Sports history is replete with superstar athletes who vow to retire at the top of their game. Yet just this year Brett Favre and Lance Armstrong joined the long list of those, including Michael Jordan and Mohammed Ali, who failed to do so.
By contrast, I cannot recall a single superstar coach ever making a similar vow; though surely some like Bill Parcells would have done well to make and honor it. Which brings me to Phil Jackson, coach of the defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers.
It would be remiss of me … not to acknowledge the heretofore unimaginable coaching feat Lakers coach Phil Jackson accomplished. This was his 13th appearance in the Finals and his 11th victory, padding his lead over NBA standard bearer in this respect, former Celtics coach Red Auerbach, who won 9.
(Lakers repeat, The iPINIONS Journal, June 18, 2010)
This is how I paid homage to Jackson last year after the Lakers repeated as NBA champions. Perhaps it should have occurred to him to retire then … at the top.
But he can be forgiven for thinking that, with his team still essentially intact, he should try to repeat the three-peat feat (of winning three consecutive championships), which his Lakers was the last major American sports team to do 2000-2002. (The New York Yankees were the last Major League Baseball team to do it 1998-2000; but, interestingly enough, no NFL team has ever three-peated.)
I actually thought he would three-peat again; I even bet on it. Unfortunately, his quest came to an ignominious end on Sunday when his Lakers were swept out of this year’s playoffs by the lowly Dallas Mavericks 4-0 – losing the final game of the Western Conference semifinals 122-86.
In all my hopes and aspirations, this is the final game that I’ll coach. It’s been a wonderful run.
(Associated Press, May 9, 2011)
Clearly this is not the end Jackson hoped and aspired for. Even worse, his ignominy was compounded by his players who evidently had so little respect for him (and themselves) that they just threw in the towel halfway through the game (trailing by 30 at one point), and then resorted to committing flagrant fouls in a vain attempt to preserve what little was left of their pride.
It was an utterly classless display; which is ironic given that Jackson’s players were always known for emulating on the court the classy and cool demeanor he always exhibited on the sidelines.
I was a little bit embarrassed. Not with the loss, but some of the things I saw on the court were really just not something that a person that wears a Lakers uniform should do.
(Ex-Lakers superstar and current general manager Jerry West, Dan Patrick Show, 570 KLAC Sports Radio, May 9, 2011)
And so another sports hero ends his storied career in disgrace….
Farewell, Phil.
That said, I doubt they’ll “blow up the roster” this off season as another ex-Lakers superstar, Magic Johnson, suggests. But I’m sure franchise player Kobe Bryant will demand (and will get) one or two more reliable players to play supporting roles next season.
Incidentally, one of the two Lakers ejected for committing a flagrant foul was Lamar Odom. But, unlike the other player, he probably did it as much out of frustration as out of some perverse attempt to create more ratings-grabbing fodder for Keeping Up With The Kardashians, the reality TV show on which he appears as a two-bit player alongside his wife Khloe Kardashian.
Yes folks, our social values have become so screwed up that it’s entirely credible to assert that a multimillionaire basketball player would willfully demean himself and his team on the court just to boost ratings for his reality TV show. Odom’s mind is clearly elsewhere; therefore, he should be the first player the Lakers get rid of as they try to regroup and refocus for next season.
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