Phil Jackson: Zen Master in Training
by Dennis D’Agostino, nyknicks.com
 |
| Jackson assisted Red Holzman with coaching and scouting duties during the 1969-70 season. (Photo: From the Lens of George Kalinsky. Visit GeorgeKalinsky.com.) |
Most of the humorous speculation centered on Bill Bradley, the freshly-minted Rhodes Scholar who, everyone assumed, would wind up as President of the United States.
Of course, Dollar Bill would need to form a cabinet. Outdoorsman Willis Reed would be Secretary of the Interior. Blue collar Dave DeBusschere would be a fine Secretary of Defense (or Dee-fense). Either Dick Barnett or coach Red Holzman – both of whom kept a trained eye on their wallets – would fit in perfectly as Secretary of the Treasury.
And if there was a spot on the Bradley team for a Minister of Counter-Culture Affairs, that would surely go to Phil Jackson, the mustachioed, iconoclastic forward from North Dakota who was forced to sit out the entire championship season with a back injury.
As far-fetched as that title sounded, it seemed a lot closer to reality than the thought of Jackson becoming something like, well, for instance. . .a Hall of Fame coach who would win a record ten NBA Championships.
And yet. . .
The seeds for one of the greatest coaching careers in the game’s history were actually planted during the Knicks’ run to their first title. Sidelined for the entire season, Jackson, who had been a member of the NBA’s All-Rookie team in 1968, filled his time by becoming a part-time photographer (co-authoring Take It All! with the Garden’s legendary George Kalinsky) and, as it turned out, a full-time student of coaching.
“Ever since I’m injured, Red has me go out and scout,” said Jackson in 2002. “If we’re on the road and if the home team has a game the night before we’re supposed to play them, Red says to go over and catch that game, and put some stuff on the board tomorrow. Red never X’d and O’d. He never drew or diagrammed any plays. I don’t know if he used salt shakers or something on the table; I just never saw him do it. He told me point-blank, `I’ve never drawn plays. I just don’t do that.’
“But he asked me to draft up a team book. So whenever we’d get a new player, they’d come see me and I’d have this mimeographed book of plays.”
 Legends Night Archive Purchase Legends Night Tickets The Entrance: Another World Ago Walsh Proud to Honor Champs 2nd Annual Legends Night |
“As we got going and I received more responsibility as a player, there were things he’d tell me that became significant to me,” said Jackson. “Little things like, `If you want to coach, this is what you do. . .’
“He told me that one of the best places to coach is Puerto Rico. It’s a game and a place where the energy is so intense, the language skills are different. It’s just basketball in its rawest form, and you learn to coach off the seat of your pants. And I ended up coaching in Puerto Rico for four-and-a-half years because when the opportunity came, (I knew) he’d tell me to go there if you get the chance to do it.”
But as a player, Red’s prize student wasn’t always the teacher’s pet. And therein lied another lesson.
“I was his whipping boy,” remembered Jackson. “If he needed somebody to rally the troops around, he could start yelling at me about a variety of things, whether I gambled on defense or I made a mistake on offense or took a shot that maybe I shouldn’t have, or whatever. And I was the combative one. . .I didn’t like to be the one who was vented at. But with my pecking order on the club, it was natural to do that. And as you find out when you’re the coach, it’s nice to have a player you can use to be a motivator on the team.”
The coach-in-waiting had to wait a while. Jackson enjoyed a 13-year NBA playing career, was a key member of the Knicks’ second championship team in 1973, and his 732 games played as a Knick is exceeded in franchise history only by Patrick Ewing, Walt Frazier, Bradley and Carl Braun. Following a brief broadcasting career, the coaching road took him to the CBA, then to Chicago, then to Los Angeles. . .then to the Hall of Fame and a still-unfolding legacy.
There was a lot of truth, it turned out, in that long-ago lockerroom humor. Bradley, after all, served for 18 years as a Democratic state senator from New Jersey and came heartbreakingly close to the White House.
The prospective Minister of Counter-Culture Affairs wrote another kind of history.
