Although he didn’t draft Michael Jordan himself, when Jerry Krause took over the Chicago Bulls front office just one season later, he immediately made sure the team turned in a new direction.
It’s well known that Krause once said that when he came to the team as GM, it was “Jordan and 11 guys he didn’t want”. And while in the years to come he would slowly build the coaching and player puzzle piece by piece, his very first move turned out to be crucial.
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Winter was the first move Krause ever made for the Bulls
The first acquisition he made was Tex Winter, a coach previously known for his college work, with a short NBA stint with the Houston Rockets, where he had a losing record of 51-78 over three seasons.
Still, Krause was convinced that the future would be built on Winter’s coaching knowledge as an assistant.
Phil Jackson, who also came in as a relatively unknown coach, started absorbing everything Winter had to offer, even while he was still an assistant.
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“Phil saw the advantages of the triangle right away,” Krause said on “The Vertical Podcast with Woj”. “He saw what I saw. And he started picking Tex’s brain. They would eat together, sit next to each other on airplanes and talk. I saw a developmental thing there. I’ve never seen a brain picked better than Tex Winter’s brain picked by Phil Jackson. He picked that brain until there was nothing left. He got everything out of the coach there could be gotten.”
Collins was fired because of disagreements with Winter
Let’s take a step back.
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Krause never planned for Winter to be the head coach, but he knew how much he could contribute as an assistant. That’s why it was important for the head coach to share the same vision as Winter. When Doug Collins was hired, it was actually Winter who went to Arizona College and spent three days with him, even though Collins had no previous head coach experience.
Later, Collins eventually shut Winter out once the team started winning, believing he was interfering too much. Krause already sensed that even though the team was winning, his vision wasn’t going in the right direction.
In the season when the Bulls reached the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in 15 years, Krause told Jerry Reinsdorf halfway through the year that Collins should be fired because he couldn’t get along with Winter. During that time, Jackson, who was in charge of the team’s defensive schemes, was, as Krause said, soaking up every second spent with Winter.
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That dynamic didn’t go unnoticed by Krause.
The rest is history as Jackson became the most successful coach in league history with 11 titles, six with the Bulls and five with the Los Angeles Lakers. The rosters changed, but the triangle offense, the system conceptualized by Winter, remained.
Krause had a vision from the start
Jerry maneuvered a move that changed the league forever, the night before the 1987 draft, when he managed to steal Scottie Pippen from the Sacramento Kings at the last moment. He later brought in Phil after he had been rejected for a Chicago job interview when nobody else in the league wanted him.
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Krause even convinced Toni Kukoc to leave a much better contract in Europe, where he had both money and superstar status, to come to Chicago for less money and a bench role. Krause made countless great moves, but the first one, hiring Winter, was the foundation for all six championships.
If it hadn’t been for his vision of the triangle offense as the system that would take the Bulls to the top, he might never have fired Collins and we might not be talking today about Jackson as the greatest coach of all time, or the Bulls as the greatest team ever.
Still, Krause was persistent and ultimately executed his vision from the very first day he accepted Reinsdorf’s call.
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This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Oct 13, 2025, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.