Phil Jackson is a legendary name in the NBA, many consider him the greatest Head Coach ever. He won 11 championships in his career, building the league’s most dominant teams in the 1990s Chicago Bulls and the Lakers in the 2000s.
One would think that the man who nurtured Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and helped them succeed would be an NBA fan for life. But Jackson revealed he hasn’t watched the league since the 2020 Bubble, giving an intriguing reason.
“All the teams that could qualify went down there and stayed down there, no audience, and they have things on their back like ‘Justice’ and a funny thing happened like ‘Justice went to the basket and Equal Opportunity knocked him down,'” Phil Jackson said.
“Some of my grandkids thought it was pretty funny to play up those names, I couldn’t watch that. The Lakers won that year… They even had slogans on the floor and the baseline. It was trying to cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience to the game and they didn’t know it was turning other people off. People want to see sports as non-political… Politics stays out of the game, it doesn’t need to be there.”
Phil Jackson says he doesn’t like basketball’s evolution & doesn’t watch anymore, thought the Bubble & political slogans on jerseys was “wanky” and made fun of it with his grandchildren
was listening to his new interview with Rick Rubin & thought it was interesting. pic.twitter.com/FVBpdnuCFj
— Clique Productions (@ImClique_) April 20, 2023
Phil Jackson is a genius when it comes to coaching basketball, his resume speaks for itself. Three three-peats with two different teams are no joke, and he deserves to be in the conversation as the greatest coach of all time. But this take is a bit out there for sure, and one that is sure to get different reactions from different people.
Is There A Place For Politics In The NBA?
The context of why the NBA and players were spreading a strong social message was the backlash to the killing of George Floyd, among other such instances. These are issues that need to be discussed and athletes should be allowed to use their platform to do so. Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are among NBA greats that were heavily involved in political and social causes, and there is no reason to say there is no place for it in the NBA.
There is some hypocrisy involved considering that the NBA is a profit-motivated business at the end of the day. But if someone is turned off from watching the league because they have an issue with the political messaging, it’s not a good enough reason to stop talking about the things that matter. The NBA should always be about basketball first, which it is, but there is place for more than that within the league.
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