Four years ago, Michael Jordan hit the jumper in Salt Lake City, ending the NBA Finals with his sixth championship and a wave bye-bye -- for the time being. The Chicago Bulls were soon broken up, with Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman and the coach, Phil Jackson, all going their very separate ways.
Each moved on to a custom-made future. Jordan took a three-year retirement so he could try a second comeback. Pippen is ringleader for the utterly heartless Portland Trail Blazers. Rodman, mercifully, has disappeared. Only Jackson has remained a championship force in the NBA.
With every new June, the Age of Jordan is lapped again by the Age of Jackson. Many will protest, with some justification, that the Age of Jackson really is just the Age of Jordan plus the Age of Shaq and Kobe, for Jackson's teams have never been accused of overachieving. One suspects, also, that those schematics are of little interest to Jackson, who's going for his ninth NBA championship in 12 years when his Los Angeles Lakers take on the New Jersey Nets this month in the NBA Finals.
When someone wins as often as Jackson, one must pay attention, because it seldom happens. Red Auerbach won nine NBA championships with the Celtics. That's it. In no other major professional team sport has any coach won the championship nine times.
At the same time Jackson guns for his ninth NBA championship, Detroit Red Wings coach Scotty Bowman is on track for his ninth NHL championship in 30 years this month, when his Detroit Red Wings face the Carolina Hurricanes in the Stanley Cup Finals. The difference is that Bowman, in hockey circles, is revered.
In discussions about the best basketball coaches, meanwhile, Jackson often takes a back seat to college coaches who haven't proven themselves up to the challenge of directing adults. Among the pro coaches, Larry Brown's name is more likely to be mentioned.
So why does a certain magic not linger in Jackson's name, the way we think of Vince Lombardi, Casey Stengel or Auerbach? Why doesn't Jackson go on the same plane as Lombardi when it comes to unifying his players, on the same plane as Stengel when it comes to melding his complementary players with his stars or on the same plain with Auerbach when it comes to the fine points of the game?
One of the greatest coaching careers in the history of sports is right in front of us, and it's playing off like some kind of coincidence. While his demeanor, in its best public moments, lacks the warmth of great coaches past, the standard criticism of Jackson always comes back to his coaching trademark -- he wins championships with stars. One would think Jackson doesn't do any work. And, true to whatever mixture of Zen and Native American spirituality he's metabolized, that might be a sign of his leadership.
Jackson grew up in North Dakota, a considerable distance from Western Civilization. His parents were ministers. He reached his full height, 6-8, before college. Not surprisingly, a 6-foot-8 North Dakota kid in the 1960s received a basketball scholarship at the University of North Dakota, where he played for Bill Fitch, later of the NBA. Never known as a smooth athlete, Jackson became an efficient scorer at the small college level and the New York Knickerbockers took him with their second-round draft pick in 1967.
The son of North Dakota ministers hit it off well in The City, where Knicks fans embraced him despite -- or because of -- his utilitarian application of modest skills, his proto-hippified ways and his 1975 book, Maverick, in which he talked freely about experimentation with marijuana and LSD. The NBA had little use for him when his playing career ended in 1980, however, so Jackson set about coaching in the Continental Basketball Association.
Coaching the CBA's Albany Patroons, Jackson implemented the "Triangle Post" offense, which, according to legend, is rooted in an offense run with aplomb by University of Southern California players like Tex Winter, Alex Hannum and Bill Sharmon in the 1940s under head coach Sam Berry. It's a read and react offense that gives players freedom and structure, best left to professionals who are either acutely aware of the game or who play with time-saving skill.
Eschewing the militaristic coaching style of top-down control that's characterized the profession, Jackson has often been lampooned for his New Age vocabulary. But he has redefined aspects of the vocabulary to fit with the Xs and Os. Alongside all the jock-tied exhortations to pride and heart, Jackson preaches awareness and categorizes "teamwork" as "selflessness."
He goes so far as to say it's more important to be aware than to be smart, because he doesn't want players to think for themselves so much as he wants them to run the triangle and be aware of the compromises it forces on the defense. Those compromises are scoring chances, but they close quickly. Awareness is everything.
So Jackson recommends books for players, tries to expand them mentally and sprinkles his speech with Zen lyrics. He is a performance optimizer, but the performance he tries to optimize is specific to the technical requirements of the triangle and his defensive schemes. Toward that end, he's a motivational analyst, a psychological instigator. Success has made him a secular priest for basketball stars under his watch.
Jackson's first great convert was Jordan. Once he sold Jordan, the rest has been relatively easy. After taking over the Chicago Bulls in 1989, Jackson hired Winter, principal author of the triangle, and then convinced Jordan to trust his teammates.
That took some doing. Jordan's teammates weren't all that much. But Jackson improved them and the result was magic, same as he's making in Los Angeles.
Two of the usual rubrics for assessing a coach's performance are often left out of the discussion on Jackson. First, it's never mentioned if he's ever gotten less than the maximum out of any player. Even if some players score less than they might otherwise, it's impossible to argue with the championships.
Secondly, Jackson's teams are never deterred by internal strife -- and that's not because there is no internal strife. He just understands how to harmonize conflict, which is why he won during Rodman's playoff sideshows and despite early feuding between Shaq and Kobe.
Old-time coaches can appreciate those skills but don't always demonstrate an apprehension of today's massively inflated star athlete and how those skills turn that athlete into a champion. While squeezing in a few compliments on Jackson's work, Auerbach played the star card against Jackson in a report last week, as if coaching stars is easy. Coaching stars is easy, if all you want is a chance to win the championship. But if you're trying to really win it, a concerted effort must go into integrating the stars with the rest of the team.
Today's stars, unlike Bill Russell, aren't necessarily team oriented. That value has to be taught in a way that's credible and serious. Motivated by the trappings of individual success, the players have made it to the NBA by tuning out the slogans about teamwork, which haven't often applied to them against lower-level competition anyway. The message has to come from another direction.
Though Jackson's methods have often been derided as loopy, they aren't as loopy as banging players over the head with slogans they don't believe.
Auerbach also said Jackson has never built a team from scratch, that his teams always have been ready made for him. That not only smacks of blasting a man for seeking and accepting the best opportunities, but it just isn't true.
The teams Jackson inherited weren't ready to win. They weren't even teams. They were working arrangements for individual stars, the kind of outfit that goes home after the conference finals. Jackson made them into teams, let alone championship teams.
It should be remembered that Jackson didn't inherit any champions. Jordan didn't win before Jackson went to Chicago, and there's no guarantee Jordan would have won if Jackson hadn't. Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant hadn't won before Jackson went to Los Angeles, and there's no guarantee they would have won if he hadn't.
It's easy to say Jordan, O'Neal and Bryant would have won without Jackson. It's a lot easier to say they won with him alone.
By common apprehension, the NBA is a players' league in which a few great players make all the difference. Coaches are little regarded because it isn't altogether obvious what they do.
Can it be that what the NBA coach does is simply a matter of making the few great players make the biggest difference by converting them to team concepts? Judging from Jackson's relative lack of acclaim as he seeks his ninth NBA championship, many people still don't think so.
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