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David Aldridge: OKC’s Mark Daignault, asked by @Rachel__Nichols what coaches he’s talked to about dealing with the pressure of his first NBA Finals: “I don’t have a lot of friends I’ve never been more embarrassed in my life…I don’t have Phil Jackson’s number.”
Law Murray: The last six times a team changed coaches after a Conference Finals appearance - 2022 Celtics (Ime Udoka*) - 2014 Grizzlies (Lionel Hollins) - 2008 Pistons (Flip Saunders) - 2005 Pistons (Larry Brown) - 2004 Lakers (Phil Jackson) - 2003 Pistons (Rick Carlisle) *unplanned lol
Mike Miller: I almost signed with Lakers, talked to Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson
Mike Miller on Kobe Bryant elbowing him: Unfortunately, he's in heaven. He's missed, man. Like, he was the best. But he knows if I'm lying right now, so I can't lie. It was an unintentional elbow I hit him with. It was unintentional. But I'll be honest, I loved his competitiveness. I didn't like the fact that my team didn't really have my back when he freaking took my jugular out. But like that's what he's supposed to do. And the NBA called me after that and they talked about I said that it's a a basketball play like you know I but we had good conversation. I actually almost went there in my free agency year when I went to Miami. I talked to Kobe multiple times. I talked to Phil [Jackson] and I almost went there because he was one of my favorites, because I love that competitive stuff, he was unbelievable.
Brad Townsend: Rick Carlisle (Mavericks, Pacers) joins a select group of coaches to take 2 franchises to The Finals. Others include: Alex Hannum (Celtics, Lakers) Red Auebach (Capitols, Celtics) Phil Jackson (Bulls, Lakers) Pat Riley (Lakers, Knicks, Heat) Larry Brown (Sixers, Pistons)
Gary Payton: Then I started playing, and I started feeling better and better. We were down too much in the series, and I just started saying: “Let me guard him.” And he [Jordan] was averaging 33 points at the time. Then I started becoming a pest for him. I brought it down to 23 points. And what do coaches do when they have a problem? They try to solve it. Jordan was starting to take it personally with me, which is what I wanted to happen. Then Phil Jackson said, “Nah, let me put somebody bigger on him and distract him—make it a problem.” And he put Scottie Pippen on me. Pippen is a bigger player than me—he’s 6'7", he’s mobile. And it started taking a toll on me— Trying to score and guard Jordan at the same time—it took a toll.
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“If your desire in life is to lead and to teach, NBA head coaching is the ultimate crucible,” Carlisle said to The Athletic Sunday night in his office ab0ut 25 minutes after his Pacers had dropped 80 points on Cleveland in an exquisite first half and won Game 4 of the series, shredding the Cavs’ 3-2 zone that had flummoxed the Pacers just 48 hours earlier. “Everything is at such a high level,” Carlisle said. “It’s such a fever pitch. You’ve got to learn from a lot of mistakes that you make, and you’ve got to try to learn from watching other coaches who do it well. Watching guys like (Gregg) Popovich, Phil Jackson and (Pat) Riley. I worked for Chuck Daly for two years. I worked for Bill Fitch for three years. These guys were all best of the best, Hall of Famers.
!["I know that Phil [Jackson] was brilliant, and I know …](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/content-pipeline-sports-images/sports2/nba/logos/4.png?format=png8&auto=webp&quality=85,75&width=140)
"I know that Phil [Jackson] was brilliant, and I know that Pop is brilliant and you have to have the talent," Ker said. "But I love Pop's humility. It has always been a huge part of his persona, his values. His 'Pound the Rock' motto is all about modesty, really. When you think about it, you can keep hitting that thing 99 times, but it's the hundredth [that splits it]. It's 'slow and steady wins the race.' Everything with Pop was values-based. He knew who he was. He knew who he wanted his team to be. And it all fit. Everything made perfect sense." Those values were many, but Kerr singles out two. "His willingness to speak up on social issues," Kerr said. "Particularly now."
San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich, currently taking a leave of absence due to health issues, is the NBA’s all-time leader in coaching wins with 1,419. Former NBA head coach Lenny Wilkens has the most wins by an African American coach with 1,332, third overall in league history. Rivers also appears to have a strong case to make the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach one day as he is the only coach in the top 10 in all-time wins who has not been inducted. When asked about being close to tying Jackson, Rivers said, “I just don’t count them [wins]. If you hadn’t told me, I would not have known. My job is to win. I’ve done that and that’s all I do.”
Pau Gasol: That moment—after we lost to the Mavs, right before training camp—was crazy. The trade that was supposed to happen but didn’t, it rattled us. Lamar was involved, and instead of going to New Orleans, he ended up in Dallas—the team that had just beaten us. That had to be tough for him mentally. And then I stayed, but things weren’t the same. Phil Jackson stepped away as head coach, Mike Brown came in, and the dynamics changed. We had to adjust. We did the best we could, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t good enough to get back to where we wanted to be."*
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How tough was it after a day of practice? Randy Brown: Phil Jackson was really good with us. Being a former player, he understood what practice was all about and it became a running joke that our practices basically were harder than the games. It’s funny, we’d have a game to 20 and we would never make it to 20 because both teams were very competitive. There were defensive players on both sides of the ball and that’s why I said it was so intense. It was a grueling hour and a half. We got to the games, and we were like ‘wow, this is easier than practice.’ So, practice became a staple for us. We were lucky that we didn’t have a lot of injuries and like I said before, I was shocked to see one through 15 guys practicing so hard, but this prepared us for the games.
It was clear to everyone that the 1998 season would be the last for this dynasty, had Phil Jackson been given another year contract do you think the ‘four-peat’ would have been achieved? Randy Brown: It was weird because after that season there was a strike. If there wasn’t a strike, Phil Jackson probably would have come back because he was hurting physically during that season. He talked about having surgery and possibly not coaching anymore, so the NBA going on strike pushed him to say, ‘let me go ahead and do the surgery while there’s no basketball at all’. We clearly would have won another championship. We were in our prime, we were healthy, and we were hungry. The two years Michael went away to play baseball, that’s two more possible championships. During those winning seasons, we were mentally tired, but somehow during every season, we’d find our groove to championship. So, yes, if Phil Jackson hadn’t had that surgery, Michael comes back, we have the same core and we get a chance to defend our championship until somebody knocks us off.
Q: If you could coach one game against any coach in NBA history, who would it be? Jordi Fernandez: Phil Jackson. I was born in the early ’80s, and then the Bulls had all that success. So that was the beginning of me falling in love with basketball. We could not watch a lot of NBA when I was young because of the time difference, there was no Internet, and it was also pay-per-view and we didn’t have at home.
That’s why Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak held regular meetings about the post-Kobe Bryant Lakers. Especially: Kupchak met secretly and regularly at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills with Dwight Howard’s agent Dan Fegan, who died in 2018. Fegan told me several times about those meetings. One topic: which coach might make Kobe more of a team player. Fegan advocated Phil Jackson. Failing that, he recommended ways the Lakers use the amnesty clause to jettison the biggest contract in the NBA. If the Lakers amnestied Kobe, Fegan believed, there were many paths to pairing Howard with another star and returning quickly to contention. For a time, it seemed to Fegan that Kupchak and Jim Buss, who made the big Laker decisions at the time, were leaning that way.
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