Last week was Phil Jackson’s birthday. The legendary coach has won more rings than he has fingers and has had the luxury of coaching some of the greatest players in NBA history; the man has quite the highlight reel from which to choose, even as a coach. In honor of Jackson’s birthday, NBA TV was showing a marathon of Phil Jackson games, each one from a Finals series where his team closed out and won him a ring. The marathon started early in the morning with the ’91 Bulls’ victory over the Lakers in Game 5, and finished in the wee hours of the next morning, around 4AM, with his final ring, a 2010 Game 7 victory against the Boston Celtics.
As I watched the early game, Michael Jordan’s first ever championship, Jackson’s first as a coach, the doubt in the air around them was palpable. These days, Jordan is a god among men in basketball terms, and Jackson is the surest thing to win a championship if his team is talented enough. So hearing the air of doubt surrounding these two was a bit unsettling. This peaked when, post Jordan winning, Marv Albert said that many “questioned if a team led by Jordan could win a title”.
These narratives aside, everything else was exactly how we remember. Phil Jackson sitting calmly on the sideline, no matter the situation, letting things play out. Only calling timeouts to make subtle adjustments here and there. As I watched more of these games, I began to understand Jackson’s coaching style a little better. The more confident he was, the less he micromanaged from the sidelines. The more worried he was about his opponent, the more active he would get. If Jackson was constantly standing or pacing the sidelines, then that meant he was very concerned with his opponent. He did this a lot in his 1992 Game 6 victory against the Portland Trailblazers, which required a 4th quarter comeback.
When Jackson wasn’t concerned, his demeanor was always calm and collected. Jackson is famous for allowing a situation to play out and not taking a timeout, no matter how large his opponents run got. I saw this a few times in my viewings, specifically with his Bulls teams. Against the Lakers in 91, he allowed his team to go on a very long cold streak of shooting. Part of this might have been from his team playing some amazing defense, but the Bulls went a whole three minutes without a single made basket for the team. Most coaches would call a timeout, draw up a play to get an easy bucket, and let the team get some confidence back. Jackson just let things play out, and eventually, the team started making shots, and the Lakers did not.
Part of the reason Jackson was able to do this, was his incredible defense. Phil Jackson teams are always famous for running the Triangle. But I’d go so far as to say that his team’s defenses were massively underrated. The Bulls teams were suffocating, the early 2000’s Lakers teams were overpowering, and the late 2000’s were fast. Every Phil Jackson team that won, had the defense to backup their offense.
Watching all of these, there were two performances I thought were better than the rest. The 1993 and 2009 Finals victories. 2009 is personal, but still impressive to me none the less. That Magic team got to the finals that year on amazing defense, and incredible three point shooting. The Lakers, they neutralized that shooting. They forced the Magic to beat them by hitting big shots in big moments. Jackson was the only coach in the NBA that season that out coached Stan Van Gundy, and he did so in Games 1 and 5, both heavily Lakers dominated. The rest, Jackson put his team in a situation to win, and his team executed it.
The 1993 finals is probably Jackson’s most impressive victory over them all. Not just because it was to top off a third straight finals victory, but because it was against one of the best teams of that entire decade. The 1993 Finals is one of the best in NBA history, and even though the Bulls won it in 6, it really could have gone either way. Barkely was nearly unstoppable, Dan Majerle was a pain in the Bulls side, and the duo of Kevin Johnson and Danny Ainge was nearly unstoppable. Sure, Jackson had Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Horace Grant, three incredible defensive players, but it’s the way he used them that was most impressive. Of all teams those early Bulls teams took on, no team came as close as that Suns team did to figuring out the secret of that defensive trio. The way Jackson adjusted quarter by quarter, to everything the Suns threw at him was spectacular. Then, at the end, with the game in question, he drew up a DECOY of the greatest player ever, for John Paxson. That takes some serious confidence, and cajones.
Is Phil Jackson the greatest coach ever? I don’t know. Is he one of them? Most definitely. He fell into the good fortune of coaching all time greats like Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, and Pau Gasol, but he managed to do great things with what he was given. Happy birthday Phil, I hope it’s as great as your career was.