"It would take some exceptional courage to tell Jordan that he was being unfair" - Chicago journalist says everybody joined MJ in bullying Jerry Krause

Ben Joravsky is a tenured Chicago politics writer who broke his way into covering sports because of his love for basketball. That's when he bore witness to the tension between the Chicago Bulls and the team's late general manager, Jerry Krause .

In a wide-ranging candid interview with Hoops Analyst in 2020, Joravsky shed light on some of the intriguing things that took place during the Bulls' reign in the '90s that The Last Dance failed to unfold. Among the many things the writer revealed was the true context of Michael Jordan and the rest of the team, including Phil Jackson bullying Krause.

According to Joravsky, MJ did a tremendous job utilizing his charisma and influence in picking on Krause, whom he described as "the nerdiest kid" on the campus at the time.

"Everyone did!" Joravsky said when asked if Jackson also took advantage of Krause. "The coolest kid in the cafeteria, Michael Jordan, picked on the nerdiest kid, Krause. It would take some exceptional courage to tell Jordan that he was being unfair and to stop it. People went along with it. You [see] in The Last Dance that Jordan bragged about being a bully helped him win."

Even the media people poked fun at Jerry

As conveyed in The Last Dance, the friction between Krause and the Bulls players became increasingly apparent over the years. Joravsky recalled that it reached the point in which Jordan and his teammates were unapologetically picking on the general manager.

The media people then, understandably, hopped on and began trolling the GM both in front of the Bulls and on the pieces they wrote. Through Joravsky's lens, those people yearned to forge a good connection with the players, and they found mocking Krause to be an effective way to do this.

"I feel, particularly back then, the negativity about him had to do with his appearance," Ben said of Jerry. "There was so much fat shaming going on around him that doesn’t exist as much today. The basketball players made fun of him and called him “Crumbs” [implying that he was all covered in crumbs from his last meal], and the sportswriters picked up on it."

"I believe the sportswriters wanted to show how cool they were to the basketball players so they joined in on the mocking of Krause," he continued.

Krause made it easier for MJ and everybody to pick on him

Having covered the Bulls for years, Joravsky could tell that Krause was a highly intelligent general manager. However, his leadership style and the way he conducted himself often put him at odds with the Bulls players, especially Jordan, as well as the media people.

The writer himself didn't have that issue with Jerry. However, he admitted to being on the receiving end of GM's rudeness. Ultimately, Joravsky didn't imply that Krause deserved all that bullying from “His Airness” and the rest of the people involved at the time, but the man in question gave them a reason to do it.

"I’ll say this about Jerry Krause…he is one of the greatest general managers in the NBA, and the criticism leveled against him is absurd given the way GMs operate," Joravsky explained. "Having said all that, Jerry Krause was his own worst enemy. He had a very prickly personality. I feel like he was so anti-social that he drove people away. I can tell you he said so many inappropriate things to me in the course of all those interviews we did, not just about other people, but about me. He was his own worst enemy is the best way of putting it. He had no social graces, and that really hurt him."

"This is particularly the case when you have someone as popular as Michael Jordan, and he is outspoken in his disdain for Jerry Kraus.," he added. "So, if you are the geeky sportswriter and you want to be in with the cool crowd, you would be drawn to the player’s attitude. It was exacerbated by Krause’s prickliness, his habit of saying the wrong things, and making himself look worse than he actually was."

Related: "That's not a goal I want to achieve. That's not something I think I'll be good at" - Allen Iverson on why he would never want to be a coach

Krause is part of the Bulls dynasty

Krause joined the Bulls in 1985, and he was laser-focused on fulfilling his job as a general manager from Day 1. Though his viewpoints and front-office strategies did not always sit well with their main man, some still believe that Krause was instrumental in morphing the '90s Bulls into a dynasty.

His vision and innate ability to build a formidable squad was pivotal in the Bulls capturing six NBA championships. While that will always be a fact, it's just unfortunate that his looks and bravado weren't as pleasing as his general manager attributes.

In retrospect, some may or may not agree with Joravsky that Jordan and the Bulls bullied Krause. Regardless, one thing we can't deny as fans is that the passive-aggressive feud between Krause and MJ adds another layer to the already intriguing history of one of the greatest NBA dynasties of all time.

Related: "Frequently it was heated" — Steve Kerr claims Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen's conversations in practice usually had tension