Phil Jackson is one of the greatest coaches in NBA history, having won a record 11 championships during his stints with the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers.
Jackson got to coach two all-time greats in Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and during an appearance on Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin, he was asked if there were any players who could have been as great as those two (starts at 29:04 mark).
Rick Rubin: “Did you ever see a player that you thought could be Michael, could be Kobe, but for whatever reason it just never came together? Like you saw the promise but it didn’t happen?”
Phil Jackson: “Yeah, there’s a couple. There’s a couple of players that were actual contemporaries of theirs. Carter, Vince Carter is one of them and he was really good, he won the dunk contest, and he had a long career, he played until he was 40. He had a really good (career) but he just didn’t have that X factor.”
Jackson went on to explain that the X factor means being able to hold not only one’s end of the bargain but also uplift the whole team. He doesn’t seem to think Vince Carter had that in him, which is why he never reached the level of Bryant and Jordan, despite being supremely talented.
Carter still had a pretty good career, though, averaging 16.7 PPG, 4.3 RPG, 3.1 APG, and 1.0 SPG over 22 seasons. He made eight straight All-Star appearances from 2000 to 2007 and is generally regarded as the greatest dunker ever. Carter never won a title, though, but one could argue he was never really on a team that was a serious title contender during his peak.
Phil Jackson Wasn’t Happy With The Political Slogans On The Court In The Bubble
Jackson has ruffled some feathers with these comments regarding Carter and he had quite a bit to get off his chest during this episode. He stated that he couldn’t watch the games in the Bubble because players had messages on the back of their jerseys and because of the slogans on the court.
He felt that the NBA was trying to bring in a certain audience to the game without realizing that it was turning other people off. He believes politics should stay out of the game, and he certainly isn’t the only one who thinks like that. Whether he or others like it or not, it isn’t something that is going to go away now, as players are going to use their platform in order to speak for those who aren’t as privileged as they are.
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