Should Phil Jackson be Coach of the Year?

It’s that time of year again. The NCAA Tournament is over.  The NBA playoffs are soon to begin. The NBA season awards are on the way, which means so is the annual snubbing of Phil Jackson for Coach of the Year.

So far, I’ve heard lots of talk about Tom Thibodeau (Bulls) and Gregg Popovich (Spurs) for Coach of the Year. You hardly ever hear Phil Jackson brought up, let alone discussed as a serious candidate.

That Jackson gets ignored for this award is nothing new. In fact, Jackson has been overlooked as much or more than any other coach in NBA history when it comes to Coach of the Year.

The only multiple winners of Coach of the Year are Larry Brown (4a), Pat Riley (3), Don Nelson (3), Bill Fitch (2), and Hubie Brown (2).

Yet, the only two coaches with a handful of NBA Championship rings Red Auerbach (9) and Phil Jackson (11) have a combined two Coach of the Year awards (one each).

The three main criticisms of Jackson that (each year) work against his winning Coach of the Year are:

1. Jackson has always just had the best talent.
2. Jackson never built a winning team. He just takes already constructed teams to the title.
3. Assistant Tex Winter designed Jackson’s offense.

Best Talent

Phil Jackson is always criticized for having the best talent, but what exactly does that criticism mean? Doesn’t having the best talent mean having the best ownership and management? So, does working for a great owner and general manager make it tougher for a coach to win Coach of the Year? Should it? Does that mean it’s easier to win Coach of the Year if one works for a less successful GM or owner? When you think of it this way, the “best talent” argument seems a bit silly.

Historically, though, the “best talent” argument works. The coaches with the Most Valuable Player do not usually win Coach of the Year. Before 2000, only 18% (7/38) of coaches with the MVP also won Coach of the Year. Honestly, though, it seems to be a changing trend. Between the mid-60’s and 70’s, a coach was more likely to win Coach of the Year even if they had the MVP. And since 2000, 40% of the coaches with the MVP have won Coach of the Year.

Since the first Coach of the Year award in 1962-1963, here are the only coaches to have won the award in the same season their star player won the MVP:

So, contrary to the ‘best talent’ argument, over the last ten years, the coach with the best talent has won the Coach of the Year award almost half the time. And, the only season Jackson won the award was the year his Bulls won 72 games (the next year they won 69).

Never Built a Winner

Many of us tend to think about Jackson taking over as Head Coach of the Bulls and winning three consecutive NBA titles, but he actually lost in the Eastern Conference Finals his first year as coach of the Bulls. We remember that Jackson took over the L.A. Lakers in 1999 and led them to the title his first season.

But, before any of this, in the CBA, Phil Jackson earned his stripes and showed he could take a team from the cellar to the championship. The Albany Patroons, a recent CBA expansion team, had finished 4^th in the East and did not make the playoffs the season before Jackson arrived. Jackson, in fact, took over a bad team. Before Jackson became Head Coach, the team had an 8-17 record.

In their first season with Jackson as Coach, the Patroons won the championship. The Patroons went from 4^th the season before to 2^nd in the East in the regular season with Jackson at the helm.

Also, according to Albany native and sports writer Chuck Miller’s “History of the Albany Patroons,” Jackson’s experience was filled with challenges, mainly the challenge of a constantly changing roster. One challenge was not always having the best players, or at least, being able to keep them. Before the 1983 CBA All-star game, Jackson’s Patroons had just acquired the CBA’s 1982 Rookie of the Year (and MVP of the ’83 All-star game). Unlike Jackson’s NBA experiences where his team was guided by the league’s MVP, right after the ’83 All-star game, and mid-season, his teams two best players, including their All-star MVP Larry Spriggs, were called up to the NBA. So, in the CBA, it seems that Jackson did not always have the best talent, was confronted by numerous challenges, and, yet, he succeeded. Moreover, Jackson succeeded in the same kind of 1-2 season championship makeover that he has become famous for in the NBA.

Phil Jackson was an Assistant Coach (1987) for Doug Collins before taking over as Head Coach of the Chicago Bulls in 1989. As an Assistant, Jackson was with the Bulls and Jordan when they were going through playoff growing pains against the Detroit Pistons.

This team had a solid roster, playoff experience, and the best player in the game (Jordan), but it was Phil Jackson who harnessed and focused this team in the right direction. Before Jackson, according to offensive and defensive ratings, the Bulls were a great defensive team. When Jackson took over, the Bulls (and later the Lakers) became a much better offensive team, in addition to helping them make some small improvements defensively.

Of course, Jackson took on his most recent challenge in 2005 by returning to a Lakers team that had just missed the playoffs. Then, the Lakers suffered through back-to-back first round playoff exits at the hands of the Phoenix Suns. Since acquiring Pau Gasol and getting Jackson back as Head Coach, the Lakers and Kobe Bryant have made three consecutive NBA Finals and won back-to-back championships (’09 and ’10).

Tex Winter’s Offense

Jack McCallum, who wrote “For Whom the Bulls Toil” for Sports Illustrated in 1991, implies that if Phil Jackson had not believed in Tex Winter and his “Triangle Offense,” it might never have been used in the first place. In essence, if it were not for Phil Jackson electing to employ the “Triangle,” many of us would not be so familiar with the name Tex Winter. Later in the article, McCallum probed Jackson for the reasons why he liked Winter’s offense.

“Tex’s system is exactly what I was looking for,” said Jackson. “When I got here, there was a feeling of impotence among some players who were eliminated from the process of ball movement. I came from the Knick system that incorporated all five players. Tex’s system made a lot of sense.”

In teaching, what Phil Jackson did is called ‘best practices.’ You borrow the best ideas, strategies, and techniques you can find because you want to be the best. Then, you put your own spin on it. In a way, I think that is similar to what Phil Jackson has done with the Tex Winter’s Triangle Offense. At the same time, we don’t want to in any way belittle the great contributions of Tex Winter, who will soon enter the Hall of Fame, because in many of the players’ eyes, he was much more than a typical assistant coach.

Besides, in coaching you utilize ‘best practices’ more than you can imagine. According to Hoopedia, Tex Winter actually developed the “Triangle Offense” by refining his USC Coach Sam Barry’s “Center Opposite.”

So, the argument that somehow Winter deserves the credit, instead of Jackson, loses a bit of credibility here. Don’t all coaches just want to be the best and use the best strategies?

Further, Phil Jackson should win this year’s Coach of the Year award, partly as a career-achievement award, but also because (1) Jackson’s strategy of “patience” has worked so far, (2) the Lakers, again, have one of the best records in the NBA, and (3) these Lakers may end up with the best record of Jackson’s three-peat teams when in their final championship season.

Since the beginning of the 2010-2011 season, Phil Jackson has preached patience to his team. Patience that the Lakers will start playing their best basketball heading into the playoffs. Patience that the panic about the state of the Lakers is overstated.

Now, that the Lakers are 17-2 since the All-star break, we are starting to see why they were so quietly confident.

While it looks much more likely that the San Antonio Spurs or the Chicago Bulls may end up with the league’s best record, the Lakers may end up with the third best record, which is significant. Most Coach of the Year winners are selected from teams somewhere between 1^st and 4^th place.

As far as Coach Phil Jackson’s championship seasons in the NBA, there is a definite trend—the 3^rd season is much tougher. There is more wear and tear on player’s bodies. These players end up playing about 200 games going into their three-peat seasons, compared to the 164 games that a non-playoff team would play. Not to mention that, of course, starters typically play more minutes in the playoffs. So, there are physical and even mental breakdowns that can occur as these teams just become exhausted. The Michael Jordan teams, though pulled off an exception to that, mainly the remarkable ’96-’98 regular season run where the Bulls went 203-43.

Still, let’s not forget that those same Bulls had to go through a game 7 in the ECF in 1998, Jordan’s only Eastern Conference Finals or Finals game 7. Also, in Jordan’s third season (of the 2^nd three-peat), 1998, it was the only time the Bulls lost more than 1 game in a playoff series on their way to back-to-back-to-back titles from 1996 to 1998.

Almost the exact same trend occurred at the end of the Bulls first three-peat. In the Eastern Conference Finals in 1993, the Bulls went through a 6 game series against the New York Knicks, followed by a 6 game finals against the Suns. The pattern shows that the 3^rd season/playoffs of a three-peat has always presented challenges for Phil Jackson’s teams.

Jackson’s Lakers, too, faced a game 7 in the 3^rd year of their first three-peat in the 2002 Western Conference Finals against the Sacramento Kings. This current Jackson team shooting for the 2009-2011 three-peat most certainly has a game 7 series in store for them this season, the third of their three-peat. Seemingly, Jackson’s last three-peat has been one of the toughest, as the Lakers have already been through three 6-game series and two 7-game series (Houston Rockets and Boston Celtics).

In the 2011 season, these Lakers are also defying the trend of Jackson-coached teams not having a tremendous regular season record in the final year of a three-peat. With their current schedule, and sitting and 55 wins, these Lakers could win 60 or more games this season.

Once this season’s Lakers get passed 58 wins, they would only have one more record to beat (62) in order to have Phil Jackson’s best regular season record in the 3^rd year of a three-peat.

In Phil Jackson’s self-proclaimed ‘last season,’ perhaps we should take a long, hard look at why arguably the greatest NBA coach of all-time has only 1 Coach of Year award.

Rob S. De France is a College and University instructor of English Composition living in Los Angeles. He has a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing. De France has played, coached, and officiated competitive high school basketball in California for many years. Recently, De France, his wife, and another colleague started an internationally read magazine at Shwibly.com.