In This Courtship, Jackson Has Rings

On their way to dinner Tuesday night with Laker owner Jerry Buss, Phil Jackson and his longtime girlfriend, Jeanie Buss, walked past a playground where a basketball game was in progress. Play stopped and kids began to yell out to Jackson:

“When are you coming back?”

“Why would you go to New York?”

A like-minded message was sent to the Lakers’ El Segundo headquarters last week.

“We the undersigned season ticket holders in the premium seat location on the floor urge you to do all you can to bring Phil Jackson back to coach the team next year,” read a petition prepared by front-row season-ticket holders, who pay $2,000 a ticket. Organizers said they faxed and mailed to the Lakers the petition with signatures representing 52 of the 139 precious seats, but declined to provide a list of names.

Regardless of age or tax bracket, Laker fans are eager to see the team bounce back from a woeful 34-48 season, and many view Jackson, who led the team to three consecutive National Basketball Assn. championships before departing last year, as a savior.

It is a sentiment shared by championship-hungry owners in other NBA cities, which has led to a slow-speed courtship of the Zen-loving Jackson that could draw him back to the game for a record $10 million or more per season. Or not.

Jackson, who holds the greatest postseason record of any coach in NBA history, is the closest there is to a sure thing in his profession. While Los Angeles fans presume that his first choice would be to return to the Lakers -- noting that he already lives here and dates the owner’s daughter, who is a team vice president -- Jackson, 59, has been coy about whether he even wants to coach again.

Ten months ago, after the Lakers were humbled in the NBA Finals by the Detroit Pistons, losing four games to one, Buss declined to offer Jackson a new contract to replace his expired $6-million-a-year deal, telling the coach he desired a return to the kinetic, 1980s-era “Showtime” game.

It was a finality Jackson described as unsettling in his published diary of last season. Since then, he has built a large, lakefront home in Montana, lollygagged in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean and spent the winter holidays with his four grown children.

His agent, Todd Musburger, said last week that it was “51-49” Jackson would re-enter the profession -- he did not say with whom -- up from the “50-50” likelihood that he had previously cited.

Others close to him say that in the end, the challenge of coaching might prove too appealing to resist.

“The last time I visited with him, he indicated to me that if he was feeling good, he wouldn’t mind accepting the challenge,” said Tex Winter, a longtime assistant under Jackson. “I think people mistakenly feel Phil wouldn’t take a job unless he wins immediately. I think he kind of looks at the challenge of winning with this group, or any group.”

If the Lakers are first in line among Jackson suitors, the New York Knicks are also poised on the doorstep, able to offer Jackson as much money as he wants to work in the nation’s top media market, where he played for the 1973 NBA champions.

The longshots are the Cleveland Cavaliers and Portland Trail Blazers, though each has its charms.

Cleveland, recently bought by mortgage tycoon Dan Gilbert, has LeBron James, the game’s most dazzling young player -- a marketer’s dream spiritually descended from another Jackson-coached superstar, Michael Jordan. The Cavaliers put out a statement Friday saying “we have had contact with Phil Jackson” without providing details -- a meeting believed to have taken place Wednesday via conference call.

Portland owner Paul Allen could dip into his Microsoft-powered $21-billion fortune to boost his chances.

Jackson dined in Los Angeles on Monday night with Knick President Isiah Thomas, a meeting that Musburger described as “long, productive and interesting.”

The next evening, it was sand dabs and halibut with Jerry and Jeanie Buss at the La Marina Inn in Playa del Rey. Amid swirling glasses of fine wine, tinkling piano keys and a crackling fireplace, laughter and talk of world travel preceded more serious conversation about mind-sets and physical health, according to people familiar with the meeting. (Jackson underwent an angioplasty in May 2003 to open a blocked heart artery and resumed coaching with no problems.)

There was no offer from Buss, nor a commitment from Jackson to resume his career.

Laker spokesman John Black said Jerry Buss and General Manager Mitch Kupchak have both said Jackson is probably the best coach in basketball. “It certainly would be no surprise if fans and people that are intelligent about basketball would understand that as well as we do,” Black said.

The Lakers have said they want a coach named by late June. If Jackson does not return, their options could include Detroit’s Larry Brown, former Minnesota Timberwolf coach Flip Saunders and even current Laker Coach Frank Hamblen, who had a 10-29 record.

Jackson has developed a reputation as a coach who accepts only win-win situations: He has won championships in nine of his 14 seasons, guiding the Chicago Bulls to six with Jordan and the Lakers to three with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. Jackson is tied with the Boston Celtics’ Red Auerbach for the most championships by a coach, and his 175 playoff victories are the highest in league history.

But taking the Laker job would open a new chapter for Jackson -- that of a fixer-upper. After trading O’Neal to Miami, the Lakers failed to make the playoffs this season for only the fifth time in the franchise’s 58-year existence. Fans are getting itchy; there were 12 non-sellouts at Staples Center this season, more than the last four seasons combined.

“If you look at the product of professional basketball in the market of L.A., it really is entertainment,” said Paul Swangard of the Warsaw school of sports marketing at the University of Oregon. “They want to have success, they want to star-watch, they want to feel like they’re something special. They didn’t feel that this year.

“Phil was an attraction and he created this belief in everybody’s mind they were a championship-caliber team. That’s what will get people in the building. That resonates with them even though we all know a coach is only as good as the players on the team.”

Jackson’s future remains a point of intrigue across the NBA.

O’Neal, who is trying to lead Miami to its first NBA championship, took the time before a recent playoff game to ask a reporter what was going to happen with Jackson.

The answer: Only Jackson knows, and he is saying little.

After the initial shock of being rebuffed by Buss, Jackson has lived 10 months of bliss.

Last fall, he spent most of his time at Flathead Lake in northwest Montana, about 60 miles south of the Canadian border. He has owned property there since his playing days and decided to replace the existing house with a new one on the West’s largest natural freshwater lake.

In January, he left for a two-month trek that included Australia, New Zealand and Bora Bora. When Laker Coach Rudy Tomjanovich resigned Feb. 2 because of health reasons, Jackson was with a former player on a boat near Rottnest Island, catching lobsters and cooking them under the stars off the west coast of Australia.

Since March, he has spent most of his time in L.A., except for one week in Montana. He rises half an hour after the sun and meditates each morning in his home, which overlooks a swath of sand and a bike path.

He is kept busy by various speaking engagements, where his fees approach $100,000, plus expenses. In the last two months, he has delivered 45-minute motivational speeches to employees at the Miller Brewing Co. in Milwaukee and the International Foodservice Manufacturers Assn. in Miami.

The Lakers, meanwhile, are waiting for a legitimate sign of interest from Jackson. Buss has yet to make up his mind whether he wants Jackson back.

“I’m not even sure that he does want to coach. He didn’t pay that much attention to the season, although he did watch the Lakers,” said Charley Rosen, an author and longtime friend of Jackson’s. “The playoffs get his chops way up.... I’m sure his interest is peaking and will peak for the next two months.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Phil Jackson’s NBA coaching record

*--* Year Team W L Pct 1989-90 Chicago 55 27 671 1990-91 Chicago 61 21 744 1991-92 Chicago 67 15 817 1992-93 Chicago 57 25 695 1993-94 Chicago 55 27 671 1994-95 Chicago 47 35 573 1995-96 Chicago 72 10 878 1996-97 Chicago 69 13 841 1997-98 Chicago 62 20 756 1999-00 Lakers 65 17 817 2000-01 Lakers 56 26 683 2001-02 Lakers 58 24 707 2002-03 Lakers 50 32 610 2003-04 Lakers 56 26 683 Totals 830 318 723

*--*