Birth of the Bulls

When the Bulls came into being in 1966, Chicago had already been home to half a dozen failed and forgotten pro basketball franchises. The Tigers, featuring George Halas as owner and head coach, had survived from 1927 to 1929. They were followed by the Duffy Florals, the Studebakers, the American Gears, and the Stags. As recently as 1963, Chicago had lost its two-year-old NBA franchise, the Zephyrs, to Baltimore.

Chicago was, in the words of The Sporting News, “long regarded as the burial grounds of professional basketball.” In 1947, the American Gears won the championship of the National Basketball League, while the Stags were runners-up for the Basketball Association of America title. Chicagoans yawned.

Both the Gears and the Stags were defunct by 1950. The National Basketball Association, formed by the merger of the two earlier leagues, did not see fit to grant Chicago another franchise until 1961, when the Packers were born. Their 6-foot-11 center Walt Bellamy was Rookie of the Year, but the Packers finished 18-62 and didn’t draw flies to their home games at the International Amphitheatre. Owner Dave Trager announced that the franchise would move to Baltimore as soon as the promised new arena there was ready. That turned out to be not as soon as he had thought. The team remained in Chicago the next season, changing its name to the Zephyrs and playing its home games in the Coliseum—the ancient building that had been forsaken by the Blackhawks more than 30 years before. The Zephyrs improved slightly, to 25-55, and featured another Rookie of the Year, forward Terry Dischinger, but few people noticed and fewer cared when the team packed its bags after the season.

Along came Dick Klein, a former player for Northwestern University and the Gears who believed that an NBA franchise could not only survive but flourish in Chicago. First, he tried to purchase the Zephyrs to prevent their move to Baltimore. When that effort failed, he began campaigning for an expansion team and rounding up investors. “He was a P.T. Barnum-type guy,” said Johnny “Red” Kerr. “He could sell anything to anybody.”

DICK KLEIN, AL BIANCHI, JOHNNY KERR

Selling the NBA on Chicago was the greatest challenge of Klein’s career as a salesman. The league was in a bad way itself. It had no national television contract, NBC having bailed out in 1962, and had little inclination to try another Chicago experiment. The owners of the nine existing clubs informed Klein that he could get a franchise for $600,000, which was at least $400,000 more than he could muster. Klein formally applied for a franchise on April 11, 1963, neglecting to enclose the required $100,000 deposit. “I said the check would be forthcoming,” he recalled. “Later, I learned my telegram had been filed in the wastebasket.”

      Then, in 1965, ABC expressed interest in carrying the NBA’s games. One of its conditions was that the league place a team in Chicago, the nation’s second-largest television market. All of a sudden Klein’s quest seemed less quixotic, and several big investors signed on. But when Klein reported to NBA commissioner Walter Kennedy that he had gathered the $600,000, he found that the franchise fee had risen to $750,000. When he returned with $750,000, he was told the fee was $1 million. By now there were seven or eight other groups competing with Klein’s for the Chicago franchise, and the NBA was taking full advantage of the situation. The fee was ratcheted up yet again, to $1.25 million.

All of the prospective owners were summoned to the league offices in New York on January 26, 1966. “When I made the presentation,” Klein remembered, “they asked me what single thing made my group stand out. I said, ‘I have approximately half a dozen partners, and any one of them could buy the whole league.’”  Klein got the franchise. Employing a bit of hyperbole to boost its image, the league announced that he had paid $1.6 million.

Klein wanted a nickname for his team that would evoke the stockyards and the brawny, big-shoulders character of Chicago. “Chicago had the Bears and the Sox and the Cubs and the Hawks,” he explained, “all single syllables.” When he hit upon “Bulls,” Klein knew instantly that he’d found the right name.

He also wanted a strong Chicago connection in his coach. His first choice was Ray Meyer, whom he could not persuade to leave DePaul University. He then received a petition on behalf of Kerr, a Chicago native and former University of Illinois star who was just finishing up his playing career. “They had something like 1,600 names,” Kerr recalled, “but I’m not sure all of them were real. It’s a little like how they used to register people for voting in Cook County.” Genuine or not, the petition worked. Kerr was hired.

The Bulls drafted two players from each existing club in the 1966 expansion draft. Because Kerr and his intended assistant, Al Bianchi, were technically still active players, both were acquired through the draft. They promptly retired as players and signed on as coaches. The following players were the first to become property of the Bulls: Kerr and Jerry Sloan from Baltimore, Ron Bonham and John Thompson from the Boston Celtics, Nate Bowman and Tom Thacker from the Cincinnati Royals, John Barnhill and Don Kojis from the Detroit Pistons, Bob Boozer and Jim King from the Los Angeles Lakers, Len Chappell and Barry Clemens from the New York Knicks, Bianchi and Gerry Ward from the Philadelphia 76ers, Jeff Mullins and Jim Washington from the St. Louis Hawks, and Keith Erickson and McCoy McLemore from the San Francisco Warriors.

Of all these players, only Sloan and Boozer would make a lasting impression with the Bulls. Thompson retired to go into coaching and later led Georgetown University to the NCAA championship. King and Mullins were traded to the Warriors for point guard Guy Rodgers.

At the Bulls’ first training camp at North Central College in Naperville, Rodgers and the 14 remaining players from the expansion draft were joined by nine rookies picked up in the college draft. The apparent plum of the latter group was Dave Schellhase, who’d led the nation with 32.5 points per game and had signed a contract for the considerable sum of $35,000. Unfortunately, it took only a few workouts to show that Schellhase wouldn’t make it. “He had been a nice player at Purdue,” Kerr said, “but he didn’t have the size to be a pro forward or the quickness to be a guard. He came to training camp about 20 pounds overweight and was eaten up by our veterans.”

The 1966-67 Bulls had 179 season ticket holders, each of whom paid four dollars per game for a courtside seat at the Amphitheatre. Their front office “staff” was general manager Klein, marketing director Jerry Colangelo, public-relations man Ben Bentley, and a receptionist. The Bulls organized a parade down State Street to publicize the season opener. It consisted of two trucks and a car. “The press that came to the parade might have been giggling,” Klein said, “but at least they were talking about us.”

Klein actually put an ad in the papers calling for players, and about 180 showed up for an open tryout. Kerr was not amused. “I told Al [Bianchi] to line them all up against a wall and have them count off by twos,” he said, “then have the twos go home. We did that, and later on we sent all the ones home, too.”

      The Bulls played their first game on October 15 at St. Louis with a starting lineup of Sloan and Rodgers at guards, Boozer and Kojis at forwards, and Chappell at center. They won 104-97 behind Rodgers’s 37 points. Three nights later they made their home debut against San Francisco. Newspapers estimated that the announced crowd of 4,200 was padded by about 1,000. In any event, the few fans on hand got their money’s worth. The Bulls rallied late to overcome a 13-point deficit and won 119-116. Sloan scored 26 points and Rodgers had 20 assists.

The Bulls were young and quick, and they played an entertaining style built around the fast break. When they won four of their first five games, Chicagoans sat up and took notice. On October 23, the Bulls had their first sellout. “We could have sold 30,000 seats that night in a 7,000-seat arena,” Klein asserted. “We let 9,000 in and the fire marshal came to me and said, ‘Dick, you gotta close the doors.’” Officially, the crowd was 8,472, the largest crowd ever for an NBA game in Chicago up to that time.

“They got people who can’t get into the game,” said Sloan. “It’s sold out. I thought, ‘My goodness, we’re not that good, are we?’ We certainly found out that night. The Knicks waxed us pretty good, and reality started to set in.”

A nine-game losing streak in November and December dropped the Bulls into last place in the West Division at 8-15. “I remember how cold it was that first winter,” sportswriter Bob Logan said, “and how small the crowds were.” The Great Blizzard of ’67 struck in late January, dumping almost 30 inches of snow on the city. On January 29, the Bulls lost to Los Angeles by 20 points before an announced crowd of 1,077. Klein later admitted that the actual attendance, “including security guards, was something like 72 people.” Since the Lakers were stranded in Chicago after the game, Klein treated them to a steak dinner.

By the end of February, the Bulls were 25-44 and still mired in last place, three games behind Detroit for the final playoff berth. On March 1, they traveled to Evansville, Indiana, to take on Philadelphia. (Sloan had played his college ball at Evansville, and the Bulls played five “home” games there to capitalize on his popularity.) The 76ers were en route to a 68-13 record and the world championship, but the Bulls upset them 129-122. The game was a turning point for the Bulls—they won eight of their last 12 to qualify for the playoffs.

The Amphitheatre’s management did not consider the NBA playoffs as big an event as the boat show it had already scheduled, so the Bulls’ postseason home games were relegated to the decrepit Coliseum. The Bulls were swept by St. Louis in the first round, with the lone home game drawing a mere 3,739. 

The Bulls’ first season was more successful on the court than at the ticket windows. Their 33-48 mark was the best ever by a first-year expansion team, and Kerr was selected NBA Coach of the Year. Rodgers led the league in assists; both he and Sloan were all-stars. Center Erwin Mueller was named to the all-rookie team.

After the Bulls’ second season, Colangelo left to become general manager of the Phoenix Suns and took Kerr with him as head coach. Klein was forced out as general manager by his fellow investors (“I rubbed a few furs the wrong way,” he remarked), but not before he had hired Dick Motta, the untried young head coach who would work with new GM Pat Williams to build the Bulls team--led by Sloan, Chet Walker, Bob Love, Tom Boerwinkle, and Norm Van Lier--that topped 50 wins for four consecutive seasons beginning in 1970-71 and ensured that the Bulls were here to stay.

“The thing I really feel a little bit of pride in,” Sloan said many years later, “is the fact that we kept the franchise here. Otherwise it would have been gone.”