Michael Jordan achieved a lot of success in the NBA after the Chicago Bulls hired Phil Jackson as the head coach of the team.
The player-coach duo helped the Bulls lift six NBA Championships in their prime. Evidently, they shared a great bond with each other. Phil Jackson recently revealed a crucial reason behind it in an episode of ‘Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin.’
“Yeah,” Jackson admitted being the advocate of the team against the management and press. “I think that’s a reason why Michael Jordan and I had such a great relationship. I didn’t ask him for anything. I didn’t have him sign tennis shoes or bring people to meet him or do anything. It was just we had a player-coach relationship, and that’s what I valued more than anything else. So that was a big deal. I saw how he had been held before. We ended up a lot of times on the same executive level floors, and I’d see eight hotel employers parked outside his room. Waiting for an opportunity to get a signature, and they were always on him.”
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Michael Jordan’s stardom during his playing days was through the roof. Considering that, he was always surrounded by the media and fans, even off the court.
Phil Jackson understood how tiring that must be for MJ. So, he never wanted to be a contributing factor to it and didn’t ask Jordan to indulge with them. As a result, Jackson forged an amazing relationship with ‘His Airness.’
Michael Jordan Wasn’t A Fan Of Phil Jackson When He Was Hired By The Bulls
Phil Jackson initially joined the Chicago Bulls in 1987 as an assistant coach. In 1989, Jackson was promoted as the head coach of the team, after parting ways with Doug Collins.
Now, Jackson wanted to involve the entire team in the offense as opposed to Collins, who ran his offense primarily through Michael Jordan. As a result, Jordan once revealed that he wasn’t a fan of Jackson when he first arrived at the Bulls.
“I wasn’t a Phil Jackson fan when he first came in because he was coming in to take the ball out of my hands.”
Despite taking some time to adjust to Jackson’s new offense, Jordan accepted it wholeheartedly and went on to win six NBA titles. Over time, MJ not only became a huge fan of Jackson’s triangle offense but also claimed it would not work with any other superstar besides him and Kobe Bryant.
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