The X man

Many people scoff at me for my rooting interest in the Los Angeles Lakers. They beieve this has to do with Kobe Bryant. While I like watching him play, the real reason I root for them is the man behind the team - the coach Phil Jackson. I spent many years in Chicago overlapping with his championship-winning years, including the seminal 72-10 campaign of 1998 and have been rooting for him since then.


Yesterday, he won his 10th NBA championship as a coach (in just 18 years of coaching in the league), the most all-time. To me, the more staggering numbers are this:

• He has won more than 70% of the games he has coached (and he has coached almost 1800 games)
• His teams have never had a losing record in any season.
• In a best-of-7 playoff series, his teams have won the first game on 50 different occasions. His teams have then gone on to win all 50 of them.

Jack McCallum of SI.com compares Jackson with Red Auerbach, the Boston Celtics head coach who also won 9 NBA championships. Jack notes that while they may appear to be vastly different personalities on the surface, if you dig a little deeper, their basic natures are quite similar.

It would've been fun to watch Auerbach and Jackson coach against each other, the former fussing and fuming and pacing the sideline, the latter sitting there with that Zen-like calm, calling his timeouts according to some inner clock, running the game with a seeming caprice that actually comes from a fundamental plan. There would inevitably come a time when they would torch each other in public, Auerbach with a straight-to-the-point rant, Jackson with a witty, circuitous insult. But winners almost always respect other winners, and, my best guess is, if they were pressed to tell the truth, here's what each would say about the other: He's a great coach.

Prior to winning the 10th championship, Eric Neel of ESPN.com also did a piece on the man with some background from his early years.

That given Sunday

On any given Sunday, anyone can win, anyone can lose, anything can happen. But once in a while comes that perfect Sunday, when all the chips align themselves. Last Sunday was just that:

Roger Federer cried again, this time they were tears of joy. A huge monkey is off his back forever. Bring on the GOAT discussions (by the way, check out comment #5 in this discussion thread - Lendl was indeed the truth).

A dude who spent Sunday morning fretting over Federer then went out and produced an inspired ending to his own day. With 2 weeks to go for the US Open, all the pressure is back on Tiger Woods's shoulders, just where he likes it because it means he is playing well.

In the evening, the Los Angeles Lakers put Phil Jackson within 2 wins of winning his 10th NBA championship. Yes, tenth!!

But I did not watch Federer or Woods and barely caught the last 6 minutes of the 4th quarter and then all of overtime in the LA-Orlando game.

You see, I was capping my perfect Sunday playing cricket for a team that drove in the rain to Ames, played in bright sunlight, and drove back in the rain! But who cares, after all these stories were processed in my head the whole day felt like one long sun-fest.