Scott Pollard: Phil Jackson 'One Of The Most Overrated Coaches Of Our Time'

People were right to question Phil's rankings among the greatest coaches of all-time after his stint in Chicago. I'm guessing there aren't too many coaches who couldn't win a title with Jordan and Pippen. None did, and one could argue that a pretty good coach (Collins) couldn't do it, but Collins was probably a few years too early. They needed a few years to get better than the Lakers and the Pistons.

Kobe and Shaq aren't Jordan. Great players, but they're great players who need a coach who they respected. I'm guessing his time in LA was a lot harder than his time in Chicago.

 

How did Pollard get a ring with the Celtics? Didn't he play like 1/4 of a season?

 

That is true about 72-73, and I guess I though they were teammates for longer. However, they did have an overall losing record for the seasons they were together.

 

The only one you could even argue that Jackson made him great is Kobe. Shaw and Jordan were already the most dominant forces in the game by the time Jackson became their coach. Kobe had already been an All-Star but he didn't really emerge until Jackson was the coach. How much was Jackson and how much was it that Kobe was already considered a phenom and just came of age? No one will ever know but at the very least Kobe was already clearly one of the next great players.

I'm not saying Jackson isn't one of the best coaches. I think he is easily the best at managing massive egos, the type that come with dominant players. Jackson isn't what made those players all-time greats.

 

Or Gene Keady and John Chaney.

 

The only thing Pollard got wrong in this was that he added "one of" at the beginning of the sentence. Other than that, take the plural off coaches and he was completely accurate.

Phil Jackson overrated? Well, duh.

 

Pollard may also have bad memories of the 2002 Western Conference finals when the Kings missed out on going to the Finals because they were playing 5-on-8 most of the time.

 

That's one thing people leave out even when making the case he's overrated: two-thirds of his threepeat in Los Angeles never should have happened. The 2000 NBA champion should have been either Portland or Indiana, because if Game 7 had been called fair, the Blazers would have eliminated the Lakers. In 2002, Sacramento should have won the title. Only in 2001 did the Lakers legitimately win the title.

Easy knock on Jackson that he had Shaq and Kobe and could only win one title without getting a LOT of extra help. Yet nobody ever makes that argument, probably because the argument is so easy to make that you don't even need to get there.

 

Oh for fuck's sake.

 

Pomposity crossed with ignorance, never a good combination.

Amusing how this legend has grown so much. You might want to check the numbers and the calls for that series. Be sure to look at Game Five, in which the Kings enjoyed some gifts.

Kings lost the first game at home. They choked away Game Four. And they had Game Seven, at home, and couldn't hit a free throw.

But yeah, Game Six had a free-throw disparity, so the whole series must have.

 

Leave it to nighthawk90210, who knows everything about everything even though he was six in 2001, to get me thinking Phil Jackson was accurately rated.

 

Phil long ago used up his karma on MJ and Kobe.

Signed,
Buddha