NBA Golden Era Ending? Phil Jackson Looks to Exit with Fourth "Three Peat"

Human beings have an uncanny ability to use a combination of logic, metrics and emotions to often times convince ourselves of something we want to or even need to believe to be true.  As a result, we many times miss the clear cut-and-dry truth that lies right in front of our collective noses.

Sports fans are perhaps the best segment of society from which to examine this phenomenon. 

Unlike in life—when emotional allegiances can be ambiguous, logic can be murky and numbers can be lacking or incomplete—sports fans are much more transparent in all three categories. 

Sports fans have clear emotional ties, (we love our team and hate and discredit any team that opposes or defeats our team in big games or series) easy-to-understand logic (we want our team to win and our best player will be the one we defend and build up) and a seemingly bottomless sea of statistics and information to manipulate and draw conclusions that fit our respective biases. 

All this fire, passion and extreme dedication to one team or player is admirable and is one of the primary reasons why someone like myself first enters this business.  However, when it comes to objectively evaluating the accomplishments of players, coaches and teams outside one's favorite, this narrow-minded approach often distorts what would otherwise be viewed as fact. 

Which brings us to Lakers head coach Phil Jackson. 

Jackson is in the final year (supposedly) of a career that could only be described as incomparable.  Simply put, by the numbers Jackson has absolutely no equal as a head coach in NBA history.  His digits are well known so I won’t spend a ton of time harping on them here but just a quick recap:

• 229 playoff wins 1^st all-time (through completion of the Hornets series)
• .694 career playoff winning percentage, 1^st all-time
• 327 playoff games, 1^st all-time
• 1,165 career wins in the regular season 5^th all-time
• .704 regular season winning percentage 1^st all-time
• Has been involved in three of the five “three peats” in NBA history: (91-93 Bulls, 96-98 Bulls and 00-02 Lakers)
• And oh yeah those 11 championship rings he has (12 if you count the one he earned as a player on the 73 Knicks) yeah that’s a record too. 

People who don’t like Jackson—or the teams and players he has coached—often use the tired and senseless argument that he only won because he had the luxury of having great players like Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal on his team.

Ask anyone who has coached the sport of basketball on any level in the last 20 years however, and they will invariable tell you it’s much harder to coach great players with big egos (there are not too many Tim Duncans in the world) than a team full of lesser players who are more eager to take coaching, listen and learn.

Jackson’s ability to manage egos, blend impossibly different personalities (Rodman and Jordan Shaq and Kobe) and still maximize his teams’ talent is honestly unbelievable. 

The reality is, players in the Jordan and post-Jordan era have more power, demand more control and overall are much harder to manage than anything any of Jackson’s chief competitors (Red Holzman, Red Auerbach, Chuck Daly and Pat Riley) ever had to deal with.  Auerbach and Holzman coached in an entirely different era, Daly just does not have the numbers (not that anyone really does), and Riley achieved most of his success with Magic Johnson and the Lakers before the Jordan revolution. 

His calm demeanor on the sideline infuses his teams with poise and confidence and restraint in calling timeouts has helped win his teams countless games and series over the years. 

Still not convinced? 

Consider this:

Jackson’s four greatest players—Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Scottie Pippen and Shaquille O’Neal—collectively have 21 championships between them. In their collective 26 seasons without Jackson roaming or should I say sitting on the sideline, care to take a guess at how many titles those four won?

ONE.

The singular title was achieved by Shaq during the 2005-06 season when he teamed with Dwayne Wade and was coached by probably the second or third greatest coach in NBA history, Pat Riley. 

That simply cannot be, and is not, a coincidence.  Jackson knows how to coach great talent.  There are some coaches who were great in their own way that you could argue do not coach great talent well. 

One coach fitting that description who comes to mind is Jerry Sloan.  Sloan had statistically the greatest point guard to ever play the game (John Stockton) and arguably the greatest power forward and second greatest scorer ever to play (Karl Malone) together for 18 seasons and yet managed to go to just two NBA finals, losing to Jackson’s Bulls both times.  There is no way you could convince me that Jackson would not have won multiple championships with those two.

If it is just about the talent of the players, why do we bother having coaches? Why pay them multiple millions of dollars a year?  And most importantly—if it really is just about talent, why had probably the greatest owner in NBA history Dr. Jerry Buss paid Jackson as much as $12 million a season to coach his team?

Surely you won’t argue with Dr. Buss and his ability to evaluate talent, will you?