Lakers so good Jackson won’t consider retiring
Mike Monroe
At full strength, the Lakers are clearly the class of the Western Conference, and that is how Phil Jackson likes it.
The Lakers coach is at his best when his teams are so good he can allow them to fight through occasional lapses on their own, even in big games.
In Jackson's world, timeouts to scold players are admissions of failure, and entirely counter to his Zen philosophy of living in the moment.
With a roster that Spurs coach Gregg Popovich calls young, athletic, long and deep, the Lakers provide Jackson every reason to continue coaching them for years to come.
There are also 12 million reasons Lakers owner Jerry Buss has promised him to coach the team in 2009-10.
Somehow, though, talk bubbled up this weekend that Jackson may be considering retiring after this season if the Lakers earn him his 10th NBA championship ring.
Jackson is in the first year of a two-year contract he signed last summer that makes him the NBA's highest-paid coach. He hasn't categorically denied contemplating a life that would not include the physical rigors of dragging two surgically replaced hips around the NBA for nearly 36 weeks each year, but Sunday he made it sound like speculation that he may not return next season was way off-base.
“Don't be befuddled by TV,” he said during his pre-game meeting with reporters at Staples Center. “It's just the medium that gets all these things confused. Everything is the same as it always was.”
In any case, he said, any decision would not be influenced by a Lakers le this June.
Despite the multi-year contract, Jackson has the leeway to end things if he deems the physical grind more than he cares to handle. He is 63, and looks younger than his age after shaving his beard. But he had an angioplasty in 2003 to clear a blocked artery, and makes no secret of the fact he does not enjoy the travel required in the NBA.
You wonder what Jackson would do if he retired, but he claims to have had a lot of fun in the year between his stints with the Bulls and Lakers.
It's the roster built by Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak that really provides the lure that will keep him coming back for more. Aside from its abundant talent, it includes players that require the sort of manipulating Jackson seems to find the most interesting part of his job.
No coach in the league uses the media to tweak players as often, or as effectively, as Jackson, a point Popovich made before the Spurs gave the Lakers one of their eight losses, on Jan. 14.
Jackson never has been afraid of tweaking opposing coaches and their teams, either, but he was downright gracious after his team spanked the Spurs on Sunday. The Spurs' shooters were just flat in the second half he said, and things could have been different had they just been more accurate.
Jackson always has seen himself as part-coach and part-shrink, and you get the impression he regards the feud between Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant that led to the breakup of the Lakers in 2004 as one of the disappointments of his career. This is why he wants O'Neal added to the Western Conference All-Star team he will coach in Phoenix next month.
“I'd love to see Shaquille and Kobe (Bryant) have a chance to play together again,” he said. “I think a lot of people would like to see that.”
Popovich, who says he will retire just as soon as Tim Duncan does, likely believes Jackson will stay on the Lakers' bench as long as the core he has now remains intact.
“That's a of a team and it's going to be a of a team for a long time,” Popovich said after Sunday's game.
it's just typical Laker ..
the Celtics and Cavs are grind-out teams, like we were in our championship runs..they don't get nearly as much love as the Lakers, despite one of them being the defending champs, and the other having the best player in the NBA..
wait until Kobe fails in the finals again..
wow.... i can see the steam coming out of the ears of spurs fans and their eyes turning green..
just becuase your team is not the poster of the NBA anymore doesnt mean you should knock the lakers now they have a decent squad and doing all the right things on and off the court
i dunno why would you wanna retire, when ur earning 10m a season coaching, and ng the boss daughter.....
if I didn't hate the Lakers and talk about them whenever they're mentioned, I wouldn't be a real Spurs fan..I gave credit to the Lakers for beating us last year, because they were the better team..but I'll knock the Lakers at every chance I get..
she's hot im suprised kobe hasn't got his hands on her
The Spurs were never the "poster" of the NBA, what're you smoking??? Stern has nightmares of crappy ratings everytime they win a PO game. I just wish I lived in an alternate universe where the teams and coaches/GMs of the Spurs/Lakers switched cities, just to see if the media stayed true to their small market snubbing ways.
Wahhh!!!!! Small Market!!!!!! Wahhh!!! Stern Hates Us!!! Wahhhh!!!
!!!
I wouldn't retire either If I was in his spot, a prime Kobe + a prime Gasol with a monster on the come up in Bynum surrounded by young talent....that's a nightmare for the rest of the league.
Typical KFC.
Coaching only when he has a good team.
No cojones
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