Phil Jackson: A Study in Over-ratedness

Overrate – to rate, estimate, or value too highly

Phil Jackson is the most overrated coach in NBA history. I am sick and tired of hearing about Phil Jackson being the greatest coach of all time. Phil Jackson is probably a good poker player...he knows when he has a good hand, and he knows when to fold. I also find him to be a certifiable quack. Here's the thing, name me one time, ONE TIME, in the playoffs where you watched a Bulls or Lakers Jackson-coached team and felt like Jackson outcoached the other coach. I certainly can't think of one. Jackson coaches the Spurs in 1999, 2003, 2005, and 2007 and he maybe makes it out of the West and wins two titles. Popovich won four. Let's go back and figure out where this "Jackson is the Zen-master/greatest coach ever!!” stuff started.

Summer 1984 - the Bulls select Michael Jordan. Obviously, 95% of basketball people feel Jordan is the best ever. Jordan probably, at current time (ask me again when LeBron has three rings), is the greatest basketball player ever. It pains me to say that, because I personally have no love for Jordan. I think he is a competition-addicted jerk who happened to have been put on this earth to be a dick to people and play basketball. He did both incredibly well. So, Jordan is a Bull and starts his assault on the record books. It shouldn't have been a surprise he was so good, so soon He was coming off being the Naismith Player of the Year at North Carolina. (Note to Larry Bird: Not all UNC players that won player of the year should be a lottery pick, especially if they are white, slow, and undersized).

Before the 87-88 season, the Bulls got Horace Grant and Scottie Pippen. I’ve always felt Pippen is one of the most underrated players ever. Jordan got the pub, Pippen got the steals and boards. Many people argue that Pippen was nothing without Jordan. Remember when Jordan "retired"? Look at Pippen's stat line that year (22.0 pts, 8.7 reb, 5.6 ast, 2.9 steals, and 0.8 blocks per game, while shooting 49.1% from the field and a career-best 32% from threes, First team All-NBA, finished 3rd in MVP voting), and don’t forget he averaged 12,6,5, and 1.5 steals for the 1999 Portland team that should have went to the finals.

Back to the Bulls. 1987-1988 they got 50 wins and went to the Eastern Conference Semis. 88-89 they get Cartwright, win 47 games and lose 4-2 in the Eastern Conference finals to Detroit. Then, Boom. Coaching change. Phil is the man at the helm. Anybody who tells me Doug Collins couldn’t have taken this CONTINUALLY IMPROVING team to the finals is drunk. Anyway, Phil comes in; they get Stacey King and BJ Armstrong and lose to Detroit in the Eastern Finals again. Everybody knows what happened in the 89-90 season. Jordan won MVP, his 5th scoring title and his first NBA championship. The “triangle offense”, designed by Tex Winter, NOT Phil Jackson was in full effect. I’m sure many of AAU coaches used a form of this offense first, but they called it, “let’s have out best player do most of the ball handling and shooting and let him go one-on-one a lot”. Is it smart to run with Jordan? Yes. Smart with Kobe? Yes. A brilliant basketball scheme? Hardly.

So Phil and the Bulls win three straight rings, Jordan leaves, Pippen is the man. Scottie played great these years, as shown by the stats I presented earlier, but they couldn’t get past the Eastern Conference Semis running the genius Triangle offense without Jordan. The great Phil has seemingly lost control of his team a little bit. Pippen didn’t even want to take the game-winning shot which led to the infamous Kukoch incident. Here is a mystery of Phil I’ve always wondered…he is considered great for having great relationships with his players, what the hell happened when Jordan left? A lot of whining and bitching happened in Chicago. That’s what happened.

Jordan comes back at the end of the 94-95 season, and is in tip-top playing shape by the time the 95-96 season rolled around. The Bulls also acquired the four-time defending rebound champion and first-team All-NBA defensive player Dennis Rodman. Many people praise Jackson for his handling of Rodman. I feel everybody forgets that Rodman won championships with Detroit, had almost a father-son relationship with coach Chuck Daily, and was the FOUR TIME DEFENDING REBOUNDING CHAMPION! People act like Phil inherited a outcast delinquent, crazy-haired idiot who couldn’t play a lick of basketball or get along with anybody. That is false. Rodman had won before pretty much everywhere he went, even though San Antonio didn’t win a title with him, and I have found this strange relationship between winning, and notorious head-cases being well-behaved. Jordan scoring 30 a game and winning titles held Rodman in check, not Phil Jackson.

So Jordan is back, Rodman and Pippen are happy because they are winning, Chicago has the deepest bench in the league led by Toni Kukoch, and they win three straight titles again. This is about as shocking as LeBron’s high school team winning the state title. Any homeless person off the street could have coached those teams to a title. (I say homeless person, because Jim O’Brian has a home somewhere in the Indianapolis suburbs I assume, so that counts him out.) Jordan and Pippen were two of the best 10 players in the league, with Jordan head and shoulders above anybody else.

Jordan leaves after the 97-98 season, and here is a surprise…so does Phil. This is like the college coach (Calapari) who leaves the school with recruiting penalties and an empty cupboard. Better not try and take a non-championship team and build a winner. We’ll leave that for other people. In that same 97-98 season, the Los Angeles Lakers won 61 games and went to the Western Conference finals with Shaq leading the way and becoming the most dominant force in basketball.

That 98-99 season was shortened by a lockout, but the Lakers were coming into their own with Shaq being the best player in basketball and Kobe quietly becoming the new MJ. The Lakers were no doubt on their way to being the elite NBA team….Seems like a good time for Phil to swoop in. I imagine the call went something like this…”Is Kobe the best swingman in the NBA yet? So the triangle offense works with him? Nobody can stop Shaq? Can I sleep during games and still win them? Ok, you got yourself a deal!” Phil Jackson is a Laker.

2000, 2001, 2002 the Lakers are NBA champions. Phil has won nine rings now. All rings he won was with the best player in the NBA, whether it be Jordan, or the Shaq/Kobe teams, which really, either could be considered the best in the game. 2003 saw some tensions coming to the surface in L.A. Tensions bubbled up between Kobe and Shaq and between Kobe and Phil. The Lakers did not reach the finals, losing the San Antonio. The 2003-2004 team was supposed to be the greatest team in NBA history when the Lakers acquired Karl Malone and Gary Payton. This didn’t really work out for Phil and the Lakers as they coasted to the finals, only to be physically dominated by the better coached Detroit Pistons team led by Larry Brown. This loss was apparently too much, and Phil called it quits. He likely knew Shaq was going to be shipped out of town, which he was to Miami.

Jackson took a year off to regroup and returned to the Lakers in the 2005-06 season, only to lose in the first round of the playoffs. In 2006-07 they did the same, losing in the first round. By the 2007-08 season, the Lakers had retooled and were once again loaded with talent. They eventually won the West, but lost in the finals to Boston where Phil was outcoached by Doc Rivers. Congratulations Phil, you were the first coach to ever be outcoached by Doc Rivers, and that includes Vinny Del Negro.

2008-09 was when the Lakers got sick of losing and got Odom and Kobe on the same page. Kobe had a chip on his shoulder averaging 25, 5 and 4.6 for the season. The emergence of Trevor Ariza, Andrew Bynum, and Sasha Vujacic helped fuel the Lakers through the playoffs. Derek Fisher also ran a tight ship at the point guard, and the mid-season acquisition of Pau Gasol put the Lakers in a league of their own in regards to team talent. The Lakers did in fact capture the NBA title last year beating Orlando 4-1 in the finals, although many felt Orlando outplayed the Lakers in three of the first four games, just didn’t make the shots when it mattered, even though they had them. DO NOT tell me this is a sign of good coaching that the Lakers won these games while being outplayed. The Magic had the plays drawn up to beat the Lakers, just missed some timely shots. That’s luck, not coaching.

So here we are again in 2010 with the Lakers as the favorites to win the title. Phil is going for his 11th title. Impressive number, but not so impressive when you think of how he won those titles. The front offices of Chicago and Los Angeles deserve a lot of the credit, and the parents of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Shaq deserve most of it by giving their sons super-human basketball skills. Phil will go down as one of the greatest coaches of all time. His resume says this is true, however, a true basketball fan should recognize him for what he is: an overrated coach who was in the right place at the right time, coaching teams that 98% of NBA coaches would have won the title with.

The Lakers will likely win this series against Oklahoma City either tomorrow night in OKC or Sunday in L.A., but these young Thunder and Scotty Brooks have given him more than he can handle. It is a shame because the Thunder have taken me on a wild ride this last week or two. I haven’t enjoyed a series this much in a long time. ESPN writer Bill Simmons made a good point when he asked why it took Phil five games to figure out Russell Westbrook had been running Fisher ragged and he needed to have Kobe guard him. If L.A. people say he did this to save Kobe’s legs the first few games, then why didn’t he do it right away, sweep the series, and save his legs for a week while waiting for their second round opponent? Popovich would have.
Rumors are placing Phil Jackson in New York or Chicago next season, depending on where LeBron, Wade, and Bosh end up. Is it a surprise that Jackson is trying to cut and run from L.A. with Kobe starting to show his age, and the best player in the world (LeBron) coming into the prime of his career? Absolutely not.

I don’t mean to say Phil is a bad coach. I personally think he is nothing special, but he has won 10 titles. If this means his greatest attribute is that he is smart enough to not try and micro-manage people like Kobe, Jordan and Shaq, then so be it. He isn’t horrible. He is, however, overrated. To say Phil Jackson is a better coach than people like Popovich, Larry Brown, or Jerry Sloan is blasphemy. Phil Jackson needs to inherit a team like the 2010 Kings and take them to the promise land before I will be convinced he is anything but a good businessman who gets himself in situations where he has to do little work and just give the ball to the greatest player in the NBA. Zen is for monks and hippies, not basketball players.