Early in the season, Phil Jackson was living out of his hotel room at the Century City complex downtown here. His two-story house overlooking the ocean at Playa del Rey wasn’t ready, but he had to get to work.
Los Angeles was the place and the Lakers were the team he had chosen. The offers in his past from the Bulls, the Denver Nuggets, New Jersey Nets, New York Knicks and Golden State Warriors were history.
“This was something that was predestined, almost,” Jackson said then.
And so he met with his new team composed of mostly young and uncertain players unquestionably in need of guidance.
“I had to stop in the very first practice and tell them they couldn’t work hard at a consistent energy level; they ebbed and waned,” Jackson said.
“They played with intensity, without intensity. Guys couldn’t hold attention. They had a mental block between that and working hard.
“I’m not a long-winded minister, preacher, whatever, but I noticed the attention span would come and go. So we really had to get focused.”
That focus led Monday night, finally, to the first NBA championship for Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and this new era of Lakers. For Jackson, earning a title with a second team and without Michael Jordan was a validation of his excellence as a coach. His legacy as a great winner will be enhanced in the history books of sports.
But it also was further illustration that the son is the father, that Jackson, who dances to a different drummer, follows mostly in his father’s footsteps; he is preacher, minister, counselor, rabbi as much as he is coach. Not that there has to be a difference.
Comfort, console and direct, that’s what Jackson did with the Lakers.
“It has been Phil,” said O’Neal, who went to Lakers’ management after last season’s second-round playoff elimination and asked the team to hire Jackson or Chuck Daly. “He knows what he’s talking about. He brought the system.”
And something more. It’s no coincidence Jackson’s metaphors and allusions often have a religious or spiritual connection.
When Jackson was growing up, his father was on the road constantly as superintendent for the Pentecostal churches in Montana. Eventually, the travel took a toll on the family and he sought out a parish in Williston, N.D.
“It’s where the Lord wants me to go,” he told his family.
But it then was a Pentecostal minister’s duty to find his own church and congregation, to seek out those in need of his guidance rather than waiting for a call. So it was for Jackson and the Lakers.
“It was a team that was maybe a little bit of a community under stress or deranged or at odds with one another from last year’s playoffs,” noticed Jackson.
O’Neal and Bryant were at odds, leadership missing. There was talent and desire, but no direction.
“There is a certain poise or composure or confidence that Phil brings,” Lakers personnel director Mitch Kupchak said.
The L.A. situation was not unlike that of the Bulls when Jackson became their head coach. Although blurred by Jordan’s famous “shot” against Cleveland and unexpected playoff run to the conference finals, the Bulls had taken their first step backwards in five years. They fell from 50 to 47 victories and weren’t regarded as serious contenders. Their megastar, Jordan, was frustrated with his teammates and management seemed at odds with the team.
Jackson’s contribution was in the background of Jordan’s brilliance, but it was no less vital and no different than it was to become with the Lakers.
He brought calm, confidence, understanding and direction to his flock.
“I’ve enjoyed working with these young men,” Jackson said of the Lakers.
The notion is that Jackson has moved on from Chicago, where he established himself with six Bulls championships. But the reality is Chicago was merely another congregation for Jackson’s message. Like his parents, he’s a missionary, but of the cathedral of the hardwood.
Observers point to Jackson’s lifestyle changes and classify him as another “L.A. guy.” He is separated from his wife of 25 years, June. He is dating Jeanne Buss, the daughter of the Lakers’ owner. He lives by the ocean and drives a Porche.
“It’s just a different time in my life,” Jackson said. “I sat watching my kids the other day and they’re out on the ocean, surfing and skiing and it’s so different. In Chicago, it was growing up, going to their games. Before that they are babies and you are trying to find out who you’ll be.”
Jackson long has searched. He considered law school for a while in the 1980s, opened a business in Montana with friends, debated a life of reflection on campus. But he always was drawn back to basketball, his religion.
It was almost a living force and Jackson grew more determined to spread that word and share his gift, to counsel, cajole and reassure. He is a knowledgeable and hardworking basketball practitioner, studying film, devising strategies, as comfortable as any with X’s and O’s. But it’s more for him than a game.
That’s why he goes beyond his players’ basketball lives. He has been urging Bryant to think about marrying so young. His Zen and meditation are vehicles to extend beyond the court. He engages his players in politics and polemics.
Life is a metaphor for basketball, he always says, and basketball is a metaphor for life.
“In some ways, it’s kind of selfish,” Jackson admitted about taking off to coach the Lakers. “But maybe it is something I do well enough that I should pursue it. I had to accommodate that.”
A calling? It is just basketball and we shouldn’t confuse it’s place in our world.
But for Jackson, it’s the next step, another place where he can make a difference. And he has.
