Bleachers Brew: The Zen of Ten

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The Zen of Ten
by rick olivares

When Phil Jackson was announced as the new coach of the Los Angeles Lakers in the summer of 2000, Kobe Bryant, then in his fourth year in the National Basketball Association watched the press conference from the backstage.

The Lakers’ season ended badly under coach Kurt Rambis and the frustration was mounting not just for him but his team that was bursting to the seams with talent yet could not get over the hump of the class of the West that included the Utah Jazz and the San Antonio Spurs.

Bryant peered and watched the coach who led the Chicago Bulls to six championships in nine seasons and mentored the greatest player to ever play the game. A man many said Bryant was the heir apparent.

“I just wanted to see for myself,” said Bryant of his presence backstage. “Any time you get a great coach who has won so much, you think that he just might be the one who could help us win a championship.”

From the way the young star was talking, it was as if they team had signed a free agent All-Star who was the missing link in the championship puzzle.

Bryant did play in six finals and came away with four Larry O’Brien trophies. And following their scuttling of the Orlando Magic in five games, his first NBA Finals MVP Award.

As great as the evening was for the storied franchise and personally for Bryant as he finally stepped out of Shaquille O’Neal voluminous shadow, the spotlight was on Jackson.

Now and forever he will be joined at the hips (including his own perennially bad pair) with Bo Derek, Pearl Jam’s seminal debut album, and Nadia Comaneci among others when the number “10” is mentioned.

In the post-1997 NBA championship celebration of the Chicago Bulls, Phil Jackson fessed up to a dream that involved Shamans and five fingers.

Jackson, then the Bulls’ mentor interpreted the dream as winning five titles. Maybe he can be forgiven for the haze of peace pipes and backward-walking Indians because Jackson has won 10 NBA championships. Double than what he saw in the dream.

After his Lakers thoroughly dismantled the befuddled Magic, there are no longer questions about his greatness as a coach though shameful it was that there were still doubts even if he was tied with Boston patriarch Red Auerbach with nine titles as far back as a season ago.

So 10.

It’s a composite number and that word is apt when describing the free-spirited Jackson.

His beliefs are an amalgam of Christian and Native American beliefs.

The basketball system he runs is a hybrid of his former coach Red Holzman’s teachings and long-time assistant Tex Winter’s Triangle Offense.

His coaching success comes with two teams… the Bulls and the Lakers. And he’s had two of the greatest basketball players ever in Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

How it must rankle his critics to see him surpass Auerbach!

When Jackson’s Bulls were winning, many panned the Bulls as not having any equal to truly define them the way Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics and Magic Johnson’s Lakers constantly tested each other.

Excuse me. Jordan’s foes were all dispatched in the East – Patrick Ewing’s Knicks, the Cleveland Cavaliers, Isiah Thomas’ Detroit Pistons, and Alonzo Mourning’s Miami Heat.

During Bird and Magic’s time they were only two teams (with the Philadelphia 76ers and the Houston Rockets crashing the party). But there was no parity then. It’s only the sentimentalists from New England and New York who say that as they are hesitant to give props to a man who brought Eastern mysticism and geometry to pro ball.

It is already no secret of Jackson’s ability to manage a professional team of multi-millionaires with egos the size of the Empire State Building. When other teams tried to run the Triangle Offense, they soon gave up because they paled in comparison to the one true master (he actually has eleven as he coached the Albany Patroons to a Continental Basketball Association title before he got the job with the Bulls).

Prior to their championships, Jordan and Bryant were described as monumentally talented players who couldn’t make their teammates better.

When both started winning, the counter argument was, “Bah, how could he (Jackson) not win when he had great players?”

Booshwah.

When Orlando’s coach Stan Van Gundy, a creative genius yet still unsung in his own right, was asked of Jackson’s greatness, he didn’t mince his words. “Maybe you’ll hear the comment, ‘He had great players. First of all, I don’t know of a team that’s ever won it once that doesn’t have great players. Yeah, he had great players, but he wins all the time! If you have Kobe and those guys and you’re losing, okay, maybe they can talk about it. But that guy is winning all the time. You can’t give him the short stick. Damn, you look at the guy’s record, it’s unbelievable.”

Indeed. Not only does have 10 NBA championships but he also has guided two teams to three-peats having done it twice with the Bulls and once with the Lakers.

He’s won 51 play-off series. And he was there when the Bulls won a record 72 games.

In the aftermath of the Bulls’ record-setting 1996 season, the NBA’s older generation pooh-poohed Chicago’s place as the greatest team ever.

Jordan’s response was rapier-sharp and deadly to the point: “Anyone else win 72 games?”

In so many words, he made it plain and clear that the son of a Pentecostal minister from North Dakota was the best.

Anyone else coached 10 NBA championship teams?