Inspirational motivator still courting success

LOCKER ROOM:Having already won nine NBA titles, the legendary coach Phil Jackson returns to centre stage, writes Tom Humphries

HAD MICHAEL Jordan the decency to have died young, the NBA, that glitterfest of celebrity masquerading as a basketball league, would have cryogenically frozen his bald remains and periodically relaunched the league on the basis of his return. Not possible but the good fairy who grants the wishes of those who don't really need them has granted something even better: the return of a fabled rivalry.

This week the Boston Celtics will return to the NBA finals after a long absence and find the LA Lakers waiting for them. It's as if time hadn't moved on since the great rivalry that defined the two franchises in the course of 10 title battles that climaxed with the Magic Johnson/Larry Bird rivalry.

There are lots of reasons this week for those of us who feel a passionate affinity with shamrocks and little leprechauns (the Boston emblems) to be cheering for what geographically and demographically for us are the home side. But there is one good reason to spare a grin should the Lakers prevail on behalf of la-la land: Phil Jackson. Jackson has been coaching for half a lifetime in a world that makes the Chelsea dressing-room look as outgoing as an enclosed order of monks.

And he manages it all, from Michael Jordan who once described the remainder of the Chicago Bulls as his "supporting cast", to Dennis Rodman who was once found in the carpark of an airport with a gun barrel in his mouth, to Kobe Bryant, the greatest testament to whose focus is the fact that he played on during his rape trial a few years ago.

Jackson does all this while inviting ridicule by giving millionaire young hoopsters inspirational books to read, by quoting tracts of Indian wisdom and Zen philosophy - all the sort of stuff over which the average two-caps-and-a-reputation Irish international would spew his Budweiser. Jackson teams have group meditation sessions and surprise trips; they play party games and take naps together before games.

Jackson has won nine NBA titles but there was a time when his reputation as a middle- aged hippie was so crippling he could not get work even as a coaching assistant. He underwent personality testing to help him find out what he would be suited for. Number One: Housewife. Number Two: Trail Guide. He has worked for some of the most difficult and ebullient owners in the entire world of sport and has coached some of the most difficult and egotistical players on the planet.

Jackson has an ego himself of course. He wears the Armani suits and is rather fond of wearing his Zen on his sleeve, but when you can walk the walk there is no harm in talking the talk. His mouth doesn't drip with Lombardi-like aphorisms which get quoted in dressing-rooms and coaching courses, but he exemplifies a philosophy which he lives and evidently puts into practice, because he can tame and live with some of the wildest and most ego-driven personalities on the planet.

The secret is different from Alex Ferguson's. Jackson doesn't have to win or be seen to win every headbutting contest. One of the keys to coaching for Jackson is to have the "the intuitive ability to change a conflict situation into a team-building one".

He looks odd. He is 6ft 8ins tall, which in basketball isn't freakish; but to see him moving among media after a match, a chore he does with a sort of professorial interest, is an odd sight. He wears glasses and a grey beard and his expression would best be described as austere. Put him in overalls and dirt and he could be a dirt farmer from the dustbowl. Put him in his suit and take away the garish ties he favours and he could be an academic. Yet he has a purchase on the respect of men many decades junior to him, many millions richer than him and many cultural shades removed from him.

Some may say he has their respect because as head coach he holds the key to their financial and sporting wellbeing. But this is the NBA. He actually doesn't. This is the league where a star player tried to choke his coach but went on to greater celebrity status and where routinely the grumpier elements among the franchise players just have the coach removed if things aren't going well in their lives (not enough appearances on MTV, downturn in sexual liaisons).

Jackson's predecessor at the Lakers, Kurt Rambis, once got into a shouting match with a young Kobe Bryant. Not during training but during a key time-out in a game. Rambis broke up the time-out yelling, "Okay, you just do whatever you want to do." The same Rambis was once chided by Shaquille O'Neal for having had the audacity to invite O'Neal to enjoy a team huddle. In this world, Jackson reigns serenely and supremely.

Jackson has overcome a lifelong sense of difference to be what he is. The Jordans and Bryants don't impress or intimidate him much. Raised by, not one but, two Pentecostal ministers in North Dakota, Jackson never saw a movie before he was a senior in high school. He was outsized and cerebral but found a home for himself on the basketball court.

His good fortune on finishing college was to find himself in a city which could have devoured him whole and spat him out but with a franchise, the Knicks of the 60s, which under the coaching of Red Holzman breathed and practised the sort of cohesive team play which can make basketball such a wonderful game. Jackson absorbed it all.

His team-mate and friend on the Knicks was Bill Bradley, who would later lose a race for the Democratic nomination for the US presidency. Bradley and Jackson found they shared many gently left-leaning views on politics and life. It is difficult to imagine their conversations being replicated by any two players in the NBA (or the Premiership) today.

And it was that belief in the team and its supremacy which led to Jackson's greatest moment as a coach. It was back in 1994. Michael Jordan had quit basketball to try his arm at baseball. The Bulls had turned to the brittle Scottie Pippen to be their go-to guy. In game three of a play-off series with 1.8 seconds of time remaining, Jackson called a time-out and asked his players to get the ball to Toni Kukoc, an imported European.

It was a wise move. Pippen was the obvious choice and would be guarded tightly. Pippen didn't see it that way and famously blew a gasket, announcing he was out. Kukoc drained the shot. The Bulls won but Jackson's entire philosophy and authority had been undermined by the sight of Pippen going one direction after the time-out and his team returning to the court.

NBA teams have a short time after the game ends before they must open dressing-room doors to the media. Jackson had this amount of time to solve the Pippen problem. He took a massive leap of faith in his own power over players and just removed himself and his coaches from the situation. If everything he believed about the primacy of teams had been absorbed by his players, well then they would sort out the issue among themselves. If not he was finished, his authority shattered.

Jackson has nine NBA titles and is looking for his 10th. The incident followed Scottie Pippen for the rest of his career like a bad smell. Sometimes the good guys win.