Phil Jackson is cool

Even if he does coach the Lakers, Phil Jackson is the sort of cerebral quirky boss that makes the NBA entertaining. Especially when contrasted to the wreck of the Dolan-ettes.

Unlike the Knicks’ Censors, Jackson Likes Being Frank - New York Times

[Phil] Jackson has a penchant for brutal honesty and a zest for tweaking his players through the news media. This season, he has derided Lakers center Kwame Brown for having “butterfingers,” dubbed forward Vladimir Radmanovic “a space cadet” and generally bemoaned his players’ lack of interest in reading by suggesting they would rather “play video games and watch porn movies.”
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“I think the best policy is honesty,” Jackson said in an interview Tuesday morning, hours before the Lakers played the Knicks at Staples Center.

It is an interesting policy to consider, given that two years ago Jackson interviewed with the Knicks, who forbid their coaches to speak freely and discourage them from uttering a controversial word.

In general, Knicks players and coaches are ordered not to make negative comments about one another, or the organization. They are strongly discouraged from even granting interviews without a public-relations person present.

Whenever the coach and team president Isiah Thomas speaks, a staff member is perched nearby, typing his comments into a mobile device — with the comments to be sent later to officials at Madison Square Garden.

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“I feel like I’m relatively persuasive, even though I’m not a good politicker,” said Jackson, who spoke in a quiet room with one reporter and no public-relations person within 200 feet. “But I’m relatively persuasive. I think when you explain an open, honest policy, I think that it always works better than a closed, narrow one. But that’s corporate jargon right now, and the Knicks are corporate.”

Jackson said the Garden’s rules on dealing with reporters never came up during his lengthy interview with Thomas in April 2005. But he was told that Knicks coaches — the head coach and the assistants — were expected to dress alike, even at practice.

“I said, ‘Well, my coaching staff likes to wear their sweats and I like to wear jeans when I coach a practice,’ ” Jackson recalled. “He said, ‘Well, then, everybody would be wearing jeans and what you wear.’ I said, ‘I kind of like individuality at some level.’ But that’s the only thing that gave me pause.”

There is no telling how Dolan and his army of public-relations staff members would have reacted to Jackson’s daily press briefings if Jackson had agreed to coach the Knicks. But given Dolan’s reputation for heavy-handedness, it seems reasonable to assume that the staffers would be hiding under their desks after every interview. Consider some of Jackson’s comments this season.

¶After Kwame Brown had three turnovers down the stretch of a triple-overtime loss to Charlotte, Jackson said, “We’re going to feed him Butterfingers on the flight home just so he can feel the effects of it.”

¶In addressing the struggles of Radmanovic, who signed a $30.2 million deal with the Lakers last summer, Jackson said: “He’s a space cadet. He could be on Mars. I know it’s not on Venus, but he could be on Mars.”

This has come in a season in which the Lakers (30-22) are again one of the elite teams in the league. Contrast that with the Knicks (22-29), whose policy seems to be taken from “Home on the Range” — never is heard a discouraging word.
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Jackson said there was a method to his verbal madness, and he referred to his “space cadet” remark as an example. Jackson expressed affection for Radmanovic, but said that “sometimes he plays a game in which some of his shots don’t make any sense.”

“And to use the little ‘space cadet’ term, which caught on, kind of gave him some liberty with our fans — O.K., this guy is a little out there sometimes, but we’re trying to work at him to come back in,” he said. “I think it buys players actual grace or liberties, so that we know their fallibility, they’re dealing with their fallibility, and we’re trying to help them get through.”

“When you’re not honest, I think you run into Bush-itis,” Jackson added, veering into the sort of political commentary that would also make Garden officials shudder.

Yes, James Dolan's crew and George Bush's crew, are from the same mold - a slime mold.

Tags: Basketball, /Knicks, /Lakers