It only seems as if the Knicks haven’t had a big moment like this since Willis Reed limped through the Garden tunnel and into Game 7 of the NBA Finals against the Lakers 44 long years ago.
It is now Phil Jackson’s job to get the Garden to sound that way again, to get this city to remember what it feels like to bond as one with its basketball team, his former basketball team around the time of Vietnam and Watergate and Ali-Frazier, to remember what it looks like when teammates share the ball and love one another and play as a team.
He doesn’t need the $12 million a year, he sure doesn’t need the headaches, sitting on bleachers with his surgically repaired, body parts, but he comes back to the Knicks now anyway, without Michael and Scottie or Kobe and Shaq at his side, but James Dolan and Carmelo Anthony instead.
He comes back to a desperate franchise mired in quicksand that only asks him to be Saint Knick.
He brings a long history with the triangle offense into what for too long has been basketball’s Bermuda Triangle.
It is the challenge of a charmed basketball life, a 13-ring basketball life — two rings as a player, 11 rings as a coach. And no one knows for certain whether he will have enough fire in the belly at age 68 and counting to be a miracle worker, the Zen Messiah, to play the Parcellsian role of resurrecting a downtrodden franchise summoning him to be its exorcist.
The Jaxorcist.
It was a happy homecoming for him at the Chase Square Tuesday, highlights of him playing with the Red Holzman Knicks airing on the marquee outside on Seventh Avenue, “Welcome Back, Phil” and “NY Made” signs and posters accompanying images of the young Jackson wearing his Knicks 18 jersey, a photo op following the press conference with Clyde Frazier and Dick Barnett and Peter DeBusschere, Dave’s son, who had been seated in the front row.
“There is no better place to win than New York City,” Jackson said, and that includes Chicago and Los Angeles.
Barry Watkins, the Garden’s media director, read heartfelt welcome messages from the Holzman family and from Reed before Dolan introduced him, welcomed him home, and Jackson ambled to the microphone at the front of the stage and didn’t need a script. He told a story that ended with the revelation: “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” originated not from Coach Sinatra, but from Coach Holzman, when the Hall of Fame coach and his wife, Selma, picked Jackson up at Kennedy Airport in 1967 and some rockhead decided to throw a rock down from a walkway and cracked the window on their new Chevy Impala.
“So we’re going to make it here,” Jackson vowed.
Then he took a seat, Dolan to his right, GM Steve Mills to his left. Dolan beamed with pride, so eager to let the mobilizing protestors know he pinky swears he will not meddle anymore, and let the beautiful basketball mind of the big fish he has just landed swim on his own.
“I am by no means an expert in basketball,” Dolan said, and feel free to make your own jokes if you like.
There was laughter from the media and Knicks and Garden staffers when someone asked whether Jackson has a pre-nup as part of his arrangement and Jackson began talking about his fiancée, Jeanie Buss, and his accumulating fortune. And amidst the laughter, Dolan playfully patted him and joked: “Besides, we married for love.”
If there is a day for Knicks romantics to cheer, it is this day, because if anyone deserves a chance to fix the Knicks, it is Phil Jackson. And it can work only if he comes here less as a mercenary and more as a man committed to the gargantuan task and who has followed this old Chinese proverb:
“Fall down seven times. Stand up eight.”
He answered questions intelligently and thoughtfully and quietly, as if in a town meeting, still an imposing figure, or as imposing as any grandfather of eight can be, those famous shoulders seemingly capable of stretching from Seventh Avenue to Eighth.
He sounded all-in on Carmelo Anthony, which makes sense even if Dolan promised ticket prices would not be raised next season, because what Jackson’s most important gift will be, even more important than signing off on the coach, will be recruiting the 2015 free agents, and Melo can help him. “One step at a time,” Jackson said.
There seemed to be good chemistry between Jackson and Dolan, and Knicks fans can only hope they both honor the promises they made to each other: Jackson established himself in the city, and Dolan (“Willingly and gratefully”) lets him run the show, and even engage the media.
“I’m too old to play, and too lame to coach,” Jackson said.
This is the job he wanted at this stage of his life, and this is the place he chose to do it in.
“Championships come with deliberate action,” Jackson said. “There are very few accidental championships in the NBA. [Winning a title] would be a capstone on a remarkable career that I’ve had.”
He doesn’t fear how failure might affect his legacy. Nor should he.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to do something that I love, and that’s hopefully create a team that loves each other and plays with each other,” he said.
Not Game 7 against Wilt. But Game On.