5 things we learned from Episodes 3 and 4 of ‘The Last Dance’

5. The start to Phil Jackson’s coaching career was BONKERS

Before he was an 11-time NBA champion head coach, before he was a Bulls assistant and before he was even a championship-winning coach with the Albany Patroons in the CBA, Phil Jackson’s coaching career began humbly — and insanely — in Puerto Rico’s Baloncesto Superior Nacional league.

Simply put, the league at that time sounded completely NUTS.

Jackson said it was so competitive there were fires in town after games, and fans would throw rocks at their cars. Teams would kill a chicken in a graveyard and pour the blood on the opposing team’s bench like some kind of sadistic ritual sacrifice to the basketball gods. The mayor of Quebradillas, a municipality in Puerto Rico, shot an official in the leg with a gun … and his only punishment was not being allowed to attend his team’s home games for the rest of the season.

For a guy who was raised to constantly think about Christ’s second coming, immersed himself in Native American culture and was, by all accounts, kind of a hippy, it is hilarious to picture Jackson’s coaching career beginning in just a bat-s**t crazy environment.