There have been a lot of rumors about Mark Jackson over the past couple of years. Some of his players believe that he’s being blackballed and that he should be coaching right now, while other people believe that he’s better off in a TV booth.
And, according to ESPN’s Ryen Russillo in the latest edition of his Podcast, Jackson not being on a team right now has nothing to do with his expertise as a coach but with his personality.
During a monologue at the beginning of his show, he revealed some information from a conversation with Golden State Warriors’ majority owner Joe Lacob, claiming that no one in the organization truly liked him:
“Part of it was that he couldn’t get along with anybody else in the organization,” Lacob said. “And look, he did a great job, and I’ll always compliment him in many respects, but you can’t have 200 people in the organization not like you,” Russillo said.
He went on to add that the Warriors’ decision to let him go had a lot to do with where they stood as an organization and wasn’t entirely from a basketball perspective:
“Look, I don’t think we should get into the great details of what did happen, other than to say that this is a decision that was based on what was good for the organization as a whole. And when I say the organization as a whole I don’t mean just the team and just the 15 players that are involved and the coaching staff. I mean everybody. There’s 200 employees here. So when we look at the organization going forward and the kind of coach we want and… not just the performance but everything else, all these factors matter. We took all that account,” Lacob said, according to Russillo.
There’s no doubt that Mark Jackson did a great job with the Warriors. He built the foundation and then Steve Kerr took them to a whole new level, and whether those rumors about him are true or not is something we just don’t know, but that would definitely explain why a guy with such a nice basketball mind and experience hasn’t gotten another chance in the league.
