by Phil Jackson
As the season progressed, I slowly started to introduce the team to some of the tribal customs of the Lakota. Some of these were quite subtle. At the beginning of every practice, we had the core team—players, coaches, and training staff—convene in a circle at center court to discuss our objectives for that day. And we would end practice the same way.
Lakota warriors always gathered in circular formations because the circle was a symbol of the fundamental harmony of the universe. As Black Elk, the famed Lakota wise man, explained it:
Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are the stars. . . . The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood-to-childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.
For the Lakota everything is sacred—including the enemy—because they believe in the fundamental interconnectedness of all life. That’s why Lakota warriors didn’t seek to conquer other tribes. They were far more interested in performing acts of bravery, such as counting coup (touching an enemy with a stick), taking part in a raiding party to steal horses, or rescuing a fellow warrior who had been captured. For the Lakota going into battle was a joyful experience, much like playing a game, though the stakes were obviously much higher.
Another Lakota practice I adopted was beating a drum when I wanted the players to congregate in the tribal room for a meeting. The tribal room—aka the video room—was decorated with several Indian totems I’d been given over the years: a bear-claw necklace (for power and wisdom), the middle feather of an owl (for balance and harmony), a painting illustrating the story of Crazy Horse’s journey, and photos of a newborn white buffalo calf, a symbol of prosperity and good fortune. Sometimes when the team lost a particularly lopsided game, I’d light a sage smudge stick—a Lakota tradition—and playfully wave it through the air to purify the locker room. The first time I did it, the players ribbed me: “What kind of weed you smokin’ there, Phil?”
The coaching staff also played a critical role in getting the players to shift consciousness. When I was an assistant coach, Tex, Johnny, and I used to sit around for hours talking about the history of the game and the right way to play it. We didn’t agree on everything, but we did develop a high level of trust and a commitment to modeling the sort of teamwork that we wanted the players to embrace.
Needless to say, the coaching profession attracts a lot of control freaks who remind everyone constantly that they’re the alpha dog in the room. I’ve been known to do this myself. But what I’ve learned over the years is that the most effective approach is to delegate authority as much as possible and to nurture everyone else’s leadership skills as well. When I’m able to do that, it not only builds team unity and allows others to grow but also—paradoxically—strengthens my role as leader.
Some coaches limit staff input because they want to be the dominant voice in the room. But I encouraged everyone to take part in the discussion—coaches and players alike—to stimulate creativity and set a tone of inclusiveness. This is especially important for players who don’t get a lot of playing time. My favorite poem about the power of inclusion is Edwin Markham’s “Outwitted”:
He drew the circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
When I’m hiring coaches, my strategy is to surround myself with the strongest, most knowledgeable people I can find and give them a lot of room to express themselves. Shortly after I took over as head coach, I hired Jim Cleamons, one of my former Knicks teammates, to fill out the roster. He was one of the most skilled guards in the game, and I knew he could help nurture our young talent. But what endeared him to me most was that he had trained at Ohio State under coach Fred Taylor, one of the best system-oriented coaches in the history of the sport. Tex and Johnny couldn’t wait to pick Jim’s brain.
Each assistant coach had a clear role. Tex was in charge of teaching everyone offensive skills as well as the basic fundamentals of the triangle system. Johnny oversaw the defense and specialized in getting the players revved up for each new opponent. And Jim worked one on one with the players who needed more instruction. Every morning the coaching staff and I would meet for breakfast and discuss the fine points of the practice plan, as well as the latest scouting reports. That allowed us to share information with one another and make sure we were all on the same page in terms of day-to-day strategy. Each coach had a high level of autonomy, but when we talked to the players, we spoke as one.
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The team got off to a slow start that first year. Most of the players were wary of the system. “It was frustrating,” says Scottie. “We didn’t have a good feel for each other. And late in games, we would go away from the offense because we didn’t have confidence in it.” But in the second half of the season, the team started to get more comfortable and we went on a 27-8 streak. Most opposing teams were confused about how to cover Michael now that he was moving more without the ball. They couldn’t double- and triple-team him, as they did when he had possession. But they also couldn’t afford to take their eyes off him, no matter where he was, and that created a lot of unexpected openings for other players.
We finished second in our division with a 55-27 record and breezed through the first two series of the playoffs, against Milwaukee and Philadelphia. But our next opponent, Detroit, was not as accommodating. Even though we’d beaten the Pistons during the regular season, memories of the mauling we had taken during the previous playoffs still haunted some of the players, especially Scottie, who had to leave game 6 with a concussion after being clocked from behind by center Bill Laimbeer. Scottie was also coping with a difficult personal issue. He’d missed most of the Philadelphia series in order to attend his father’s funeral, and the stress of having to grieve in public was difficult for him to bear.
It was a brutal series that came down to a seventh game at the Pistons’ new stadium in Auburn Hills, Michigan. We were struggling. Paxson had sprained his ankle in the previous game, and Scottie was suffering from a horrible migraine that blurred his vision so badly that he couldn’t distinguish the colors of the jerseys. Both men tried to stumble through the game anyway, but the team fell apart in an embarrassing second period, and we never recovered. We lost by 19 points, and it felt like 100.
After the game, Jerry Krause showed up in the locker room and launched into a tirade, which was unusual. And Michael was so angry he burst into tears in the back of the team bus. “I made up my mind right then and there it would never happen again,” he said later.
My reaction was more subdued. Yes, it was a difficult loss, one of the worst games I’ve ever had to coach. But once the noise died down, I noticed that the pain of humiliating defeat had galvanized the team in a way I’d never seen before. The Bulls were beginning to morph into a tribe.
7
HEARING THE UNHEARD
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
ROALD DAHL
In the foyer of my home in Southern California hangs a tall totemlike painting of the core players who won the Bulls’ first three championships. It’s a series of portraits stacked vertically, starting with Michael Jordan at the top, followed by the other starters, then the backup players. With its elegant red border, subdued color palette, and dignified rendering of each player, the painting feels more like a sacred object than a collection of images. I like that the artist, Tim Anderson, made no distinction between the stars and the role players, except for the order in which they appear. Everyone’s picture is th
e same size, and each possesses the same quiet poise. To me, the painting is a tribute to the concept of team.
After that wrenching loss to Detroit in the playoffs, we still had a long way to go before we reached that ideal. But we were definitely moving in the right direction. The players were beginning to embrace the system and show signs of becoming a more selfless, stage 4 team.
Over the summer I spent time reflecting on what we needed to do to accelerate the process. For starters, we needed to pace ourselves through the grueling eighty-two-game season as if we were running a marathon, not a series of sprints. To unseat the Pistons, we had to secure home-court advantage early and peak at the right time, both physically and psychologically. Second, we needed to use our swarming, high-pressure defense more effectively, especially in the playoffs, when defense usually makes the difference between success and failure. Third, it was important to make sure that each game was meaningful in terms of what we were trying to do as a team. I often reminded the players to focus on the journey rather than the endgame, because if you give the future all your attention, the present will pass you by.
The most important thing was to get the players to develop a strong group intelligence in order to work more harmoniously together. There’s a section in Rudyard Kipling’s The Second Jungle Book that sums up the kind of group dynamic I was looking for them to create. During the 1990–91 season that became our team motto:
Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back—
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
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When I started playing for the Knicks, I spent a couple of summers as a grad student in psychology at the University of North Dakota. During that time, I studied the work of psychologist Carl Rogers, whose groundbreaking ideas on personal empowerment have had a strong influence on my approach to leadership. Rogers, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, was an innovative clinician who, after years of experimenting, developed several effective techniques for nurturing what he called the “real self” rather than the idealized self we think we’re supposed to become. The key, he believed, was for the therapist to create a relationship with the client focused not on solving a problem but on nurturing personal growth.
For that to happen, Rogers said, the therapist had to be as honest and authentic as possible and regard the client as a person of unconditional worthiness, no matter what his or her condition. The paradox, he writes in his seminal work, On Becoming a Person, “is that the more I am simply willing to be myself, in all this complexity of life and the more I am willing to understand and accept the realities in myself and in the other person, the more change seems to be stirred up.”
In Rogers’s view, it’s virtually impossible for anyone to change unless he thoroughly accepts who he is. Nor can he develop successful relationships with others unless he can discover the meaning of his own experience. He explains: “Each person is an island unto himself, in a very real sense, and he can only build bridges to other islands if he is first of all willing to be himself and permitted to be himself.”
I don’t pretend to be a therapist. But the process Rogers describes is not unlike what I’ve tried to do as a coach. Rather than squeeze everybody into preordained roles, my goal has always been to foster an environment where the players can grow as individuals and express themselves creatively within a team structure. I wasn’t interested in becoming best friends with the players; in fact, I think it’s important to maintain a certain distance. But I tried to develop genuine, caring relationships with each player, based on mutual respect, compassion, and trust.
Transparency is the key. The one thing players won’t stand for is a coach who won’t be honest and straightforward with them. During my first year coaching the Bulls, B.J. Armstrong lobbied to replace John Paxson as the starting point guard. B.J. argued that he was a better playmaker than John and could beat him off the dribble. But he had been a reluctant convert to the triangle offense because he thought it would hamper his ability to show off his stylish one-on-one moves. I told him that I appreciated his enthusiasm, but I wanted him to share minutes with Pax because John worked better with the starters and we needed B.J. to energize the second unit. What’s more, the team flowed together more effectively when John was in the lineup. B.J. wasn’t thrilled with my decision, but he got the message. A few years later, after he’d demonstrated that he could run the offense and play cooperatively, we made him a starter.
One of the hardest jobs of a coach is keeping the role players from undermining team chemistry. New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel used to say, “The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.” In basketball, the guys who hate you are usually the ones who aren’t getting as much playing time as they think they deserve. Having been a backup myself, I know how aggravating it can be if you’re languishing on the bench in the middle of a crucial game.
My strategy was to keep the backups as engaged as possible in the flow of the game. If the triangle offense was working right, Tex used to say, the team should play together as if they were “five fingers on a hand.” So when backup players went into the game, they needed to be able to merge seamlessly with the players on the court. During those early years, I used a ten-man rotation—five starters and five backups—to make sure the nonstarters had enough time on court to get in sync with the rest of the team. Late in the season I would trim the rotation down to seven or eight players, but I tried to pull the other backups in whenever possible. Sometimes role players can have a surprising impact. Take Cliff Levingston, a backup power forward who played limited minutes during the 1990–91 season but flourished in the playoffs because he matched up well against the Detroit front line.
I’m not a big hugger or someone who doles out praise easily. In fact, some people find me aloof and enigmatic. My style is to show appreciation with subtle gestures—a nod of recognition here, a touch on the arm there. I learned this from Dick McGuire, my first coach on the Knicks, who used to come by my locker after games and quietly reassure me that he was looking out for me and would try to give me more time during the next game. As a coach, I tried to convey to each player that I cared for him as a person, not just as a basketball factotem.
The great gift my father gave me was showing me how to be genuinely compassionate while also commanding people’s respect. Dad was a tall, majestic figure with a distinguished carriage, a warm smile, and a softness about the eyes that made him look trustworthy, caring, and a little mysterious. He resembled portraits I’ve seen of George Washington, a man who was soft-spoken and modest yet totally in control. As a child, I’d often stand next to my father and greet church members as they left services. Some said I looked like him in the dignified way I held my body. No question, I’ve benefited as a coach from having a large frame and a deep, resounding voice. When I talk to players, I don’t have to look up at them; we can converse eye to eye.
Dad was a pastor in the true sense of the word. He was one of the few genuinely Christian men I’ve ever met. He lived by a simple set of rules dictated by the Bible and avoided lawsuits and animosity in general because they conflicted with his Christian ideals. While my mother often railed about fire and brimstone in her sermons, Dad focused primarily on benevolence and having a generous heart. He cared deeply for his parishioners and prayed for each one of them in his study after breakfast. The church members felt protected and reassured by him, which helped bind the community together. This was a lesson I never forgot.
As a rule, pro basketball players are not forthcoming about their deepest yearnings. They prefer to communicate nonverbally or make jokes rather than reveal any vulnerability, particularly when they’re talking to their c
oach. So it can be tricky trying to unearth what makes each player tick.
I was always looking for new ways to get inside the players’ heads. When I started coaching the Bulls, I had the players create what I called a personal shield, a simple profile based on questions such as “What’s your greatest aspiration?” “Who’s influenced you the most?” and “What’s something people don’t know about you?” Later I asked them to fill out a more formal questionnaire and used their answers to probe more deeply during our one-on-one meetings midway through the season.
My favorite psychological tool was one June called a “social bull’s-eye,” which creates a picture of how people see themselves in relation to the group. On one of our long road trips, I’d give each of the players a sheet of paper with a three-ring bull’s-eye, representing the team’s social structure, in the center. Then I’d ask them to position themselves somewhere on the bull’s-eye based on how connected they felt to the team. Not surprisingly, the starters usually placed themselves somewhere near the eye, and the backups scattered themselves in the second and third rings. One year backup forward Stacey King, a fast-talking, stylishly dressed player who made everyone laugh, drew himself hovering far outside the third ring. When I asked him why, he said, “I don’t get any playing time, Coach.” Which wasn’t true, but it was how he felt. On the surface, Stacey seemed confident and gregarious, but inside he felt like an outsider struggling for recognition. I don’t think I ever figured out how to heal that wound.