Athletes - Phil Jackson

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	Athletes - Phil Jackson

Philip Douglas "Phil" Jackson (born September 17, 1945 in Deer Lodge, Montana), is a National Basketball Association (NBA) coach and former player. He is tied with Red Auerbach for coaching a record number of NBA championship titles, with nine.

He is known for both his triangle offense ballplaying scheme as well as an holistic approach to coaching players, influenced by Eastern philosophy, notably Zen. The latter is the source of his sports media nickname: "The Zen Master".

Early life and college

Jackson was raised in a strict Pentecostal home; both of his parents were ministers. Most of his early childhood was spent in Montana; his parents later moved the family to Williston, North Dakota, where he attended high school and was a multi-sport star.

Jackson went on to play basketball for Bill Fitch at the University of North Dakota. The 6'8" Jackson's wingspan was so prodigious that Fitch would often have him show off to NBA scouts with something called "The Car Trick," in which Jackson would sit in middle of the back seat of a 1950s Buick and open both doors simultaneously!

New York Knicks

In 1967, he was drafted by the Knicks, and found that the skills that served him well at the small-college level were all but useless in the NBA. While he was a good all-around athlete, with unusually long arms, he was limited as a shooter, and did not have great speed. He compensated for his physical limitations by sheer intelligence and extremely hard work, especially on defense, and eventually established himself as a fan favorite and one of the NBA's leading substitutes. He was a top reserve on the Knicks team that won the NBA title in 1973 (Jackson missed being part of New York's 1970 championship season due to spinal fusion surgery). Soon after the second title, several key starters of the championship teams retired, eventually forcing Jackson into the starting lineup, where his limitations were exposed. He retired from play in 1980.

Coaching

In the following years, he mainly coached in lower-level leagues, notably the Continental Basketball Association and the BSN of Puerto Rico. While in the CBA, he won his first coaching championship, leading the Albany Patroons to their first CBA title. He regularly sought an NBA job, but was invariably turned down; during his playing years, he had acquired a reputation for being sympathetic to the counterculture, which may have scared off potential NBA employers.

NBA coaching

Jackson was the head coach of the NBA's Chicago Bulls from 1989 to 1998, and of the Los Angeles Lakers from 1999 to 2004 and again from 2005 to present. Jackson has a total of 10 NBA championship rings: one as a player with the New York Knicks (as noted earlier, he was injured for all of the 1969-70 championship season), six as coach of the Bulls, and three as coach of the Lakers. His nine NBA championships as a head coach ties him with Red Auerbach for the all-time lead in that category. Phil Jackson also holds the best playoff winning percentage of all-time.

The Bulls

He finally earned an NBA job in 1987 as an assistant with the Bulls. It was at this time that Jackson met Tex Winter and became a devotee of the triangle offense. In 1989, Jackson was elevated to the head coaching job, and the rest is history. In his nine years as Bulls coach, he won six championships, losing only in 1990 (his first season), and 1994 and 1995 (when Michael Jordan retired from basketball).

The chemistry between Jackson and his team was untouched and was on a level most coaches could only dream of and never could accomplish. The respect shared between the players and the coach was the key factor to the championships they've achieved, but regardless of the strengths Jackson shared with his team, the tension between Jackson and Bulls general manager Jerry Krause, who had originally hired him, had more of a negative impact than anyone could ever imagine. Some examples of the tension include:

During the summer of 1997, Krause's stepdaughter married. All of the Bulls assistant coaches and their wives were invited to the wedding, as was Tim Floyd
, then the head coach at Iowa State, whom Krause was openly courting as Jackson's successor (and would eventually succeed Jackson). Jackson and his wife were not invited, and Krause did not tell them of the snub; they found out from the wife of assistant Bill Cartwright
.
During contract negotiations for Jackson's final year with the Bulls, when the topic of a potential extension past the 1997–98 season came up, Krause reportedly told Jackson, "I don't care if you go 82-and-0, you're fucking gone."

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