Bulls Were Right To Whack Rodman

The part that really annoyed Jerry Krause about Dennis Rodman’s profane diatribe on television is that it was premeditated. That is why Krause hammered Rodman with a two-game suspension that cost Rodman $104,878.

“He told me,” Krause said Friday night, still sputtering about Rodman’s outburst against the league and its referees five days earlier. “He said, ‘Jerry, I’m going to go off.’ I said, ‘Dennis, don’t do it, let me take care of it.’ But he did it anyway.”

Krause, the general manager of the Chicago Bulls, made a gesture that is all too rare in professional sports. He took responsibility for his own player.

“Yeah, I know the league would have done something,” Krause said the other night, with emphasis on the “something.” Then Krause added, “But it was important that we did it. I’m not going to stand for language like that.”

All too often, clubs wring their hands and say they are caught in a bind between the league and the players’ unions. The Baltimore Orioles breathed a sigh of relief when baseball’s empty suits rewarded Roberto Alomar with a five-game spring break for spitting in an umpire’s face during a pennant race.

The Cleveland Indians looked the other way when a troubled bully like Albert Belle acted out in recent years. Belle’s reward was an unprecedented 5-year, $55-million contract from none other than the White Sox and Jerry Reinsdorf, who also happens to employ Dennis Rodman.

The leaping exhibitionist was due back Saturday night in Chicago against Charlotte. Maybe he learned something, maybe he didn’t. Any male athlete who wears wedding dresses and lipstick is on the far edge of the behavior curve.

It has been my contention for years that Rodman’s flamboyance is the sign of a man with self-destructive impulses. Advertising a vulgar rampage on television is asking for trouble just like predicting a binge with alcohol or drugs.

The league and the club have not been able to help him; maybe nobody can. He is too well rewarded by all the trappings of the society you and I created - the idiot celebrity book with large and eccentric typography, the grotesque MTV world that only confuses the impressionable and the floundering, the huge corporations who make money from shock value, no questions asked.

Dennis Rodman is on the roof and people are asking him to jump. Are the Chicago Bulls using him? Well, sure. But I could make the argument that getting rebounds is more socially redeeming than a lot of other goofy things the man does for money and attention.

At least the Bulls reminded Rodman there are limits. Rodman had been moping his way through games with an apathetic smirk on his face, too sated by his outside projects to block out his man.

Most of the time the fans are just guessing when they boo a player for a bad performance. His off-night may be as simple as his being outplayed by a fellow warrior. But with Rodman you can tell. The man is not only a superb athlete, he is a genius at positioning his body and controlling his opponent and the ball. When he is not trying, it is blatant.

Rodman is preoccupied with all the projects that accrue to a man willing to dye his hair gaudy colors and wear women’s clothing and talk dirty in public. Our bad values have rewarded this man with a cable television show, some kind of movie due out in April, and two more so-called books.

“He’s taken on a lot,” said Michael Jordan, a man who even has his own cologne. “Maybe it’s too much for him, too time consuming.”

Jordan conceded, “I’ve got a lot going on, more than I’ve ever had to deal with. I can understand some of the things Dennis is going through. But this is the first time he’s had to deal with it. I’ve been doing it my whole career. I know what my priorities are - family first, basketball second and that other stuff third.”

Even with all accounts, even during the flurry of criticism for his visit to a gambling casino in Atlantic City, N.J., during a playoff series in New York, Jordan has shown an admirable ability to come back with searing intensity on the court. Rodman does not have that ability.

“I expect him to fit right in,” Jordan said Friday night after the Bulls destroyed the Nets, 113-92, as the Bulls seemed to enjoy the respite.

“It’s like when your child is away at college,” Phil Jackson said. “You know he’s out there, but he’s away. You can just say that Dennis is away.”

Dennis was away because Jerry Krause let him know that the Bulls had their own standards. What a refreshing idea. I’m waiting to see what the Reinsdorf standards are when Albert Belle starts doing his crude thing next season.