Phil Jackson. His name says it all. The ultimate winning coach in the NBA. He won six rings with the Bulls and was rewarded by being run off in spite of the fact that team may well have won more if he and they had been allowed to stay together.
With our Lakers, he won three in a row, left, then came back to help us get two more. We owe everything to Phil with no complaints, right? Nothing bad to be said, no regrets. It was all good with him and he did nothing but help this franchise.
Or did he?
The Lakers powerful edifice of success was long supported by two powerful columns that seemed indestructible. The brilliant owner, Jim Buss and his right hand, the wise, clever GM Jerry West. It was on these two pillars that Showtime ruled the league with an iron fast break and a new great era was ready to dawn with the acquisition of Shaq and Kobe. We just needed that last push to get us over the top. As long as these two remained guiding this team, you knew the Lakers would carry the standard of excellence through the years and decades. It was an immutable law.
We all remember the time and circumstances when Phil Jackson, the savior, finally came to LA. We had the two studs, Kobe and Shaq, a pretty good team around them but no titles to show for it. Del Harris was not considered top shelf and frustrating losses to the Stockton Malone Jazz in the playoffs were trying Lakers fans souls.
I remember my exact two thoughts when the long awaited and pined for event took place. My first feeling was elation. I knew, just totally knew, titles were now going to flow. I suspect almost the entirety of the Lakers nation felt that way. The media sure did. We were crowned the champs right then and there.
But I had another smaller thought in the back of my mind. How would Jerry West and Phil get along. That may have been a strange thought to have, but not for me. It's how I'm wired to think. When ever two power players get together in any endeavor it's just a question that naturally comes to my mind.
And these were not just two power players. They were way above that. They were long ago anointed genius's and legends. West for his careers as a player and GM and Jackson for his coaching acumen and six titles.
One thing about people who are anointed the double title of genius and legend, they almost always develop huge egos. I don't bust on Phil or West for that, it's just human nature. It is hard to resist when you are put on those pedestals by so many adoring people.
When Phil took us to the title in his first year, it seemed like everything was perfect in Lakerland. We had the best owner in sports, the best GM in the league, the two best players in the game and ton of titles to win.
And then the bomb dropped. Jerry West, the guy who lived by the title Mr. Laker suddenly said he had enough and was leaving the organization. Right when the fruits of his years of labor were starting to pay off in the biggest dividends of all.
That would be akin to President Obama winning reelection then rising on election night to say, he was stepping down.
West gave some vague reasons for leaving. He was tired. He accomplished what he wanted. It was time Mitch took over. I never bought it. There was no way in my mind that West, a man who bled Laker colors would just turn his back away from what he had worked so hard to build when it was ready to run over the league. The first thing that ran through my mind was it was a Phil thing.
Years later, when West wrote his book and gave interviews, it transpired it was indeed a Phil thing.
And in looking at what happened, one has to examine the two men, West and Phil. Phil had had trouble with his GM in Chicago, Jerry Kraus. They fought like cats and dogs about every player move. In the end, it was Kraus who precipitated Jackson's departure and the break up a championship team. This had to have a strong effect on Jackson. How could it not?
West was notoriously known to be high strung and sensitive. Too high strung and sensitive. He couldn't even watch big Lakers games he was strung so tight. West also reveled in his title as Mr. Laker and his relationship with Buss.
I think when Phil took that job he had another agenda along with winning. It was to get the one guy who could challenge him for control out of the way. I don't think he wanted to have to sell his ideas on players and the team to anyone again, after the Kraus fiasco. I think he wanted dictatorship.
Phil as we all know is a very perceptive man. He also is a past master at manipulating people and events to suit his needs. Phil knew Jerry's personality. In West, Phil had the perfect foil with the perfect weaknesses to psychologically pull apart at the seams. Phil at this time was an ego machine running on pure ambition, convinced he knew better than anyone else, who was loathed to take advice from anyone. That was said by his long time friend and coaching assistant Tex Winter.
In West's book and interviews he came clean. He talked about the many perceived slights and digs Phil would subtly send his way. This started right away and continued all season. The breaking point for West was a day he was in the locker room with Phil and the players. Phil turned to him, in front of the team and ordered him out.
For West this was too much. For Mr. Laker, it was untenable to be treated that way by the first year coach. I suspect West hoped that Dr. Buss would upbraid Phil for that move. When it didn't happen, he decided to leave.
Phil defended himself by saying he only wanted coaches and players in that meeting. That defense seems hollow. What harm would having West there incur? If Phil felt that way, couldn't he have talked to West in private, telling him he wanted a meeting with players only? Wouldn't a very smart man like Phil know that ordering West out in front of everyone do to West?
I think Phil knew exactly what ordering West out would do. Just the reaction Phil had been pushing for all season.
For Phil, the gain was obvious. With West gone, he no longer had to run his ideas past Mr. Laker and hope for approval. Was Mitch Kupchak going to argue or deny him anything he asked for? No way. Not with his resume on top of the shiny new Lakers ring.
The day West left, Phil assumed de facto control. No more West to worry about, no more struggles like with Kraus. When Phil ordered West out of the locker he knew exactly what he was doing. And he knew West's personality so well it was never even a fair fight. It was decided the moment Phil came to LA.
If West wasn't built like he was, if he had a thicker skin, was less emotional, had more fight in him, less pride, he could have held on. But he didn't and couldn't.
For Buss, fans and the media, the loss of West didn't seem like the end of the world. After all, we had Phil and Shaq and Kobe. And we had Kupchak, the young West who learned for years at the masters knee. Everything was great.
But there was a problem with that equation. Kupchak was no West. Some arts you can learn from a master. Take accounting for example. It has this set, written laws and rules. If a young accountant with a good memory and strong work ethic learns from a master, he can become the master.
But in positions like coaching, or being a GM, it doesn't work. There are no written set of rules for these jobs. These jobs require vision, logic, abstract thinking, intuitiveness. You have to understand teams, players, chemistry, talent, reality. You have to be able to see down the road and around the many curves. You can't teach that. It is something intrinsic in a persons mind and makeup. You have it or you don't. West had it in spades, Kupchak never did.
There are many examples of this. As the NFL Patriots won titles and Bill Bellichik became football legend, there was a hot run on his assistants. The thinking was clear: They learned from Bill, so them must know how to do it. The list of his assistants who didn't "learn' from the master and have been fired is long: Romeo Crennell, Eric Mangini, Charlie Weis, Jim Schwartz, Josh Daniel.
With that season long baiting of West and that final humiliation, Phil succeeded in knocking out one of the two columns that supported this franchise. When we were winning title with Shaq and Kobe and later with Kobe and Pau, it seemed inconsequential.
But now though the prism of hindsight and the very clear vision of the last half decade right up to today's worst ever team, that moment comes together with frightening consequence.
Does anyone here think West, even at on his worst day would have led the Lakers down the primrose path Mitch did? Does anyone think West would have been so blind after the OKC and Dallas playoff losses to do what Mitch did? Not go to the desperately needed rebuild mode, but blindly waste years of moves and trading away picks for the ill fated win one with Kobe strategy?
Only if West was senile, and even today, as a consultant to the one time and soon to repeat champions Warriors, he seems very, very lucid, far more than his heir apparent who helped run this team six feet into the dirt.
If West had stayed, if Phil hadn't executed and carried out that vicious power play, would we be where we are?
Yes, we have lots to thank Phil for. Five rings. They are not easy to get. He gave us a lot. But man, he took too. He took something so valuable that it still is killing us 16 long years later.
There are a couple questions to ask:
Was there a coach out there who could have won those rings with Kobe and Shaq and Kobe and Pau? A coach who did not want or need to poison West out of his chair? I suspect so. Somewhere. Another question of importance is, would the Lakers have found him?
And lastly, the biggest one.
Looking back on what was, what might have been, where we are today on the heels of the loss of West, Buss and Mitch's decisions, was it all worth losing West over?
Was the horrible price Phil needed to exact worth it?
