Here is the funny part of all of this. Those who wish to decry or diminish what Phil Jackson has done over the past quarter-century invariably dig up the same tired argument, one most famously espoused by Red Auerbach, the man who used to have the record for most championships as an NBA coach before Jackson surpassed him:
“Most of your great coaches do some teaching and developing of players,” Auerbach said in 2002. “Phil may be able to do it, but he hasn’t shown it. His teams have been ready-made.”
That’s always been laughable, and not only because Doug Collins (a pretty fair coach himself) wasn’t able to win with the Bulls before Jackson did, or that neither Del Harris, Rudy Tomjanovich nor Mike Brown (four NBA Finals appearances, two titles elsewhere among them) could figure out a way to win one of those ready-made titles before, between or after Jackson’s two stints in Los Angeles.
No, the silliest part about that — or thinking the challenge Jackson will accept starting Tuesday in attempting to build the Knicks will be some kind of culture shock to him — is it always assumes Jackson was forever a mystical figure waiting to be summoned out of the smoke to throw basketballs onto the floor and stay out of the way.
It would be interesting to learn what Phil Jackson, circa 1984, would have thought of that image and reputation. Thirty years ago, Jackson was coming off a season in which he had led the Albany Patroons to the CBA championship. Afterward, he had written Jim Coyne, the Patroons owner, and made three specific requests:
A) A raise to a $30,000 salary.
B) An increase from $15 to $18 in his per diem.
C) For the Patroons to cover the $25 fines he would incur from the league whenever he would draw a technical foul. “Technicals are coaching maneuvers,” he explained. “They should be a part of the price of doing business.”
Coyne reluctantly agreed to A, denied B and C, and Jackson kept coaching, spending parts of five seasons in Albany, compiling a 117-90 record there and, most certainly, a bemused reaction shot for anyone who ever questioned whether he had paid his dues. Years later, asked why he toiled so long for so little, why he walked away from a comfortable TV gig with the Nets, he laughed.
“Red Holzman taught me many things,” Jackson said, “but the simplest one was this: if you’re going to be a coach, you’ve got to have a team. The Patroons were my team.”
He laughed.
“People in the NBA saw what we were doing,” he said. “They followed us. But it wasn’t as if there were a lot of people crawling to offer me a job.”
Thirty years later, they crawl, and they stalk, and they crisscross the country, and they will pay Jackson a reported $12 million, or exactly 400 times the salary he topped out at in Albany back in the day. Albany was also the place where he learned a thing or three about what it is to have a hand in all aspects of a team.
“There’s player manipulation, coaching skills, running the organization, putting guys on planes,” he said at the time, in 1984. “It’s a whole gamut of things. The teaching is valuable.”
And the travel otherworldly. He described one doozy of a trip thusly: “Leave Oshkosh at 4:30 in the morning. Snowing like crazy. Drive to Milwaukee. Take a plane to Atlanta. Wait forever for a flight to Evansville. Fly to Evansville, sleep in a dive right along the highway for an hour and play that night. Immediately get in a van and drive to Cincinnati. Get in at 5:30 in the morning.”
Yes. All of his teams have been ready-made.
Look, none of this guarantees the Knicks a thing. They’re paying the greatest coach in NBA history $12 million to be a front-office czar, and you can argue that’s like signing Miguel Cabrera to be a pitcher, or paying good money to watch Bruce Springsteen live … acting in a David Mamet play.
We’ll see soon enough.
But you’d be foolish to confuse the cool Zen demeanor for a lack of ambition or competitiveness. When the Patroons decided to fire his old teammate, Dean Meminger, on Jan. 24, 1983, Jackson had a growing family to feed and a mortgage in Woodstock and a good job in the shadows with the Nets. But he had to have a team.
Thirty-one years later, he still did. Bigger city. More zeroes at the end of the check. But he has a team again.