Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook

Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.

Former Chicago Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations Jerry Krause was pilloried in the press for saying on Oct. 2, 1997, as the team's second three-title run was in full swing, "Players don't win championships; organizations win championships." Don't you mean, having Michael Jordan on your team wins championships?

Actually, what he said was, "players and coaches alone don't win championships; organizations win championships." But Krause was a fat, arrogant prick who didn't kiss the sports media's just-as-ample behind, and a fat, arrogant prick who ran Jordan and Coach Phil Jackson out of town so he could assert his own general managerial brilliance. So the more damning quote stuck.

Whatever he said, matchups like Super Bowl XXXIX prove Krause was right. Organizations do win championships. At the least, organizations sure as hell can lose them.

NFL analyst-types scratch their heads over the fact that in the era of a hard salary cap, the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles can consistently be in title contention. After all, aren't free agency and its requisite player movement supposed to kill rosters? In addition, don't teams like this year's San Diego Chargers and Atlanta Falcons go from worst to first with stunning regularity?

The answer to both questions is yes, but what the Patriots and Eagles do is something all good teams, and organizations, do. They hire good people, and give them the resources and support to do their jobs. It seems like such a simple formula, and yet bad organizations like the Arizona Cardinals haven't figured this out for the last 50 years or so.

Any team can have a one-year blip — hello, 1997 World Series champions Florida Marlins — but consistent success takes a strong organization. That stands out the most in the NFL and NBA, which have salary caps that would prevent a George Steinbrenner-type from merely raiding other teams' talent to stay in contention every year. The Patriots and Eagles have kept their teams together, managing their cap money so the big free agent dollars only go to their outside players who are seen as the final piece of a championship run. Witness running back Corey Dillon shoring up New England's ground game and wide receiver Terrell Owens in Philadelphia giving the Eagles a sure-shot downfield passing threat.

OK, New England represents Krause's Law well with three championships in four years, but what about the Eagles? They lost three straight NFC championship games, then got to the Super Bowl, then lost that? Doesn't that disprove the notion organizations win championships?

Well, no. As Oakland Athletics general manager Billy "Moneyball" Beane would say, the playoffs are a crapshoot, subject to vagaries of matchups and momentum. What proves an organization is being run well is whether it is in contention year after year, particularly with different sets of players. They don't panic after one bad year. Even in baseball, with no salary cap, teams like the A's and the Minnesota Twins have the management savvy to stay in contention when their low payrolls would say otherwise.

The Pittsburgh Steelers have had two coaches my lifetime — and I'm 35. They also have four Super Bowl titles, one Super Bowl thrown away by Neil O'Donnell, and 21 playoff appearances. The Steelers have had their down years, but much of the time they've been in playoff contention until near the end of the season. This, despite an aversion to big-money free-agent contracts. The Steelers, like other good organizations, recognize that the players may change year after year, so a good, stable coaching and management base is a necessity to consistent winning.

The NBA is even starker than the NFL in the fates of their good and bad organizations. With only 16 games in a regular NFL season, even the Arizona Cardinals can get hot one year and make the playoffs. With 82 games in the NBA, the meat-grinder will turn the beef by-product filling of the league into hot dogs eventually. The Boston Celtics won 16 titles in 30 years because its Red Auerbach-led management team was one of the shrewdest in the league. They have won zero titles since 1986 because his replacements have been among the most inept.

You know who knows who to run an organization? William Davidson. Not only did his Detroit Pistons win a title last year (on top of two in the early 1990s under Davidson's ownership), but so did his Tampa Bay Lightning (NHL) and Detroit Shock (WNBA). A sign of organizational genius — Davidson has never hired his former Pistons star, Isiah Thomas, for anything in the front office, instead promoting fellow Bad Boy championship-era guard Joe Dumars. Thomas has validated Davidson's judgment by running the Continental Basketball Association into the ground, and is now working on doing the same with the New York Knicks.

This brings us back to the Bulls. Krause didn't draft Jordan — he hadn't become the general manager yet — but he swung a trade for Scottie Pippen, who become Robin to Jordan's Batman. Krause also got the right mix of players to assist Jordan and Pippen. And as much as Phil Jackson wouldn't like to admit this, without Krause hiring him when the rest of the league viewed Jackson as a whacked-out stoner, the Zen Master would still be passing out books to the Albany Patroons.

Sure, Krause's afterword to the Jordan era didn't look so good — dubious draft picks, the hiring of Tim "Pink" Floyd as a coach, money held aside for free agents who never came. However, in winning and losing, Krause proved his point. When the Bulls had a strong, solid organization with responsibility entrusted to sage management and coaching, they won. When the Bulls let their organization be destroyed a fat, arrogant prick who let his runaway ego dictate every move, they lost. (Krause himself stepped down in disgrace from the Bulls in 2003, though owner Jerry Reinsdorf did see to it the next season that Krause got his own banner in the rafters of the United Center.)

Even if Jerry Krause forgot his own Krause’s Law, the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles surely haven't, at least not the version that Krause said he said: Players and coaches alone don't win championships; organizations win championships.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.