Zen and the art of winning NBA championships

The greatest (Lake) show on earth

In 1999, he joined the renowned Los Angeles Lakers franchise and he didn’t take long to settle down. After working with the best of talent in the ‘90s, he now had a new star to lead his team in the form of Kobe Bryant, who was heralded as the next big thing after Jordan. With the best centre at the time, Shaquille O’ Neal, also playing in the purple-and-gold, the trio led the Lakers to their first championship since the ‘Showtime’ Lakers in 1988.

But was that enough? Definitely not! The Lakers went on to do a three-peat with their championship wins between 2000 and 2002 – Jackson’s third in his career as a coach. He built a fantastic team around Bryant and O’ Neal with players such as Robert Horry, Glen Rice, Derek Fisher and Rick Fox. Even though Jackson’s calm demeanour was challenged a number of times with on and off-the-court issues with (and between) Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’ Neal, they still managed to put that aside and win titles. But this too reached a point where they couldn’t co-exist, and Jackson eventually left in 2004 after losing in the Finals to the Detroit Pistons.

Phil Jackson’s third three-peat in 2002, this time with the Los Angeles Lakers

Fate had other plans and he was back in the hot seat a year later (after a disastrous season by the Lakers, who missed the playoffs). With Shaquille O’ Neal already traded to the Miami Heat, Jackson brought in Pau Gasol to pair up with Kobe Bryant. The return of the Triangle Offense combined with Kobe Bryant’s scintillating form saw the Lakers go to the NBA Finals three more times, winning twice in 2009 and 2010.

By this time, Jackson was now growing old and health concerns cropped up too, leading him to declare that the 2010-11 season would be his “last stand”. The Lakers only managed to reach the Western Conference semi-finals where they were swept by the eventual champions, the Dallas Mavericks.

A legacy left behind

Although he had a superstar in each of his championship teams, Jackson was a firm believer in unselfish basketball and teamwork. He often quoted Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Law for the Wolves’ – “The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack”. It was that philosophy that made the Triangle Offense such a massive success. Opposing teams had a tough time covering all bases on the floor and even if they did, they had a sixth man in the form of Phil Jackson on the bench to out-think and outmanoeuvre their tactics.

Jackson retired from basketball having won an astonishing 70.4% of the games he took charge of – the highest winning percentage for any coach in the Hall of Fame! He won 11 championships as a coach and two as a player – 13 in total. No other coach in any professional sport in the United States has won even 10!

Phil Jackson’s legacy will always be remembered by basketball fans worldwide as his story is woven into the fabric of NBA history. He was the man who, in a span of two decades, built a dynasty with not just one team, but two. The man who managed to accomplish a ‘three-peat’ thrice! The man who coached two incredible talents in Jordan and Bryant, and transformed them into two of the greatest superstars in the history of basketball.

Phil Jackson was, quite simply put, a man who found peace of mind after he devoted his life to basketball for five decades.