We are not heartless here. The Welcome Wagon for Tim Floyd will be along anon, with gifts and trinkets, a few of the things Floyd will need in becoming Chicago’s least wanted new neighbor.
A thick skin. Oh, Floyd is going to need that. A fake nose and glasses. Absolutely essential. And how about a stale cruller to share with his dearest friend in town, Jerry Krause? Krause, by the way, Tim, will lick his own fingers.
Cold fronts and compost come out of Iowa, and now the nominal next leader of the Bulls, whatever working title Floyd may assume for the time being.
Head coach. Chief basketball clerk. Sock puppet.
The Bulls may try some kind of transparent sham by having Floyd just hang out for a while, though a cheater doesn’t usually call a news conference to introduce his beard.
There has been the suggestion Floyd may pretend to be something else until Michael Jordan makes up his mind. What kind of desperate soul would Floyd have to be to agree to an arrangement like that?
Possibly the world will find out Thursday. All will be revealed, or as much as anything that involves Krause ever is.
What seems obvious is Floyd, the man whose team could not beat Drake, gets the chance to defend the NBA championship.
This is what comes of being both a “fishing buddy” and a “wedding guest,” if not Floyd’s proudest credentials, certainly the most helpful.
That Floyd knows basketball is taken for granted. Geez, Gene Siskel knows basketball. That Floyd knows Krause is more to the point.
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Without Krause, Floyd is just another second-tier college autocrat, floating from campus to campus, never outlasting his latest recruiting class.
The woods and alumni gyms are full of them. Krause could have thrown the NCAA directory against the wall and hired from whichever page fell open.
Floyd is not John Calipari or Rick Pitino or P.J. Carlesimo, except in style; that is, loud and active and skittish.
Krause finally gets to scheme out something important and it has to be spooky enough for everyone to agree that only Krause could have done it. By his weirdness, so shall he be known.
What this has come down to, what it always was going to come down to, is simply gall, a bunch of guys standing at the grudge trough comparing egos.
This is Krause and Jerry Reinsdorf defying Jordan when they should be honoring him. This is Jordan trying to manipulate the situation to his own advantage when he might be a better accomplice.
This is Scottie Pippen hoping to flip a bird on the way out of town, like Phil Jackson did, one fist on the handlebars and one fist in the air.
Floyd is just an incidental part of all of this, the great Krausian gotcha.
There is too much debris left over for Floyd to do anything but push it all out of the way. Otherwise, he is just a guy who had the unlikely capacity not to be put off by Krause.
However this thing is dressed, whatever spin is tried, this has to mean no more Michael. Jordan doesn’t have enough faces to do anything but leave.
Maybe that was what Jordan was going to do all along and has kept dragging it out in his own version of spite as sport. Maybe the burden of being Jordan is no longer worth the effort, especially when the reward is indifference from those whose luster was never more than reflected light.
Who but Pippen ever came close to shining alone? Krause? Reinsdorf? Luc Longley? Dennis Rodman? Only as a freak.
Jordan holds the lease on all their fame and wealth and worth. And yet, he is offered Tim Floyd in the end.
Did Jordan get what he deserved from the Bulls? Maybe so. But he could not get one last bit of indulgence. Jordan needed to be more active in getting his way. He could have begged Jackson to stay. He could have managed the money to keep Pippen happy, and before it collapsed in bitterness.
But Jordan is a separate franchise of his own, almost a competing franchise to the Bulls, to the NBA, for that matter, and with the embracing of Floyd, Krause and Reinsdorf have forced Jordan to decide which side he wants to play for.
How sad that it should have come to this.