Here is a brief excerpt from an article by Ben Dolnick for The New York Times in which he examines books that Phil Jackson has written (usually with assistance provided by his friend, Charley Rosen) during the past 20 years. As indicated in the photo, Jackson has played on or coached teams that have won thirteen NBA championships. To read the complete article, check out others, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
CreditIllustration by Sam Manchester/The New York Times
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Sometimes he sounds like Paulo Coelho: “Before me, I saw forever, nothing and everything — mountain ranges, canyons, sagebrush, the simple life at last.” Elsewhere he channels Bram Stoker: “The basketball gods can sometimes be most cruel.”
The writer is Phil Jackson, newly ordained savior of the Knicks and author of a nearly Mailer-like profusion of books. Getting through the 1,682 pages of his collected works requires every trick in his oeuvre: every breathing technique, every Lao Tzu quotation, every positive visualization. As in meditation, the rewards are considerable, but so is the suffering.
Of course, his books are not meant to be read all in a gulp. They are meant to be savored individually, by fans sporting throwback Kobe Bryant jerseys, or by chief executives applying the principles of the triangle offense to the boardroom, or by high school coaches wondering what to do with the proto-Rodmans in their charge.
If you read Jackson this way, as most people do, you will have an intermittently good time, and you will come away with a handful of memorable tidbits. You will learn, for instance, that Jerry Buss, the former Los Angeles Lakers owner who died in 2013 (and the father of Jackson’s fiancée), had a “penchant for hanging out with young girls and dancing till 3 in the morning.” You will learn that in Game 6 of the 1997 N.B.A. finals, the Chicago Bulls’ equipment manager accidentally gave the players GatorLode, a high-carbohydrate drink, rather than Gatorade, meaning that each player “ingested the equivalent of about 20 baked potatoes.”
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Here is a direct link to the complete article.
Ben Dolnick is an American fiction writer and author of the novels Zoology, You Know Who You Are, and At the Bottom of Everything: A Novel.