, had died from a heart attack.

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Bench Bosses

Sam Smith

The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Friday at the All-Star weekend festivities in Toronto completed its 2016 list and disclosed the 14 finalists for election in the Class of ‘2016, highlighted by Shaquille O’Neal, Allen Iverson and Michigan State coach Tom Izzo.

They’ll find out if they are to be Hall of Famers this year when the final results are revealed April 4 at the Final Four in Houston.

Also learning whether they’ll be enshrined in the Hall of Fame then are former Bulls and team ambassador Toni Kukoc, the late Bulls broadcaster and first Bulls coach Johnny Kerr, former Bulls general manager Jerry Krause and Bulls managing partner Jerry Reinsdorf.

The Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. quietly changed its eligibility rules last December to shortened the waiting period by a year. That made O’Neal eligible this year along with former Houston Rockets All-Star Yao Ming.

Yao became eligible in the so called “direct elect” category in international nominations. Kukoc is in that category as well with Yao the favorite to be elected this year. That international group of nominees includes former NBA players like Vlade Divac and Dino Radja. The direct-elects means one nominee will be named from that group in the April 4 announcement.

There also are direct-elects for Contributor and Veterans committees.

Loyola of Chicago, which won the 1963 NCAA championship in a game considered historic for its crack at racial barriers against Mississippi State, is among the nominees in the Veterans Committee. Others in that group include NBA and ABA stars like Zelmo Beaty, Joe Caldwell, Mack Calvin, Lou Hudson, Kenny Sailors, Jim Loscutoff, Kenny Sears, Dick Van Ardsdale and Tom Van Ardsdale, Charlie Scott, Willie Naulls and Bevo Francis.

Reinsdorf, Krause and Kerr are in the direct-elect contributor category along with a group that includes broadcaster Marv Albert, Curt Gowdy, Marty Glickman, Marty Blake, Viv Bubas, Red Klotz, Billy Packer, Donnie Walsh, Jim Valvano, Johnny Most and Al Attles.

The Hall of Fame also announced the John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement award for former Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and the Cury Gowdy media awards in broadcasting to Jay Bilas of ESPN and David Aldridge of TNT and formerly the Washington Post.

Other finalists for enshrinement include NBA official Darrell Garretson, NAIA coach John McLendon, former Maryland coach Lefty Driesell, Texas high school coach Robert Hughes, former Suns player and Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, Eddie Sutton from Oklahoma State and Bo Ryan from Wisconsin. Women’s committee finalists include Texas high school coach Leta Andrews, Muffet McGraw from Notre Dame, WNBA player Sheryl Swoopes and currently Loyola of Chicago and Wayland Baptist U.

kukoc-reinsdorf-krause-and-red-kerr-on-hall-of-fame-list

Kukoc, Reinsdorf, Krause, and "Red" Kerr on Hall of Fame list

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