Phil Jackson or Mike D’Antoni?
January 23rd, 2008, 8:11 pm · 2 Comments · posted by KEVIN DING, OCREGISTER.COM
SAN ANTONIO — A Sports Illustrated poll of 242 NBA players on the coach they’d most like to play for resulted in a tie at No. 1 between Phil Jackson and Phoenix’s Mike D’Antoni. Each got 21 percent of the vote, with San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich third at 15 percent.
“Phoenix has a wonderful way of playing basketball, I understand that,” Jackson said. “I don’t know why anybody would want to play for me, because I’m too rigid and perhaps too confining in a lot of the ways we do things. But it’s nice to know that.”
About being tied with D’Antoni, who grew annoyed early this season about Jackson calling a timeout with the Lakers en route to victory over the Suns, Jackson said: “I have no animosity towards Mike – absolutely none.”
Although rookie Javaris Crittenton isn’t happy he hasn’t played more this season — and Jackson has a long-held joke about rookies being lowest organisms on the food chain — he still got more than half the rookie vote in the poll.
I told Jackson he should be sure to tell J-Critt that; Jackson said he would.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:32 am
ESPN’s Greg Anthony once said the greatest compliment for a coach like Phil Jackson is that he has never underachieved. During his 15 or so seasons in the NBA, he has won 9 championships and he has won 70% of his regular season and ~75% of his playoff games. His worst regular season finish is last year’s 42-40 and he has never been out of the playoffs. No matter who Phil has had, his teams have never underachieved and you can almost sense him having a mystic that draws players who want to be winners.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Great point, BT, as always.