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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
The Zen-iest coach in basketball has a cruel streak. He's weird and it works.
May 29, 2001 | I'm sure there have been many moments. But the one I'm thinking of happened late in a meaningless regular season game against the muddiest of doormats, the 1998 edition of the Dallas Mavericks. Phil Jackson's mighty Bulls were mailing it in -- imitating basketball in a game they would eventually lose. It was then that he entered what can only be called a State of Phil. Rather than resort to the usual motivational exhortations of superego figures, Jackson did something unprecedented in professional athletics: He started clipping his nails. When Jackson achieves Phil, he stands at a universal meeting point where parts become indistinguishable from their whole. He is at once in your face and removed, as if surveying multitudes of you across space and time. The art of Phil is such that even the losses seem by design.
But Jackson seldom loses. This year, Jackson will complete his 11th season as an NBA coach. He spent his first nine with the Chicago Bulls, where he garnered six championships. He took the 1998-99 season off, then returned to lead the Los Angeles Lakers to glory in 2000. If his Lakers go on to win this year, it will be Jackson's eighth championship. Only Red Auerbach has more with nine -- a record that Jackson may very well break if he decides to stick around that long. Jackson has achieved his success with a uniquely New Age approach: a blend of Eastern and Western ideas heretofore foreign to professional sports. He has been known to regale players with tales of the sacred white buffalo of the plains, coach them in meditation techniques and burn sage to reverse a losing streak.
Perhaps because of his bizarre methodology, Jackson is not without his critics. They point to the great players he has always had on his side -- first Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, and now Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. It stands to reason, they argue, that Jackson wins -- the deck is always stacked in his favor. And they have a point. Jackson knows when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. When the Bulls broke up, he walked away from the game until he found a sure bet with the Lakers.
But there is another side to the story. Jordan and Shaq played a combined 13 years without Jackson and never won a championship. Meanwhile Jackson has known success at every level -- first as a player with the 1970 and 1973 Knicks, then in the lowly Continental Basketball Association, where he won a title with the Albany Patroons.
The CBA is where Jackson earned his stripes. Not only did Jackson coach, he drove the van. Late at night he took his band of malcontents and might-have-beens from one basketball outpost to the next, each light-years away from the NBA and anybody who might care about their accomplishments.
While at Albany Jackson persuaded his team to divide salaries and playing time equally. Married guys got a $25-a-week bonus. This type of egalitarianism is without precedent in professional sports -- you find it on a few scattered T-ball teams. Generally speaking, these are the teams that sink to the bottom of the standings and a parent-inspired mutiny follows. Not so with Jackson's Patroons. In 1984, they took the CBA title.
And this is the magic of Phil. Somehow, he manages to be at once himself and whatever his players need him to be. In an era when everyone wants to be an emcee, in an environment where the limelight's wattage determines self-worth, Jackson opts for a lower profile. Winning or losing, on the bench his demeanor never strays. At times, it seems as though the game played before him simply distracts him from other, more important mental activities. Like the Wizard of Oz, his machinations remain hidden.
Born to Pentecostal missionaries in North Dakota, Phil Jackson learned the art of manipulation early in life. As a player, his mental grasp of the game far outstretched his physical capabilities. Jackson was oafish and often injured, and opponents feared his sharp elbows more than his sharp shot. Red Holzman, his coach on the New York Knickerbockers, barred him from dribbling the ball.
