And then it was finally over.
Although not official, the collective consensus around the NBA is that this was Phil Jackson's last season as an NBA coach. With the Lakers' backs against the ropes down 0-3 to the Dallas Mavericks, Game 4 was the complete opposite of everything Phil Jackson represented. From being 30 pieced in the third quarter, to Andrew Bynum getting ejected for this cheap shot, to the Lakers being swept (something that has never happened in Phil's 20 year coaching career), everything was just so unlike Jackson basketball. To top it off, the Mavericks and Jason Terry both set playoff 3 pointer records in Game 4.
Before the final buzzer even sounded in Game 4 people were already debating about what this series would do to Phil Jackson's legacy. The answer is nothing. What Jackson has accomplished puts him above any other coach in league history. The only other coach who comes close in comparison is Red Auerbach, who had those stacked Celtics teams in the 1960s. Now there are those who say Jackson only won because he had the best players in Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, and Kobe Bryant. That's true, he did have the best players and the best teams. In fact, he did not win when he didn't have the best teams. He failed to win in the mid 90s when Jordan did his baseball thing. When Shaq left for Miami, he didn't win until the Lakers were literally handed Pau Gasol for next to nothing. It only seems natural to say that they players won for Jackson and he was only there to supervise.
As having Hall of Fame players helped win championships, what set Jackson apart from others was his ability to take different players and truly make them united as a team. The one thing the Zen Master could do better than anyone was take superstars with huge egos and make them buy into his system of teamwork. Everyone says that when Kobe and Shaq are on the same team it should be easy to when a ring. However, it is not so easy to take their egos and make them coexist on the same team. That is what made Phil Jackson the greatest, and why he has a record 11 rings.
So as we are all here to witness an end of an era, there may never be another Phil Jackson. He had his own techniques (there's been stories of everything from incense and yoga in the locker room to Buddhist lectures and meditation on the plane rides from arena to arena). He was always calm and let his teams play through adversary. He believed that basketball could be more than a game and that it could offer life lessons. In all other words, Phil had a certain coolness about him. He became the standard for coaching today. If this is truly his last season he is destined to be imitated but never duplicated.
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