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Greatest coach in NBA history, and a solid NBA player
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00:30This is going to be all run! Unbelievable!
00:33Don't believe what I just saw!
00:47Hello, I'm Chris Fowler for SportsCentury.
00:49He seems to have been assembled with spare parts and hung on a giant paper hanger.
00:54His legs and arms are so long that when he played the game, he looked like a helicopter in distress.
00:59But from the neck up, Phil Jackson is a graceful analyst of the human spirit
01:04who is able to separate the light from the dark in another man's mind
01:07and make him play at the highest level.
01:10To accomplish his magic, Jackson draws from cultures around the world,
01:14including that of the Native American.
01:18I think he has Native American in his blood.
01:29The beating of the drum replaces the heart beating.
01:51There's a tribal essence that you're trying to get accomplished with a team.
01:57Kobe gets it off to Shaquille, yes!
02:01Trying to get everybody igniting it the same beat, the same rhythm, and the same mood.
02:07It's a club of bulls!
02:09By the way, I'll send it to the striker.
02:10Three, straight, in the end of the championship.
02:14And that's when it becomes perfect.
02:19To elevate his team's performance, Phil Jackson reaches beneath X's and O's
02:25into what he believes is a boundless reserve of selfless energy.
02:29Phil believes in communication with his players differently than most of us.
02:33He tries to challenge them intellectually as well as physically.
02:37He said, we're going to do yoga, we're going to do some of these things
02:41that you guys have never done before to kind of open your mind
02:44to some new things out there.
02:47Every two or three weeks, he would always have a very interesting guest appear.
02:52One might be a nutritionist.
02:56Another time...
02:59The Indian culture was real big to him.
03:01He would bring sage in and, you know, kind of anoint our locker rooms along the way.
03:07When the Bulls went on the West Coast trips for two weeks,
03:10he'd give each player a book, which he thought related to them
03:13would not only help them with their basketball,
03:15but would help them with their life.
03:16He has a very good understanding of how to bond a group together
03:21and bring its mind and everything together as one.
03:26For all the big medicine practiced by Jackson,
03:29he also applies basic tried-and-true coaching methods
03:32to hone his players' bodies and their court sense.
03:35He keeps his team up physically, not a one, but also mentally.
03:42When he played against the Bulls, it was like game seven against everybody.
03:48He never changes his practices.
03:50He never changes his games.
03:51And nothing phases him.
03:53If you're a soldier, if you see your general stand strong,
03:57then you're going to stand strong.
03:58He wants you to...
04:00And then you have to go and try to prove it to him that you know,
04:04you know, the game of basketball,
04:05or you know how to be a professional man.
04:12A nationalism occurred during the 1994 playoffs,
04:15when Michael Jordan was in his first retirement.
04:19Tied with the Knicks of 102 in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals,
04:24Jackson called for a timeout with 1.8 seconds left in the game.
04:28Everybody out there expects Scottie Pippen to take this shot, because he's the guy that's gotten us this far.
04:35So let's use Scottie as a decoy and get it to Tony Kukoc.
04:40Then Phil asked him, are you with us, Scottie, or not?
04:43Scottie said, no, I'm not.
04:45He could have just went off on Scottie and ended up wasting the whole time out,
04:49but he just said, fine, if you don't want to do it, then get out of the way.
04:53It was superb calmness in the face of the most difficult thing that can happen to a coach, a player
05:00saying I'm not going to.
05:01It was true to play out without me in it, and they went on and executed.
05:09Crew coach for the win!
05:11It's good!
05:18Yes, sir.
05:19Scottie Pippen was not involved in that play.
05:22He asked out of the play, I left him off the floor.
05:27That's as much as I'll talk about that, and we have practice tomorrow at 11 o'clock.
05:33I think any other coach would have blew up and hammered Scottie in the paper,
05:37but he let Bill Cartwright handle it.
05:39And Bill got up in the middle of the floor after the game,
05:42and Bill said, you know, he was disappointed, and he had tears in his eyes.
05:48I've always had a respect for Phil.
05:50He will be cool, calm, and collected, you know.
05:54In the end, he will get the last word, and it's going to be his way of knowing.
06:02Jackson's unique counterculture approach produced uneclipsed levels of success.
06:06He and the Celtics' legendary coach, Rhett Auerbach, had each won a record nine NBA championships.
06:13Yet the 6'8 shaman is not universally respected by his counterparts around the league.
06:18His confidence level is so high, it's almost to the point of arrogance,
06:22in the sense that he knows what he's accomplished, and it rubs a lot of people wrong.
06:27Coaches that I've played for, every one of them say, I want to make him uncross his legs.
06:32You know, because Phil's sitting down there, you know, in a close game, his legs are crossed.
06:36Because he's so confident in the outcome, he doesn't need to be upset.
06:40I think sometimes his approach and what he says, you know,
06:43statements that he makes about certain players or certain franchises might turn people off,
06:48but that's, you know, that's how he gets an edge.
06:50Phil's not a coach's coach. He's not a coach. Coaches hate him.
06:54And the more he wins, the more they can't wait for this cat to bite it.
07:01Same.
07:02Although many have questioned the sincerity of Jackson's new age beliefs,
07:06his spiritual journey has continued for almost six decades, beginning as a preacher's kid.
07:13Very tough childhood.
07:16Parents are both Pentecostal ministers.
07:19When he loved his parents, but at the same time, wanting to escape that.
07:27I think his background became more philosophical and his parents were preachers.
07:32And I think his approach was different than others.
07:35It gave him a resiliency, a way of handling people.
07:39Phil Jackson was born in Deer Lodge, Montana, September 17, 1945,
07:45the youngest of four children.
07:49When he was an adolescent, the family moved to Willison, North Dakota,
07:53where his parents, Charles and Elizabeth,
07:55continued to preach fervently the word of their God.
07:58The Jackson's ministry drew much of its strength from a litany of self-denial.
08:03No smoking, no drinking, and no dancing.
08:05When they were infused with this charismatic spirit, this evangelical missionary kind of thing,
08:13that it was time to get as many people saved as possible.
08:17He grew up in a very kind of a cloistered life where you weren't supposed to express any of your
08:23emotions,
08:24not showing anger, you know, being the perfect Pentecostal boy.
08:29My family had a devotional period.
08:32Every day you read scripture and you have a prayer that was done usually on hands and knees.
08:39I was a reader.
08:40I went to the library once a week, checked out as many books as you could check out,
08:44which was four.
08:45Movies were off limits, and we didn't have a television.
08:49I think the things that he was denied made him more open to the world.
08:55It created a very curious, inquisitive person.
09:01One outlet was fostered by his mother, who had played basketball in her youth.
09:06Phil followed in her footsteps, becoming a three-sport star at Williston High School.
09:11As a senior in 1963, he led the Coyotes to a state basketball championship.
09:17The road trips for high school basketball just about always required an overnight stay.
09:23And there would be Phil getting out of bed at five in the morning to cut on the television
09:28to watch the test pattern because this was his opportunity away from the family to see television.
09:36He found this was his escape route from the strict Pentecostal background that he grew up in.
09:43This was the one avenue for him to express his emotions, both joy and anger.
09:50At one time,
09:57just came right down out of the stands, grabbed Phil by the arm,
10:01and took him out of the game and took him home.
10:03Jackson put the Spartan life behind him when he went to the University of North Dakota on a basketball scholarship.
10:10But in 1967, after twice being named a Division II All-American,
10:14was selected by New York as the 17th overall pick in the NBA brand.
10:19Phil Jackson was the kind of guy that always had an influence on the game.
10:24When he came in the game, the game changed.
10:27Jackson Jackson, because when he entered the game, there was some action,
10:30whether it be drilling a ball off his foot or elbowing someone.
10:34Something was going to happen once Phil entered the game.
10:37So he became a crowd favorite because of that.
10:41The freedom that Jackson found in Collins, he blossomed into full flower in New York.
10:46Phil had told me that it's wonderful to be in New York because he wanted to experience life,
10:52he wanted to experiment with life.
10:55The 60s was a seed for people of my ilk that were looking for
11:00a different religious experience than one they'd had in the past.
11:05A lot of marijuana dope.
11:07It was like he's at the candy store.
11:09He's going to movies, he's dating women, all that stuff,
11:12and he also got very much involved in anti-war politics.
11:17Phil Berger, who's writing a story for the Village Boys,
11:20and Jackson pulled out his marijuana and began rolling up a joint
11:24and asked Phil if he wanted to get high before they did the interview.
11:28What?
11:28After one of the playoff games in 1973,
11:32he's sitting nude in front of his locker with his legs crossed,
11:36and I said, hey, let me take a picture.
11:39He loved the photo.
11:40Here he is sitting without any facade showing this is who I am,
11:45this is what I want to be.
11:49After the 1969 season,
11:52a back injury forced Jackson to have spinal surgery.
11:55As he convalesced during the Knicks' first championship season,
11:58he gained a new perspective of the game
12:00through the eyes and mind of New York head coach Red Holtzman.
12:04He became like an assistant coach.
12:06He got better statistically, and the team got better after his back injury.
12:12He sat next to Red, and that's where he deepened his knowledge of the game.
12:18I'd be back there in the locker room,
12:20and Red would say, okay,
12:22Phil, what do you see out there?
12:24And so I'd say, well, what do you see?
12:26You know what I mean?
12:27Tell me, you know, how you have to see the movement and the defense,
12:29and you're looking at different perspectives on the floor.
12:32Two years after the backup forward helped the Knicks win a second championship in 1973,
12:38Jackson's memoir, Maverick.
12:40Three Hall of Fame players, Lucas, Frazier, Reed, and then Phil Jackson.
12:47...recounted his high life in the NBA.
12:49The one thing that created the biggest fuss
12:52was when he talked about taking acid on the beach
12:55and was running around roaring like a lion.
12:59He had that reputation, which slowed him down when he tried to coach.
13:04He was an outsider for a very long time.
13:07If you were going to think in advance,
13:10what would Phil Jackson be, say, 20 years after he was a player?
13:14I thought he would be head of the Montana Fishing and Gaming Board.
13:18I did not see head coach NBA.
13:26My mother was always more disapproving than my father was.
13:30At some point, we had to find a peace agreement
13:33where she really embraced what I was doing
13:36and what I was about.
13:38I think that was one of the things that gave me the feeling
13:40that I was on the right track
13:42or felt my personality was being fulfilled by my direction.
13:46Phil Jackson continued to create his own path in life,
13:50regardless of his parents' beliefs.
13:52After serving three years as an assistant coach for the Nets,
13:55in 1982, he accepted the head job of the Albany Patroons of the CBA,
14:00where he won a league championship in his second season.
14:03In 1987, he joined the Bulls as an assistant under Doug Collins.
14:07Two years later, when Collins was fired, Jackson was given the reins.
14:12I thought that the Bulls were perfectly ready to be championship club.
14:17They just didn't have a sense of how to play together as a group.
14:21To achieve unity, Jackson used assistant coach Tex Winters' triangle arm
14:27with dozens of variations.
14:30It's like hands in a glove.
14:33All five players know what their roles are
14:35and what they're supposed to be doing in every situation on the court.
14:39Everything is created through ball and player movement.
14:44And once that happens, every player has an opportunity
14:48to create something for him or his teammates.
14:51One of the sayings he had was,
14:53the power of we is greater than the power of me.
14:55Those are things that all of us bought into.
15:02But Jackson knew that his strategy wouldn't work
15:04without the enthusiastic support of one man.
15:08Bill convinced Michael in a way of,
15:11okay, here's the situation, here's the options.
15:14Give him Michael options.
15:22Harder to double-team Jordan
15:23because you couldn't locate him on the court all the time.
15:26He wasn't just in one spot.
15:28He was moving all over the place.
15:30Lot, pass, kick the hole!
15:35In Jackson's second season as head coach,
15:38the Bulls won the first of six NBA championships under his leadership.
15:42But with the gaining of each title,
15:44so grew a discontent between the head coach and executive VP, Jerry Krause.
15:49In the beginning, I think Phil Jackson and Jerry Krause liked each other personally.
15:54At the end, they didn't like each other personally.
15:58Jerry wanted total control.
16:01He was paranoid about every little thing that went on in the building.
16:05Every time Phil was on the phone, every time he closed his office door,
16:08Jerry wanted to know what he was up to.
16:11Phil Jackson has problems with authority figures who he thinks don't have his mission statement in mind.
16:18When that happens, you know, he can become as disgruntled as any of his players.
16:23Jerry Krause tried to get in the locker room, and he wouldn't let him in the locker room
16:25because he said, hey, this is my team.
16:27When I get done talking with him, then you can talk with him.
16:29But until then, stay out.
16:31Phil knew that he had to get the best out of his players
16:36by going along with his players more so than management.
16:40The team that's most closely tied together in unified thought and deed can really survive anything.
16:47But the whole thing conspired against that team.
16:50Jerry Krause and I had reached this brick wall
16:53where he really didn't want me to come back anymore as a coach.
16:57Phil had his ways of doing things.
17:00He was very successful with them.
17:02I just leave it at that.
17:03I have no real feelings about it one way or another.
17:06After completing his second three-peat in 1998,
17:10Jackson rejected a one-year contract offered by Krause.
17:14With the coach gone, Michael Jordan retired,
17:17Scottie Pippen left for Houston,
17:19and Dennis Rodman became a free agent.
17:21The house was effectively cleaned.
17:24Sometimes good marriages end up in divorce.
17:27And that's just what happened with Phil and his organization.
17:30Phil's not a rebuilder.
17:32He's not the kind of guy who can take a team from scratch and build it.
17:36The team was being dismantled for whatever reason.
17:40The ownership wanted to take a new direction.
17:42Phil wanted to take a new direction.
17:44Jackson had at least one other reason for moving on.
17:47The demands of being an NBA coach had put a serious strain on his relationship with June,
17:53his wife of 23 years.
17:55Phil felt like that he needed some time off.
17:57It was time for him to step aside and take a look at things in his life.
18:01That was a lot of emotional turmoil, which obviously affected him deeply,
18:09more deeply than anything that I've ever seen.
18:13Buddhist monastery, Phil Jackson was named head coach of the Lakers in June of 1999.
18:19This is a team that is talented, it's young, it's on the verge, it's been on the verge.
18:25What he was saying is, you're the most talented team in basketball,
18:28and you haven't gotten past the last round of the Western Conference playoffs.
18:32So you have to do it my way.
18:35But establishing his authority was perhaps less difficult than bringing harmony to his two feuding stars,
18:41Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant.
18:43You have two dominant personalities.
18:45Both want to be center of attention, and sometimes you're not going to have that.
18:51Phil's philosophy early on was, everything goes through Shaq.
18:55If the ball goes through Shaq, he touches it, and all the action goes off of that.
18:59It's a dribble entry.
19:01Going to either Rob or Rick's side, go corner, go directly into Shaq.
19:05You kind of turn yourself over to that format, and you're unselfish,
19:08and you rely on whatever it is he has to say to get things done.
19:11We try to get across to Shaq, if he wants to win a championship, how badly he needs Kobe.
19:17By the same token, try to get across to Kobe, how badly he needs Shaq.
19:27Shaq bought into Phil Jackson.
19:30Kobe eventually bought into Phil Jackson,
19:33because they realize this guy has been some way they never been.
19:45Even before winning that first of three straight titles with L.A.,
19:49Jackson and his wife had agreed to end their marriage.
19:52In November of 1999, he'd entered a new relationship with Lakers business VP,
19:57Jeannie Buss, daughter of the team's owner.
19:59I met him just before training camp started,
20:04and I found him to be very charismatic and attractive.
20:11I guess the timing was right for both of us.
20:14It's actually part of his life phase.
20:16I think that's the way he looked at it.
20:18For him, it was a passage.
20:19It all came together.
20:21Lakers, Jeannie Buss, Los Angeles.
20:24But the relationship between Jackson and Bryant came apart,
20:28another critical subplot in the 2004 Hoops Opera,
20:32along with Kobe's court case and his revived feud with O'Neal.
20:36Somehow, the Lakers made the finals,
20:38but lost to the Pistons in five games.
20:41They soon lost Jackson, too.
20:44By mutual agreement between the coach and his bosses,
20:47Phil Jackson won't be back to lead the Lakers.
20:49Kobe Bryant was not high on him.
20:52He made those feelings aware to Lakers' management.
20:55He played an integral role.
20:57He did not want Phil Jackson back.
20:58There were times of outright insubordination.
21:01There were times when Kobe Bryant just refused to do
21:03what he'd been asked or told to do.
21:05And there have been some shouting matches between them
21:08in games and in practices.
21:09Phil Jackson's salary demands was another reason.
21:12He wanted at least $12 million a year.
21:14They weren't willing to pay him more than $6 to $8.
21:16His relationship with Jerry Buss had soured.
21:20You know, things have to end.
21:21And, you know, in their own time, they have to end.
21:23This is the right.
21:24They can't underpay a guy who has nine titles.
21:29Time for the Lakers.
21:30The Lakers will go on, and so will Phil Jackson.
21:36Two as a player.
21:40Jackson turned his hand to writing a memoir
21:42of his last season with the Lakers.
21:43In one of the more incendiary passages,
21:46Yalbitt said that Bryant was beyond coaching.
21:51The essence of what I said was basically that I can't reach him.
21:55And if you want me to continue on with this wild club,
21:59then the change has to be made.
22:01When we read that book, we said, wow.
22:04They may never speak to each other again
22:06because it's that unwritten rule.
22:08You just don't write about what happens in the locker room.
22:11With Jackson gone and O'Neal traded to Miami,
22:14the Lakers flopped in 2005.
22:17Winning just 34 games,
22:19they failed to make the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade.
22:23That June, the team and the coach,
22:26who only a year earlier stood on opposite sides of an abyss,
22:29built a bridge made mostly of hope.
22:32It wasn't about the money.
22:33It was about the intrigue of this situation.
22:36And it's a tremendous story.
22:38It's a tremendous opportunity.
22:40It's a story of reconciliation.
22:42I think Jackson understands that we can help each other
22:46and that Kobe Bryant has gone through a lot of stuff
22:50and suddenly understands he needs a guy like Jackson.
22:55The revamp partnership of Jackson and Bryant
22:58led L.A. back to the playoffs in 2006.
23:01Although they lost in the first round,
23:03enough progress may have been made
23:05to feed at the coach's sense of his own destiny.
23:09Phil wants to be remembered as the basketball genius that he is,
23:14the Zen master that he is,
23:17and he also wants to be remembered for breaking Red Arbott's record.
23:20of winning 10 NBA championships.
23:25He did that a few years after this came out.
23:28He did that.
23:29To maintain team unity,
23:32Phil Jackson employs stratagems both brilliant and bizarre.
23:36One that qualifies either way
23:38was used during a rocky period in Chicago
23:40when one of his stars was out of alignment.
23:42So Jackson drew an archer's target on the blackboard
23:45and before leaving the locker room
23:47and told his players to place a mark
23:49at precisely where they perceive themselves
23:51in relation to the team.
23:53While Michael Jordan placed himself close to the bullseye,
23:56a disgruntled Scotty Pippen marked himself
23:59several feet from the target.
24:01The story goes that within a half hour,
24:03Pippen's teammates talked him back into the bullseye,
24:06just as Jackson had hoped.
24:08For SportsCentury, I'm Chris Fowler.
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