O’Donnell: Stacey King mastered being Stacey King
THERE'S AN OLD BARTENDER'S BROMIDE that every person walking the planet is an expert on one thing for sure and that's themselves.
Get an individual talking about him or herself and a conversation should be off to the tip jar.
In a basketball life replete with daunting bounces and tricky baselines, Stacey King clearly understood the value of that sort of connection.
He took a playing resume filled with mixed results and parlayed it with notable instincts for image construction and likability into a 20-year run as a TV analyst with the Bulls.
HIS SAD AND SUDDEN DEATH last weekend at age 59 was yet another bell toll for a team's eras of glories past.
Subsequent tributes were heartfelt. He was a good guy. From day one with the Bulls as a rookie back in 1989, he was chatty, accessible and affable.
Back then, listening to him speak was hearing a cadence and intonation reminiscent of a young Eddie Murphy.
That's not a bad place to start self-imaging for broader public consumption.
AS A BASKETBALL ALPHA, he arrived in Chicago having lost the biggest mainstage role of his career.
That was the 1988 NCAA championship game when King and vaunted Oklahoma (35-3) entered Kemper Arena in Kansas City as 8-point favorites over streaking Danny Manning and Kansas (26-11).
Manning's Rock Chalk alpha ruled the night. Larry Brown outcoached OU's Billy Tubbs. Boomer Sooners went bust 83-79.
FIFTEEN MONTHS LATER, King was a Chicago Bull. The team was finally on the threshold of something big.
King was big but caught between a Jerry Krause all-in — center Bill Cartwright — and the fleet Horace Grant.
By prevailing expectation, Grant was technically a power forward in the NBA. But much more importantly, he was a staggeringly adept flying wing to complete the Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen Air-fecta.
BUT, AS WOULD PROVE HIS KNACK during a career well managed, King made the best of an up-court situation.
He contributed as a rotation player down low, unable to anchor like Cartwright, streak like Grant or outmuscle rival hulks such as Karl Malone and Charles Oakley.
He won three championship rings with the Bulls. But after Jordan's abrupt “retirement” in October 1993 and Grant's bolt to Orlando via free agency the following summer, the team was overhauled, in large part to try and stay competitive with the ascending Magic.
King was expendable. His playing career gradually faded away. He resolutely tried to harvest every last dribble through playing and coaching turns in the Continental Basketball Association, then the NBA's primary minor league.
ALL OF WHICH EVENTUALLY brought him back on the periphery of the Bulls' sphere in 2004, looking for some bankable link to the game and the legacy.
It was a surprisingly resuscitative time to be around the floundering herd. John Paxson's Hail Jerry move from radio color man to head of basketball ops brought about the remarkable “Overhaul of '04.”
Ding-dong, the Krause-Tim Floyd nightmare was over. Paxson hired the John Mellencamp-inspired Hoosier drill sergeant Scott Skiles as head coach.
All would portend better days and even better luck. That good fortune would culminate in 2008 when the Bulls cashed a 1.7% chance on the NBA Draft to snag the No. 1 pick and South Side-spawned fresh messiah Derrick Rose.
KING CAME CALLING at Comcast SportsNet — then the local cable home of the team — at the right time.
Jim Corno, the operation's senior VP & general manager, was looking to juice game-night wraparound programming. He hired King as a studio energizer.
Left unsaid was the fact that the actuarial clock on Johnny “Red” Kerr — far and away the organization's most enduring ambassador since night one back at St. Louis' Kiel Auditorium in October 1966 — was ticking.
FOR THE 2005 PLAYOFFS, Corno decided to add a third person to his play-by-play pair of Kerr and Tom Dore. The choice was Pippen.
One year later, Corno again decided three was appropriate company for Bulls' post-season CSN telecasts. Only this time, the plus-one was King.
He could not have managed the live-fire auditions much better. He let enough “Stacey” peek through while remaining crisply deferential and respectful of Kerr, who still had much of his lively, thoroughly Bulls A-game.
But two years later, Kerr — age 76 — was in the midst of a struggle with cancer. When he died in February 2009, the television analyst throne was King's.
IN THE END, THE SPAN OF KING as a main man in the Bulls' TV scheme would touch 20 seasons. He saw “The Curse of the Breakup” repeatedly reenter the frame to bring promising things tumbling down.
He was smart enough to study and learn from classic courtside salesmen like Kerr and Dick Vitale and others who could consistently take the sometimes numbing mechanics of a great sport higher and higher.
Stacey King was a self-made infotainer who never lost instincts for where the green and entitlement behind all of his hot sauce was coming from.
That meant some constant self-editing along the way.
BUT HE WAS CHATTY, ACCESSIBLE AND AFFABLE throughout the best of times on down to the all-too-frequent hollow buzzers of West Madison Street.
As colleagues can attest, Mr. King enjoyed being himself, some would say masterfully so.
And talking about it.
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.