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SAN ANTONIO
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LOS ANGELES
PHILADELPHIA
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MILWAUKEE
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Is Phil Jackson lucky or good?
By Mark Kreidler
Special to ESPN.com
During the earlier portion of these NBA playoffs, before it became apparent that the Lakers wouldn't lose another game until Daylight Savings Time comes back off the books, someone asked Sacramento Kings coach Rick Adelman about some opinion Phil Jackson had offered on some topic or another. It's doesn't matter what. It could've been a Triangle question or traffic on the Harbor Freeway or whether Jerry Garcia was better with his own band or the Dead.
|  | | Phil Jackson has had few reasons to scratch his head during this postseason. |
What was telling wasn't the question, but the generally mild-mannered Adelman's testy response. "Hey, give me Shaq," Adelman fairly snorted. "Give me Kobe. He's got two pretty good players over there."
In other words, it isn't Phil, it's the talent. Or maybe it's how the talent is positioned. Or maybe it's the system that allows the talent to flourish. But it's definitely not Phil.
OK, maybe a little.
Adelman actually admires much of Jackson's style, but that isn't the point. The point is that, with Jackson at seven rings and counting, you still don't have to go far to find someone in the NBA who remains less than 100 percent convinced that there's a Zen genius at work here -- to find someone, that is, who doesn't wonder just a bit if Jackson's glimmering resume isn't the byproduct of some of the most fortuitous time-placement in pro hoops history.
It is a theory that jogs right up to the edge of reasonability without actually crossing it. It's got a little heft, which is precisely what makes it so dangerous.
The books certainly argue in favor of a closer look: Jackson arrived in Chicago just past the Michael Jordan early-struggle years, then joined Jordan with Scottie Pippen to form a six-championship beast. The catch? When Jordan wasn't interested in basketball, the Bulls were just another team with a decent record and no ring. So was it the coach, or was it the greatest player in recent NBA lore?
Jackson "retired" after the 1997-98 Finals, sat out a year, and then returned -- but not to just any job. A far cry from some of the reclamation and building projects he might have considered in places like New Jersey and Washington, Jackson waited for his chance to say yes to L.A. -- and to the precocious talent of Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant.
Right, class, does that make Jackson lucky or does it make him good? Does it matter that, pre-Phil, the Shaq-Kobe axis had produced no championships, or was that a result that was preordained no matter who ultimately was the guy sitting cross-legged on the bench?
You see how easy it is to underestimate Jackson? It's as easy as Pi. People look at some of Jackson's eccentricities -- handing out works of literature to his players as learning devices; splicing current movies into game films in order to produce "message" videos -- and wonder how they'd play with a team that wasn't blessed with a Jordan, an O'Neal or a Bryant.
It's a good question. It is also unanswerable, which is what makes this such a shadow argument, impossible to take a clean swing at. But even if you go down that road, you are left with the immovable object that is Result. The result, in Jackson's case, is staggering.
Jackson's Bulls did win six championships -- three in a row on two separate occasions. Jackson's tenure in Chicago did coincide with Jordan's transformation from brilliantly talented individualist to ring-bearing team leader.
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Moving Up
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Coaches with the most NBA championships:
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Red Auerbach (Boston), 9
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Phil Jackson (Chicago/LA), 7
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John Kundla (Minneapolis), 5
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Pat Riley (LA), 4
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Coaches with the most NBA playoff victories:
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Pat Riley, 155
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Phil Jackson, 137
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Red Auerbach, 99
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K.C. Jones, 81
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Lenny Wilkens, 78
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Coaches with the best NBA playoff winning percentage:
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Phil Jackson, .737
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Butch van Breda Kolff, .636
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John Kundla, .632
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Billy Cunningham, .629
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Gregg Popovich, .628
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Jackson did arrive in Los Angeles as if by divine appointment, and he did inherit Bryant and O'Neal -- but he also took a team to a title in his first season after the Lakers had already spent three years in the Kobe-Shaq vortex with no hardware to show.
This season may represent Jackson's finest finish, if by no means his best all-around job. The Lakers during the season went through without any clear sense of direction, almost wallowing in their own success of the season before; and Jackson acknowledged it without appearing able to do much about it. When Bryant and O'Neal openly feuded, Jackson was remarkably passive, and his one aggressive public move was uncharacteristic -- a riff on Bryant's apparent self-centeredness in an interview with Chicago writer Rick Telander.
But Jackson also knew about the small truths beneath the surface. He knew that O'Neal and Bryant each weren't at 100 percent. He knew (and Bryant often affirmed) that a healthy guard Derek Fisher was more integral to the Lakers' success than anyone realized. He knew that he still had the players to make a championship run.
And he knew, perhaps as only ring-wearing coaches do, that he had time. If the Lakers never panicked on the long road to Wellville, it is a fair reflection of the demeanor of the man coaching them -- the man who says in his recent book "More Than a Game" that winning NBA titles "isn't about being invincible. It's about winning the last game of the season."
Now O'Neal and Bryant carry on as though they'll be picking out drapes together over the summer, and the Lakers are being fitted for the robes of repeat champs without the annoyance of actually playing in the NBA Finals, and that 56-26 regular-season record -- the weakest of any Jackson-coached team to reach the title series -- is dismissed as a sort of restless walk-up to the games that matter, of which the Lakers have lost, let's see here, none.
It's the perfect time, that is, for the Phil Jackson question all over again. Is the man lucky or is the man good? The only clear and compelling answer: Absolutely.
Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee, which has a Web site at http://www.sacbee.com/.
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