Though we all recognize Michael Jordan today as the greatest player to ever live due to his untouchable legacy consisting of his unmatched statistics and six championship rings, his Chicago Bulls teammate Scottie Pippen is also regarded as one of the premier talents of all-time. Pippen was a huge reason Jordan was able to accomplish what he was and therefore played a role in the respected career of then head coach Phil Jackson.
Jackson served as the head coach in Chicago for all six championship runs Pippen and the Bulls made. However, Jackson’s career today looks much different than what it did in the 1990’s. After he moved on from Chicago, Jackson coached Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers where he added five more rings to his long list of accolades and recently re-entered the NBA world as the President of Basketball Operations for the New York Knicks.
To sum things up, the Zen Master has enjoyed substantially less success in New York than anywhere else he has gone and this year may be the lowest point of it all. Not only have the Knicks had a horrendous and confusing season, Pippen places all the blame for their struggles squarely on the shoulders of his ex-head coach. Following from Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News:
So much for triangle solidarity: Even Scottie Pippen thinks his former coach has done a poor job as an executive and should leave New York.
Pippen, who won six rings with Phil Jackson in Chicago, placed the blame on the Zen Master for the Knicks’ disastrous season while taking the side of Carmelo Anthony.
“To be honest with you, I’m going to have to go at my old coach Phil Jackson,” Pippen said on ESPN’s “The Jump.” “I think he just hasn’t put the right pieces on the floor. I give a lot of credit to Carmelo who is being very professional in getting through these 82 game season. And now he’s being benched to some degree, they’re taking a lot of his minutes away. But this team just hasn’t had it. They haven’t had it since Phil Jackson landed there. There hasn’t been any upside.”
At this point with the Knicks looking to just make it out of this long campaign, Pippen is likely spot on with his diagnosis. The talent is there to at least make the playoffs in the Eastern Conference and for them to have a 28-47 record with less than 10 games remaining should be unacceptable.
It’s been no secret that a lot of the off-court issues we’ve seen from the Knicks have been due to Phil Jackson, most notably because of his disconnect with superstar Carmelo Anthony. We’ve seen the two be able to manage their rocky relationship this season but things have worsened so much between the two that one of the parties is going to have to move on and all signs point to the departure of Anthony this coming summer.
Though Anthony has shown obvious signs of wearing down, the problem lies with Phil Jackson and his insistence on running the triangle offense when the pieces clearly don’t work. As the Knicks try to move forward and build around franchise centerpiece Kristaps Porzingis, Jackson may have to realize his way isn’t always going to result in success, especially with the ever-changing landscape of the NBA.
