Phil Jackson was still a Bulls assistant when he had his uncomfortable beginning with Michael Jordan.
It was not long removed, in fact, from the time he walked into Stan Albeck’s office to interview for an assistant’s job, a thick beard crawling around his face that was crimson from his work as a coach in the Puerto Rican sun.
Jackson wore a big Panama hat with a colorful macaw’s feather stretching out.
Albeck eyed Jackson, much as Jordan would a few years later, and dismissed him.
But Jackson would not go away–not for another decade–and because of that, in part, the Bulls can call themselves six-time National Basketball Association champions.
Because the man is who he is, remains loyal to his beliefs and confronts and rejects the critics.
Jackson is leaving Monday, planning to issue a statement announcing he will not coach the Bulls next season, and probably not coach anywhere.
“We have a box load full of offers for him, and I’m not talking NBA coaching,” Jackson’s agent, Todd Musburger, said Sunday night, “but things people would love to have Phil do. He can sift through those and take some real time off to reflect. Is there coaching in his future? Most certainly he will. Does it cover the 1998-99 season? Probably not.”
But when Jackson does return to the NBA, he will undoubtedly succeed.
He always has, even if he never took the most traveled route or did it the most accepted way.
Like his curious start with Jordan, who became such a big Jackson devotee that Jordan has threatened to retire rather than play for someone else.
It was like that in the late 1980s, when Doug Collins still was the Bulls’ head coach and Jackson seemed to be an eccentric assistant.
Jackson had been telling the coaching staff how it was with the Knicks and everyone’s eyes were glazing over. There has never been anything worse in the history of the NBA than to hear New Yorkers, or transplanted ones, talk about those Knicks teams of the early 1970s.
But Jackson was droning on about team play and defense and that stars were measured by how much better they made teammates.
“Walt Frazier or Willis Reed picking up for you, covering for you defensively, allowing you to play harder because they could intimidate an opponent,” Jackson would say.
That, Jackson said, is what Jordan had to do, not just score. It was about winning, not scoring. Jordan didn’t have to win the scoring title for the Bulls to be successful.
So why didn’t Jackson talk to Jordan about that?
Jackson did, one day stopping the budding star and suggesting he curtail his phenomenal game. By then, Jordan was posting the second-highest scoring average in NBA history behind Wilt Chamberlain.
Jordan listened politely, later lamenting to a teammate that it was a heck of a lot easier to make Earl Monroe better than it was to make Granville Waiters better.
But Jackson would persist, especially after he was elevated to head coach in 1989, and perhaps Jackson’s crowning achievement was in the 1991 and 1993 Finals, when John Paxson was relied on for the key shots down the stretch in the clinching games as Jordan drew defensive attention.
Jackson knew. It’s always been easy for critics to say they too could win championships with Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Horace Grant and the stars Jackson inherited from General Manager Jerry Krause and predecessor Rod Thorn.
But Jackson brought discipline and compassion, strategy and confidence.
Sometimes it was a harsh word, other times a simple pat on the butt to acknowledge a good play. It was the books on the road, the questions about family. He did care and it came across. He could laugh about defeat because he brought the perspectives of life.
Like Auerbach and Stengel and Lombardi, there always was Jackson, the coach, the leader, the spiritual guide for this disparate group, the constant when even the leader went away to meditate on the curves of life, if not balls and strikes.
And now, Jackson will not be back. Perhaps none of the championship Bulls will return. Trainer Chip Schaefer is gone, and so is assistant Jimmy Rodgers. Will Jordan, Pippen and Rodman follow? As with all parties, they must come to an end.
Somebody has to turn out the lights.
But somebody also had to keep the light on to show the way, and that often was Jackson, who brought to the Bulls an eclectic collection of notions, disciplines and theories that, combined with a group of extraordinary athletes, produced six NBA championships in eight years over a nine-year career.
Of course, the first thing to remember about Jackson is he is a basketball coach, not some mahatma casting blessings about amid chants and religious symbols.
Jackson has the vocabulary that would make any hoodlum blush. Players have heard him lash out in timeout huddles with the fervor of any of his historic predecessors.
Just because Jackson practices the equanimity of the mind doesn’t mean he can’t embarrass a sailor.
This is a competitive man. That competitiveness was born from being the youngest son of a Pentecostal minister growing up with a structured religious life in the Great Plains.
There was no dancing, rock ‘n’ roll, TV or movies.
Jackson would make up for it.
Jackson broke away from the chains of his strict upbringing as a college student in the 1960s and then as a resident of New York City when he joined the Knicks.
But as much questioning as Jackson would do, it seemed almost inevitable he’d become a leader, if not a typical one.
He was a pseudo coach with the Knicks when he was hurt in the 1970 championship season and finished his NBA career as a player-coach under Kevin Loughery with the New Jersey Nets.
So Jackson is a coach in the classic sense, trained by veterans and given time to be an apprentice in the minor-league Continental Basketball Association.
Jackson believed in himself and his players and his system, honed under his first pro coach, Red Holzman, and refined under his veteran staff of John Bach and Tex Winter, the latter Jackson’s mentor in the Zen of basketball. You play defense first because then no one has the ball, everyone contributes and you try to get as many players as you can involved offensively.
Great players make great coaches, it’s said. But Jackson’s beliefs and systems were ratified during Jordan’s absence when the Bulls won 55 games and lost a seventh game to the eventual Eastern Conference champion Knicks. The next season, they stumbled some, but by then Horace Grant was gone as well. Jackson doesn’t need to leave the Bulls to prove he’s a great coach. He’s already done that.
Yet Jackson’s reputation and behavior often obscured his ability and desire.
It was an important step when he took the team on a Staten Island ferry ride after losing a big first game in the 1993 conference finals against what was probably the best Knicks team of the decade.
There was always reason behind the seeming madness. The message with the ferry ride was there are rough and stormy seas everywhere; you just play basketball. Let’s have fun.
The Bulls would go on to win four straight in that series on the way to their third NBA title.
Jackson never has been a good loser.
He never has lost much.
He brought Native American totems to the team, and films within his films. He spliced scenes from “The Wizard of Oz” into his game tapes to show a certain team it had no heart, no courage, no brains.
Message received.
He gave players books to read on road trips. It was not just a gimmick or something to occupy the players, but an example of caring. Each one was selected to reflect the individual.
No sports team ever has been more chronicled, more hounded than the championship Bulls of Jordan, Pippen and Rodman.
For Jordan, Jackson has provided shelter from the masses.
For Grant, Jackson delivered discipline and desire more harshly, yelling at him for transgressions that might have earned a wink if it were Pippen.
Jackson has treated Toni Kukoc and Luc Longley much the same way he treated Grant, knowing they would accept it. But he has been softer on kinder hearts looking for acceptance, like Steve Kerr.
And the players embraced him in return.
“Phil came back this season with a great team,” Musburger said. “He said, `Let’s do it again,’ and they did it. He did what he set out to do and I think he leaves with enormous satisfaction and pride. Now it is the time.”
And thanks to Jackson’s part, oh, what a time it was.
