His name was Guy Rodgers. He was, the Bulls figured, the franchise`s Michael Jordan of his day.
”Gave up shirt, pants and underwear to get him, too,” said Dick Klein, original owner of the team.
The games were played that first Bulls` season of 1966-67 in the dusty International Amphitheatre near the stockyards. Public address announcer Don Harris` introduction of Chicago forward Bob Boozer (he pronounced it ”B-o-o- o-o-o-zer”) was about all that resembled the sideshows accompanying today`s games in the Stadium.
Rodgers was the star most fans-and there weren`t many-came to see. The Bulls obtained him in a trade with San Francisco shortly before their first season. Klein swapped Jim King and Jeff Mullins from the expansion pool, cash and a draft choice to get him. The Warriors` guard, a Temple alum, was No. 2 in the NBA in assists and had scored 18.6 points per game the previous season. ”We figured he was just what we needed,” said Klein, retired and living in Greenville, S.C. ”We had guys who could fly down the court, and we wanted someone who could keep up with them, shoot, or pass it off.”
Chicago won its first regular-season opener on the road, 104-97 in St. Louis. The starting lineup that night was Rodgers and Jerry Sloan at guard, Boozer and Don Kojis at forward, and Len Chapell at center. Rodgers, 31 and in his ninth NBA season, scored 37 points.
The Bulls returned to the Amphitheatre on the city`s South Side to beat San Francisco 119-116 in front of an estimated 4,200 fans in the home opener. This time, Rodgers scored the winning basket in the final minute, sealed the win with a free throw, then stole the ball to dribble out the clock.
This was followed by a third straight victory in which Chicago beat the defending Western Division champion Los Angeles Lakers 134-124 behind a 34-point, 18-assist effort by the guard. ”I was sitting there with a 3-0 record and I liked coaching a whole lot,” recalled Johnny Kerr, current Bulls TV-radio analyst.
Chicago eventually cooled off on the floor, but still made the playoffs with a 33-48 record. Kerr, who had played high school basketball just a few blocks from the Amphitheatre at Tilden Tech before starring at Illinois and in the NBA, was named Coach of The Year in his rookie season on the bench.
There were more honors.
Sloan, a little-used guard for Baltimore obtained by Chicago in the expansion pool, was named to play in the All-Star Game that season with Rodgers. Unlike his better-known backcourt teammate, Sloan was a defensive specialist. He would become a cornerstone player for the organization over the next 10 seasons and his No. 4 jersey, now hanging from the Stadium rafters, eventually would be retired.
”My nickname for Sloan was Road Hog,” recalled Kerr. ”He`d meet an opposing player on offense at midcourt and body him all the way down. Just dribbling the ball against him became an ordeal.”
The club averaged a respectable (for then) 4,772 fans per game. There was a WGN-TV contract.
Could it get any better for an expansion franchise?
No. It got worse.
In less than a year after that first season, the cash-strapped franchise was in disarray. Rodgers was traded to Cincinnati for money, Flynn Robinson and two draft choices just three games into the second season, during which the Bulls won four fewer games.
If it was possible to peak in your first year, the Bulls had done just that.
Klein wielded a heavy hand in player personnel decisions, sparring with coaches and scouts. He also battled with partners who put up much of the $1.6 million it cost for the franchise. The original board was Harold Mayer, Newton Frye, Elmer Rich Jr., Greg Barker, Dan Searle, Ed Higgins and Lamar Hunt.
Front office executive Jerry Colangelo left to start the Phoenix franchise. ”Dick always had a lot of George Steinbrenner in him and that was before we knew who George Steinbrenner was,” said Kerr, who was gone after two seasons and then joined Colangelo in Arizona.
Within three seasons, only five of the original Bulls still were in the team picture. They were Sloan, Barry Clemens, Jim Washington, Boozer and Erwin Mueller, who had been traded and re-obtained.
The Bulls failed to make the playoffs in 1969. Both the team`s record and crowds dwindled heading into the 1970s and, to some, Chicago seemed on its way to a fourth pro basketball franchise failing to make it here.
Would it be R.I.P. Stags (`46-`50), Packers (`62), Zephyrs (`63) and Bulls?
No. The franchise would be saved by the unlikely Dick Motta, who replaced Kerr as coach for the 1968-69 season. Klein had plucked Motta from Weber State, a low-profile school in Utah where he had won three Big Sky Conference championships in five years. The jump was immense, but Motta learned quickly how to survive in big-time basketball both on and off the court.
Motta`s cloak-and-dagger battles with Klein became NBA legend. The tough- minded coach didn`t think twice about making end runs to various board members to get his way. When it was once suggested early in his NBA career that he would never relate to black players because of his Mormon background, the coach found an easy solution. ”I told everyone I was from Idaho,” he said. ”It made things a lot easier.”
Like their coach and the city they represented, Motta`s Bulls had a reputation for broad shoulders and skinned knees. A half-court, deliberate offense was how they scored points. Tough defense was how they won games.
A big piece of the picture arrived when Klein drafted 7-foot center Tom Boerwinkle from Tennessee in 1968. Kerr had favored Otto Moore, an obscure giant from Pan-American U., before deferring to his boss.
Boerwinkle, though slow even for an NBA center, was the big man the Bulls felt obliged to draft to compete with top teams in the league. He endured a lot of booing in his early days, but his good passing, rebounding and tough picks made him the perfect center for Motta.
Later in `68, the Bulls would obtain Bob Love and Bob Weiss from Milwaukee for Flynn Robinson in a one-sided trade.
”I will never forget when we traded Bob Love,” recalled Oscar Robertson, a former teammate and Hall of Famer. ”I was really against that move. He was a quiet man and our front office, as a result, thought he wasn`t very bright. But he was quiet because he had a speech impediment (a stutter)
and I was never surprised by what he went on to do in the NBA.”
Love, a 6-8 forward, did all of his talking with a baseline jump shot that would make him the Bulls` all-time scorer until passed last season by Jordan. He was the team`s No. 1 scorer for seven consecutive seasons, finishing his Bulls` career with 12,623 points. Weiss, today the head coach at Atlanta, became a solid guard.
Before the `70 season started, Chet Walker, a power forward from Bradley in his eighth NBA season, was obtained from Philadelphia. He was a clutch one- on-one player. A year later-with the Bulls playing in front of their first standing-room-only crowd-it was Walker scoring 44 points to rally the team to victory.
The starting picture was completed when Norm Van Lier, obtained from Cincinnati early in the 1971-72 season, joined Sloan in the backcourt. The addition of the combative Van Lier, who had gotten into fights with Sloan when they played against each other, gave Chicago the most feared backcourt tandem in the NBA.
Sloan, Van Lier, Walker, Love and Boerwinkle.
From 1971 to 1975, Motta`s Bulls compiled a 260-150 record in the regular season. They stretched the Lakers to a full seven-game series in the second round of the `71 playoffs before being eliminated. They were on their way.
The crowds got bigger. From a franchise-low of 3,790 per game in their third season, the Bulls were averaging 10,000 per contest in the first half of the 1970s with frequent sellouts for pivotal games.
The peak continued to build to `75. With the hourglass running low for Chicago`s roster and Motta`s fuse getting shorter, the club topped the Kansas City Kings in six games in the first playoff round that season before facing Golden State in the conference finals.
Tickets to the Stadium games never were hotter. The Bulls took a 2-1 series lead on the Warriors. They went up 3-2 before dropping the final two games, including one on their own floor.
One game from the NBA finals.
Golden State went on to sweep the title in four games from the Washington Bullets. This was the closest Chicago would get to the championship. The next season, the Bulls` record was 24-58-still the worst in franchise history-and Motta was gone.
Klein, after numerous battles with his partners and his coach, Motta, had been bought out by a group headed by Lester Crown and Arthur Wirtz in 1972. Klein`s power had already begun to erode three years earlier when he lost his general manager`s responsibilities because of his infighting with the board.
”After I was out if it, they started drafting guys like Jimmy Collins and Kennedy McIntosh,” said Klein. ”That started eroding everything; the bottom fell out in a hurry.”
In fact, there would be seven different coaches, dozens of new players, and only one more playoff appearance before Jordan was selected in the draft. In the wake of that one near-miss season, the trades would become as forgettable as draft picks. Players such as John Hummer, John Block, Leon Benbow, Steve Patterson, Cliff Pondexter, Charles Dudley, Ricky Sobers, and Mark Olberding were not the answer.
Sloan, now the successful coach of the Utah Jazz, failed to find the answer for the Bulls in two-plus seasons as head man. There were individual stars such as Reggie Theus and Artis Gilmore, but Chicago made the playoffs only twice in the nine seasons after `75 (once with coach Ed Badger and once with Sloan).
”In many ways,” says Kerr, ”the Bulls were like an expansion team when Michael was drafted.”
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Next: The Bulls build around Michael Jordan
