great Phil Jackson article

[Mavinator]

www.dallasbasketball.com has a GREAT article on the Zen Master that expresses my feelings perfectly. I thought I'd give you a look...

When's the Zen?

Any opinions? This one's for you, fidel...

[djb]

I agree 100% with the article, and have always been anti-PhilJax. "He" hasn't won squat imo, and I'm tired of everyone saying he turned around the Lakers or that they were going nowhere before his arrival. Until he truly turns a team around, he gets no props from me. I think this quote really sums it all up:

We would, however, love to see a true test of Jackson's ability, a test that will come whenever he resigns from the Lakers to go cross-town to run the Clippers. But he’ll never do that, maybe because he’s just smart enough as a basketball man to know that Larry Brown and his ilk are smarter, just smart enough to know that his brilliance ends when Michael’s does, when Shaq’s does.

[Murphy3]

i'm not going to bash phil jackson, but it is impossible to get a true taste of how good or bad of a coach he truthfully is until he wins something with a team that isn't loaded with the top players in the NBA.

saying that, I denounce any article written by the fish....so i'm going to have to disagree with everything that was said in his article.

[Mavinator]

Man... when Dirk's Mavericks dynasty is starting up, Phil is going to have to really suck it up when he goes to Mark Cuban and asks for a job!

[Fidel]

Hmmm I just recently saw that one and I guess I have to comment.
First: didn´t Auerbach have Bill Russel?
Second: sucess is relative. What´s being more sucessfull: coach a good team to 52 wins and a second round playoff out, or coach a great team to six championships in eight years?
The whole argument of Fisher goes overboard if you check the 93-94 season. Without Jordan (of whom Fish says he was the "real coach&quot the bulls had a 55 win season. Now you all say that Pippen is average at best without Jordan, and Pippen had the likes of Grant, Armstrong and supersoft Rookie Kukoc to go with. So that was a good not great team, and yet Phil took them to 55 wins and a game 7 lost to NewYork in the conference semi finals (with some very questionable calls for the Knicks by the way). So in that year Phil had the same success with a good team that Fish talks about when he describes Brown or Nelson as great coaches. They didn´t win big but they did pretty well with average to good teams. (Brown was lucky the Sixers won against the Bucks and Raptors, he was clearly outcoached a couple of times in these series).
So Phil already had his test, and using Fishs standards he did great in it.
The whole argument with game one of this years finals is BS IMO, you can´t argue based on one game.
To win big as a coach you have to have great players on your team, with a good team you could pull out a surprise year but you couldn´t build a dynasty. Look what Riley does since he has left LA. He´s still considered a great coach by many, but didn´t win anything despite having Ewing or Mourning.
So I think it´s kind of symbiotic. A great team wouldn´t win with a bad coach, and even the greatest coach couldn´t win it all with an average team.
To me Phil is a great coach, cause he´s very good at what a dinasty needs to develope. Teams with really great players (Jordan, Shaq) need coaches that can deal with their egos, deal with the pressure from inside and outside the organisation year after year. Those teams need a coach who´s able to step back take a supporting roll at times, they don´t need the Dean Smith or Larry Brown types who must be in charge all the time.
Phil has that all. He was able to deal with completely different characters such as Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, Kukoc and now with antitodes Kobe and Shaq.
I know these are kind of "soft" facts dealing with mental things mostly, and you in the US like the "hard" facts better. But IMO these are the things that are most important for the success of a team and not so much how you draw your X´s and O´s.
So IMO, had Phil coached the Blazers last year (which really had the potential to be a great team) instaed of Dunleavy, the Blazers would be the defending champs this year, and that´s the best you can say about any coach.
It´s just way more difficult to win it all with a great team 7 times than to win 53 games with a good team from time to time.
Phil is great, he´s just not your average type of guy, that´s why a lot of people do not like him IMO.

[Mavinator]

What exactly did Phil Jackson do to quell the lakers troubles this season? Shaq and kobe were at each other's throats all year, and Phil was showing a real lack of ability to do anything about it. The problem would not have been resolved if Shaq, utter class act that he is, hadn't willingly scaled back his game, which in my opinion is something he should not have done. The lakers are still not as good as they were last year. What about Phil's other big job, the taming of JR Rider? What was Phil's brilliant player management doing to help Rider before he was cut from the team? I especially like the way he handled Glen Rice's ego problems last year... where is Glen Rice now? Are the lakers a better team because of Phil's master "mental" coaching?

If you mean by "stepping back and taking a supporting role", that Phil just gets out of the way and prays things work themselves out, I would strongly agree that he is great at doing that...

[Fidel]

First: the Lakers will win the title this year. That´s the ultimate accomplishment. They didn´t implode like the Blazers. Actually not only Shaq had to change his game (if you ask me he raised it), but also is Kobe playing a totally different role in the playoffs. He rebounds better and has more assists, he´s less selfish despite scoring more. Also he picks his shots better, shooting at a higher percentage. He plays more of an allround game right now (30.4, 6.7, 5.9). The Lakers are finally clicking and it didn´t happen out of nothing. How much Phil had to do with it: we´ll never know. But he lets his teams develope instead of overregulating them, just like he coaches games. Who knows perhaps another coach wouldn´t have the mental strenght to sit it out and would have traded Kobe. Sometimes it´s just better to do nothing at all. Also I think the whole Shaq/Kobe thing was hugely blown out of proportion by the media.
Your other points: Rider is a drug addict. No one can help him. Rices (and his wifes) ego are totally out of proportion. He just wasn´t worth the trouble. I was talking about great players like Jordan. They have a big ego, but can back it up on the court (other than players like Rice), so if you´ve got a guy like Jordan on your team you must be able to step back sometimes give them room to fully utilize their potential (with Jordan it was his mental influence on the whole team), and I think not a lot of coaches are able to do that.
So I´d say yes, the Lakers are clearly a better team because of Jacksons mental approach. I truly believe a coach like Dunleavy would have messed it up this year. Also Phil develops his players (leaves them room to develope), which is scary for the league, cause the Lakers will become better and better.

Also what about my Chicago points? What about Riley, Brown? You didn´t say anything about that.

[Fidel]

By the way: what should Phil have done with Kobe and Shaq. Treat them like little kids, just because they sometimes behaved like kids? That would have been exactely overreacting, that would have been what Brown wanted to do when he nearly traded Iverson. Instead he took the bashing, letting them settle it like men. I guess they both learned something from the whole situation and that´s exactly what Phil wanted.
He wants his players to take responsibility for themselfs, instead of waiting till someone comes and tells them how to behave, or what to do.
That´s why I like Phil, and think he´s a great coach.

[Murphy3]

very little written by fish or adornato is worth ....very little

[TheKid]

I feel Phil is a great coach too however I do feel he gets much more credit than he deserves. I think he is the GREATEST at controlling egos and is a good strategy coach as well. Although, I feel alot of the success of the Lakers really had more to do with the maturation that Kobe and Shaq had in the NBA. I truly do feel if they had another quality coach there, they would have still won the NBA championship last year and this year.

I just feel he didn't have much to change, he implemented a system that is PERFECT for Shaq and Kobe to flourish. Now I'm not saying this man is not a great coach because he is. However I think he came along more at the right time to coach the Lakers more so than he being their savior.

[Mavinator]

I'm gonna let this drop; I don't expect to convince you of anything... You're a good guy, fidel, even if you are a fan of The Most Overrated Coach in Sports History...

[Murphy3]

phil's a condescending, cocky, arrogant jackass that is in love with himself.
yes, he's overrated but no one overrates him more than he overrate himself.

but, he's a hall of fame coach any way you look at it. it doesn't matter whether or not he had ANYTHING to do with the bulls winning the titles or the lakers winning last year and about to win this year...
end of story, thanks

[Fidel]

Well here´s a piece at espn.com about Jackson that I like a little more.
It´s for you Mavinator [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]
The guy actually must have read my posts [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]
It´s here

I especially like those parts:


<< Jackson has done a great coaching job with the Lakers because of what he did when a strong coach was needed most.
Nothing.
When O'Neal and Bryant were at war, it was fashionably knee jerk to demand that Jackson get in there and fix things, seeing as managing personalities was one of his strengths. At least people got that part right.
In the end, Jackson did nothing and he did right. When the tension level was high, he laid low. >>




<< &quot;O'Neal is too busy being angry and hurt. Bryant is too busy not caring what people think. You've seen times during games when a team will be on the wrong side of a big scoring run and the coach won't call timeout because he wants them to find a way to fight through it? That's what this is. OK, so it's the future course of an entire cornerstone franchise at stake and not a game (details, details), but you get the idea.&quot; >>




<< Said Ron Harper, a player under Jackson in Chicago and Los Angeles: &quot;It was on him. They were like 'Phil, he should go say this or go hand that guy this book.' No. Being grown men who got egos, they may hit sometimes. That's all. It's good, I think.&quot; >>




<< To Jackson's credit, he doesn't try to sell himself as false goods. He knows he does not have the same makeup as Brown, as someone who would be great developing young talent and taking the hits that would come along. Jackson is a closer. He knows it. He proves it >>


Says Phil:

<< &quot;That did not appeal to me at all. I felt like having been through so many of those games over the course of my career that my expertise is probably in taking teams to the next level that are good teams. That might be what I have to understand about myself. Not about rebuilding or reading personnel or beating the bushes with foreign players or finding a way to beat the salary cap and all those other things that go into building a franchise to the point where you have the personnel to win. It's not about coaching. You've got to have players. That was something that I understood that was the opportunity I wanted and took it.&quot; >>

[Mavinator]

So Jackson is great because he doesn't do anything?

[djb]

To me, PhilJax was just smart enough to be in the right place at the right time.

[Evilmav2]

Phil Jackson- Lucky opportunist/Attention Seeking Gentle Philosopher

2000 Los Angeles Magazine quotes:

The wisdom of Jackson: &quot;...Los Angeles has always been kind of a mecca,&quot; he says. &quot;To me it's always been a great space, a big city that has a beach and the sun and the ocean and the variety of life that it provides. So much happened here that was negative in the early '90s. But I see this as a city that has always been kind of a healing point.&quot;

The words of a philosopher genius?

Jackson on winning: &quot;A self-described &quot;Zen Christian,&quot; Jackson says he doesn't just want to win, he wants to win the right way--which, as any Zen adept knows, is the way to win.&quot;

Evidently, the right way to win means to be handed pre-assembled playoff teams featuring one of the two most dominant players of the last 15 years...