Eleven Rings by Delehanty Hugh & Jackson Phil

Author:Delehanty, Hugh & Jackson, Phil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2013-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

14

ONE BREATH, ONE MIND

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.

THICH NHAT HANH

Iwas in the middle of nowhere—a small village on Iliamna Lake in Alaska—when I heard the news. My sons, Ben and Charlie, were with me. We were on a fly-fishing trip in a secluded wilderness area, and the fishing wasn’t going very well. So that afternoon we knocked off early and boated up the Iliamna River to see the falls. When we arrived back at the village, a throng of children surrounded us.

“Are you Phil Jackson?” one of the boys asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “Why?”

“I hear you got the job with the Lakers.”

“What? How do you know that?”

“We got a dish. It’s on ESPN.”

That’s how my adventure began. Actually, it didn’t come as a total surprise. My agent, Todd, and I had discussed the deal before I left for Alaska. I’d given him the go-ahead to negotiate with the Lakers since I would be unreachable by phone. Still, it was a bit of a shock to get the news from an Inuit boy in a place as far away in spirit from the glitzy, high-stakes culture of Los Angeles as any I could imagine.

This was not a simple move for me. After the 1997–98 season, June and I had relocated to Woodstock, New York, a town where we’d lived before. Our hope was to revitalize our marriage, which had suffered during the past stressful year with the Bulls. What’s more, June had grown weary of her role as an NBA wife. Now that all of our children were out of the house, she was looking forward to creating a new, more fulfilling life. So was I—or so I thought. I explored other interests, including giving speeches on leadership and working on my friend Bill Bradley’s presidential campaign. But in the end, I couldn’t find anything that captured my imagination as much as leading young men to victory on the basketball court.

Toward the end of the 1998–99 season, I started getting calls from teams interested in talking to me and I had meetings with the New Jersey Nets and the New York Knicks. Neither of these conversations went anywhere, but they whetted my appetite to get back in the game. Needless to say, this was not the kind of reaction June was expecting. She thought I was ready to put basketball behind me and move into a field with a less demanding travel schedule. But that was not to be, and over the summer we decided to separate.

Soon after, as I moved back to Montana—my true place of refuge—the Lakers called. The team was loaded with talent, including rising stars Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, and two of the best outside shooters in the league, Glen Rice and Robert Horry. But the Lakers had struggled in the playoffs because of weak group chemistry, and the players lacked the mental toughness to finish off big games.

Mulling over whether or not to accept the job,

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