Don't Mistake Phil Jackson's Zen for Excuses

From the minute he manned that Madison Square Garden podium last March, Phil Jackson’s tenure as president of the New York Knicks has been as much about fostering a brotherhood of community as it has forging a basketball contender.

To the Zen Master’s mind, if the Knicks were to exorcise their decades-held demons, the process must be just as important as the project itself.

But after a tumultuous start to the 2014-15 season, it’s worth wondering if Jackson’s insistence on preaching patience might not be a mask for mere excuse-making.

His latest protective bristle came following candid remarks from NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who surmised the Knicks were “clearly…still learning” the nuances of Jackson’s vaunted triangle offense, per ESPN New York’s Ian Begley.

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Needless to say, the former coach and 13-time NBA champ was none too pleased with the commissioner’s off-the-cuff candor.

"I wasn't so humored by the commissioner actually jumping in on top of that, too," Jackson said. "He doesn't need to get in on that. There's enough focus on [the] triangle. It's not anything. It's a system. It's simple basketball. Just play the game. We're over the triangle; let's get to business and play the right way."

"They're still quite a ways from their execution capability as a team,” Jackson later added. “And this is going to happen. It's all part of the process."

And what a perilous one it’s been: Through November 11, the Knicks ranked 22nd in the league in offensive efficiency (99.0) and 27th in defensive efficiency (108.7, per NBA.com), one of only three teams (along with the Denver Nuggets and Philadelphia 76ers) in the bottom 10 in both categories.

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Sadly, the eyeball test only mirrors the math. Despite the best efforts of first-year head coach Derek Fisher, the Knicks’ triangle trials have varied wildly—bursts of offensive fluidity interspersed with sheer hardwood helter skelter.

The 1996-97 Chicago Bulls, these are not.

Still, the numbers aren’t without their hedgerows of hope: The team is currently seventh in the league in three-point shooting (38.4 percent) and tied for fourth in assist ratio (18.1), signs that the triangle’s emphasis on pace and passing are at least yielding some marginal dividends.

Besides, it’s not as if eight games ever a season made. With so many new faces and philosophies in tow, New York’s learning curve was sure to be beset by bumps.

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At the same time, it’s easy to see Jackson’s protective posturing as compromising what many see as an even more important teaching totem: accountability. After all, if the guy with three rings on the bench believes everything will work out as planned, the process risks becoming passive—perpetual deference to a deity of the game.

Jackson has made no bones about taking as deep of a back seat as possible as it concerns day-to-day disciplinary duties. It might be Phil’s team to shape, but it’s Fisher’s and Fisher’s alone to coach.

But at what point does such passivity—however specifically placed and well intentioned—become little more than a conviction of sheer convenience? Grantland’s Bill Simmons posited precisely this idea in a column penned just days before Jackson’s hiring:

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The elephant in the room: Why would anyone think Phil Jackson — 69 in September, and not exactly known for his tireless work ethic during his last few Lakers years — is suddenly ready to outwork the Sam Prestis and Daryl Moreys and Rob Hennigans of the world? Could you see Phil hopping puddle jumpers from Kansas City to Oklahoma City in mid-January to scout lottery picks? What makes the 2014-16 Knicks situation any different from the 2008-10 Knicks situation … when they wasted two years chasing a pipe dream, came away with $100 million of Amar’e Stoudemire, then spent hundreds of millions more so they could win exactly one playoff series?

"

Fair questions all. Still, Jackson’s best gift has always been his ability—be it through basketball brains or player-tailored books—to lead people and delegate duties. Age, then, should have little if any bearing on the Zen Master's ultimate front-office success. If Presti or Morey somehow manage to outmaneuver him, it certainly won’t be due to analytic scouring or scouting trips.

Scan the myriad preseason predictions and power rankings, and you’re liable to find a 50-50 split on New York’s playoff prospects. Yet here the Knicks are, slogging and struggling their way through an early-season swoon, and suddenly those expert expectations are rendered revisionist—as if the Knicks were supposed to be good all along.

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Are the Knicks a bad team? One could certainly make that argument. Are they so far afield from passable, postseason-poised basketball? For his part, Fisher certainly doesn’t think so.

"We still believe we're not as far away as it seems right now,” Fisher recently told Ian Begley. “We're not getting the wins. It's still very early. We know for a fact that we're going to get better, and we're going to start to win some of these games."

That might sound like so much boilerplate coach-speak. But there’s a reason Jackson chose Fisher—with his steady speech and even-keeled countenance—to man the helm of New York’s resurrection: patience, as any true triangle point guard knows, is a virtue.

Jackson excusing his team’s poor play isn’t a sign of lazy leadership; it’s the same clarion call of calm he’s always sounded. Blame the sense-bending nightmarescape that is the Knicks’ history—desperate and desolate and decades sans salvation—for making you hear it differently.

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