It was just another one-on-one basketball game, the kind Phil Jackson and Charlie Rosen played all the time. Rosen, an old friend and fellow bearded refugee from the 1960s, was Jackson’s assistant with the Albany Patroons of the CBA. Jackson, who was a deceptively effective player for the New York Knicks in the early 1970s, always won. But this one time …
“I beat him,” Rosen recalled. “So he said I fouled him. I said, `You never lost a game on a foul? It happens.’ He’s glowering at me as he walked away and wouldn’t speak to me.
“He’s always been a fierce competitor and an intense person. He hates to lose. He went away for about an hour, did some yoga stuff, then came back and was OK. He can outwardly be calm, but inside he’s kvetching. He’s just learned to swallow it. All this stuff about the Phil who doesn’t care, doesn’t coach, doesn’t work–it’s all nonsense.”
Jackson’s Los Angeles Lakers lead the New Jersey Nets 3-0 in the NBA Finals, and a sweep-concluding victory in Game 4 Wednesday will give Jackson his ninth NBA coaching title, matching Red Auerbach’s record. He’ll also surpass Pat Riley’s record for playoff wins.
The best coach in NBA history? The record is about to speak for itself.
“I’ve been fortunate,” Jackson conceded. “I’ve been in situations where I’ve been able to coach two of the most dominant players in recent basketball history in Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal. I’ve had great role players to go along with those stars in Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, etc., in Chicago and here, obviously, with Kobe Bryant. So that’s been my great fortune.”
His great fortune has been one of the great debates in the playoffs: Is Jackson good or lucky? A coaching genius or an opportunist t’s said everyone loves a winner. Yet in Jackson’s case, that doesn’t seem to be true.
First, the curmudgeonly Auerbach pointed out that Jackson has always had the benefit of great players, and then Bob Huggins, a college coach at Cincinnati, questioned Jackson’s bench acumen and suggested Tim Floyd would have been a good coach with Jordan.
Even Riley, who has generally been respectful of his rival, recently questioned some of Jackson’s verbal tactics. For his part, Jackson has declined to take the bait. It’s how one grows to be a big fish.
“One of the things about this team as it’s gotten going is we’ve continued to have the same players, so I’ve been able to coach from an easy-chair aspect,” Jackson said. “It all looks so easy, sitting back, not at the referees, not struggling to keep tensions down.
“It is irritating when [coaches] are working their tails off and think they’re working really hard and see it’s real easy for me, like I roll the ball out. But we’re watching tape, doing our work.
“This team knows how to win and how to do things. Success brings and breeds these things. I just have to handle it the right way.”
Jackson has, deflecting criticism and jealousy with ease and aplomb, sort of the way his team has broken down the Nets. There’s this notion that it all comes easy, that Jackson is merely along for the ride, some sort of flake spewing mystical nonsense.
But Jackson is first and foremost a jock, a driven competitor. He manipulates X’s and O’s like a champion tic-tac-toe player.
“You can’t con these guys about basketball,” assistant Frank Hamblen said. “They know if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Jackson’s persona clearly is complex. The son of missionaries, he regards his players as a congregation. To him, the group is sacred, his parishioners–er, players–are the flock for which he is responsible.
That is why he is able to maintain human instead of dictatorial relationships. Jackson jokes with O’Neal about his late-night partying and rap songs, with Bryant about his urgency to grow up, with Rick Fox about his acting. Yet he also maintains respect and demands discipline.
“He jokes with guys a lot,” said Mitch Richmond, who has had time to observe Jackson as a little-used reserve. “Every day he teaches, but he gives us a lot of freedom. You come in, do your work and you’re done early and out of there. He understands a long season for a player.
“But you don’t go too far. Sometimes he’ll say this is a practice where nobody talks but him. Then you know it’s no joke.”
Jackson has developed an unusual confidence that borders on conceit. It might be his greatest strength, and it emboldens players.
“You see it in our team, especially when we get in situations like in Game 3 in New Jersey, Game 7 in Sacramento,” veteran guard Brian Shaw said. “No one panics. If he were panicking, that would show us there’s something to worry about. You see the calming effect he has on the game, so guys do step up and make plays in crucial situations.”
It’s one of the traits of the great coaches, such as John Wooden or Dean Smith or Jackson’s coach with the Knicks, Red Holzman. You prepare a team, and if you did it right you shouldn’t have to say much in the game. That approach conveys a trust players welcome. They appreciate a coach who treats them like men.
“I was part of two Laker teams before Phil got here,” Fox said. “With better talent, we got swept by the Utah Jazz. We got swept by the San Antonio Spurs. We couldn’t win. Then Phil comes and we win two championships and we’re on the verge of winning a third and he hasn’t done anything?
“Our heads were in different places. There was no understanding of what it took to play at a championship level, how to work together.”
Fox acknowledges having a hard time describing Jackson’s methods.
“You cannot put a finger on it,” he said. “It’s not like two plus two equals four. So now we get older and we’re not as talented, and we win.”
That’s not to discount O’Neal and Bryant or Jordan and Pippen. But Jordan didn’t win anything until Jackson became the Bulls’ coach. Neither had O’Neal in seven seasons.
“I read some of these statements–they’re idiotic,” longtime assistant Jim Cleamons said. “Who had this team before he had it? Del Harris couldn’t win. Mike Dunleavy couldn’t win. Hey, Doug [Collins] couldn’t get Michael and Scottie to play together.
“There’s just a lot of jealousy. A lot of coaches want to show they’re in charge, so they scream and yell and run the sidelines. What they need is confidence in themselves.”
Jackson is cerebral, and he can be remote, unusually private. Occasionally he’ll drop into a tavern near his Los Angeles beach home to have a beer and read. If he is recognized, he leaves. His routine after Bulls games for years was to find a dark corner of the Stadium, smoke a cigarette, drink a beer and sit alone until he had to talk to reporters.
“I think Phil would be happier in his cabin in Montana doing a crossword puzzle, reading, doing some writing than coaching,” said Tex Winter, his longtime assistant. “He’s a very private person. . . . He’s a low-key person in a high-profile position. He struggles with that.”
But any day now he should have that ninth title, the third three-peat. He has never lost in the Finals.
Jackson, making $6 million per season and with a reported $2 million per year championship bonus, talks about two more years. That should put him past Auerbach. But if O’Neal wanted to play a third season, who knows. Jackson is drawn both by the lure of the game and the call of the wild.
“I’ve got a mentor, Tex Winter, and he said, `You’re only a success at the time you perform a successful task,'” Jackson said. “So until the task is performed, there’s a moment of exuberance of performing it. After that, you can’t get a cup of coffee on it.”
Another championship is brewing for the Lakers. And it wouldn’t be if Phil Jackson weren’t there.
