Getting Along : Phil Jackson Adjusts Because the Bulls Won’t

Travels with Phil, a journey through an NBA season and life, in whatever order:

Early in the series against the New York Knicks, Phil Jackson broke the tension by taking the Chicago Bulls on a ferry boat ride in New York. Scottie Pippen asked if he could toot the horn. The ferry captain noted that Jackson was standing right under the stack and might lose his hearing. Gleefully, Pippen begged harder to toot the horn.

If traveling with Phil Jackson is multifaceted, going anywhere with the Bulls is like chaperoning fifth graders.

He used to buy books for every player to read on West Coast trips. Most of the players looked at them as if they were artifacts from a lost civilization.

The last year, before giving up, Jackson handed Michael Jordan “How to Win in Las Vegas.”

Jackson used to have the Bulls travel by bus sometimes so they could actually see the scenery, rather than fly over it. Once riding through Texas, he passed out a psychological test--a piece of paper with a circle and a dot in the middle. Players were supposed to say where they were in this picture and why.

Instead, they made paper airplanes or funny hats. No one handed his test in.

“It’s not for everybody,” says Jackson, grinning. “Lot of guys feel that’s not their milieu, but there’s some people that can appreciate it. It’s for them.”

Ever wonder if Phil Jackson is in the right business?

No other NBA coach ever moved to Woodstock or burns a sagebrush smudge stick in his office--an Indian rite of purification--or keeps a postcard of Sioux sign language on his desk or wears ties hand-painted by Jerry Garcia.

On the other hand, it just might have been a shaman they were looking for.

How many other coaches could have kept Jordan on the reservation as long as he did?

In Houston last season, Jackson, worried that the Bulls were tired, put in a slow-down game plan. At halftime, Jordan told Pippen and Horace Grant that they were going back to pressing. That’s what they did. Jackson made no issue of it.

How many teams would have weathered the latest firestorm?

Jackson, infuriated by Pippen’s Game 3 mutiny, blew the whistle on him for the nation to see.

A day later, however, Jackson all but put his body between Pippen and the press, pulling a protective coverlet over him, welcoming him back into the bosom of the family.

Sure enough, Pippen had 25 points, eight rebounds and six assists and declared a media boycott. His buddy Grant joined the embargo. The Bulls were united once again and now can force a seventh game in the playoff series by beating the Knicks at Chicago tonight.

They weren’t supposed to win three titles in a row, even with Jordan, or 55 games without him, or push the Knicks. But here they are.

How do you say coach of the year in Sioux?

*

He wasn’t your everyday NBA player, either.

He was the Knicks’ house hippie in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, a handy player on the court where he lent an elbow to the Knick defensive effort, a popular figure off it in the Age of Psychedelia.

The son of a Pentecostal minister, Jackson was raised strictly in tiny Williston, N.D. At 17 he sneaked out to his first movie, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” He arrived at the University of North Dakota rejecting Darwin, but left with his head spinning. By the time he hit New York, his beliefs defied characterization. His family now belongs to no church but gathers weekly to discuss spiritual matters.

Jackson immersed himself in whatever he was doing. Knick Coach Red Holzman, a middle-aged steak-and-Scotch man as opposed to Jackson’s vegetables-marijuana regimen, was so taken, he used to have Jackson scout opposing teams.

Holzman first told Jackson he should consider coaching.

Jackson did what every player does: He shuddered.

“I think we all say it when we’re players,” Jackson says. “NBA players say, ‘I’ll never be a coach. Look what you have to go through.’ Thinking about your own ego and the guys you’re playing with, the stuff you have to go through to placate the egos of the crazy nature of this game. But the reality is that it gets as close to the action as you get. . . .”

This gains in importance as a player leaves the game and samples the real world.

Jackson tried running a health club in Montana. It was hard to make a go of it. He broadcast New Jersey Net games. He took a job coaching the Continental Basketball Assn.’s Albany Patroons, settling in Woodstock, N.Y., even though it was 55 miles away.

He was on his way up the ladder.

He won a CBA title, then was voted coach of the year. He landed an assistant’s job with the Bulls--on his second try.

The first time he interviewed, he showed up with a beard, wearing a big Panama hat with a macaw’s feather stuck in the band. Coach Stan Albeck made up his mind on the spot.

The next time Jackson interviewed, for a job on Doug Collins’ staff, he shaved, bagged the hat and was hired. If he was still leery of the Establishment, it had some things he wanted, too.

When the high-strung Collins was fired two years later, the mellower Jackson moved up and, in his second, third and fourth seasons, won the Bulls’ first, second and third titles.

But it didn’t go the way people thought it would.

Highly popular as an assistant, he seemed to be the man the system couldn’t get to.

And maybe it hasn’t.

And maybe it has.

*

It goes beyond irony that Jackson and Pat Riley, polar opposites and bitter rivals, share so much.

Jackson is now in Riley’s Laker role, so dwarfed by his players’ fame that little credit filters down to him. Last season, for guiding the tired, cranky Bulls to a third title, Jackson got exactly zero coach-of-the-year votes.

Their differences are obvious. Riley is a corporate role model, Jackson is the ‘60s, all grown up. Riley might consider Jackson a whiner and Jackson might consider Riley a jackbooted tyrant, but if you look closely, they’re like brothers separated at birth who find themselves in similar positions: coaching high-profile teams in media centers, being pushed toward each other.

Jackson and Riley are reformed nice guys, once beloved by all who knew them, adapting to high-pressure life-in-the-spotlight careers by withdrawing. Both are gracious and quotable in interview sessions but guard their privacy jealously.

The Knicks and Bulls are the NBA’s twin Kremlins, with closed practices, limited access and conspiracy theories of the press- as- point- man- for- a- hostile- universe.

Jackson and Riley are adept at sending messages through the press and needling one another. Riley, in particular, doesn’t seem to like the give-and-take, but no one had ever compared him to Attila the Hun.

“Pat’s a tremendous opponent when it comes to a coach on the other side,” says Jackson. “You feel his pressure when you coach, and you know his teams are relentless.

“But you can see the differences in our styles. I believe that what we’re trying to do with this ballclub is genuine group dynamics. He’s turned a group around, and he’s got group dynamics going in a whole different value system--hard work ethic, maybe a little us against them. . . .

“Like, his players can’t talk to my players. His coaches can’t talk to my coaches. That’s the difference in our style. My style is open. I close my practices as he does, but my style is open. Freedom with the basketball club, closed basketball team. . . .

“We should be rivals. I mean, this is what it’s all about. We’re not playing one on one against each other, but we’re trying to outfox each other, we’re trying to out-duel each other, we’re trying to get our teams prepared against one another.

“I need the league’s attention to what New York’s doing defensively. I need people to say, ‘Is this legal defense?’ . . . That’s all. I’m drawing attention to that.

“He knows it’s a psychological warfare. He’s big enough to know that.”

Lest Riley forget, Jackson keeps reminding him. They’re in this thing together.

Once Riley was everyone’s caddie--Jerry West’s buddy, Chick Hearn’s color man, Paul Westhead’s assistant.

Once no one knew what to call Jackson.

Now they call each of them coach.