THE X FACTOR

Chip Schaefer, the Lakers’ athletic performance coordinator, had a recurring thought as the accolades for Phil Jackson rolled in during this 67-win season.

Just wait until you see him in the playoffs.

“This is probably where he shines the most,” said Schaefer, who had an up-close view of Jackson at work during his eight-year stint as the Chicago Bulls’ trainer. “One of the things with Phil as a coach, he handles adversity well. Playoffs inevitably offer adversity. That’s something he does really well. What’s the [Rudyard] Kipling thing about keeping your head about you when everybody else is losing theirs? That’s something that he’s always been particularly good at.”

Doc Rivers is the coach of the year for taking an Orlando team that had no business being anywhere near .500 to within a game of the playoffs.

Pat Riley is the best coach of this era.

Phil Jackson is the NBA’s greatest playoff coach. Ever.

He has won 73% of his playoff games, easily the best in league history. And yes, he even has a winning percentage without Michael Jordan (.600, a 6-4 record in 1994. That’s better than Riley’s winning percentage without Magic Johnson: .495, 47-48).

Jackson wins with what can only be described as “alternative motivational tactics,” which have included everything from a boat ride on the Staten Island Ferry to Bill Murray movies.

More relevantly, he wins because he and his coaching staff--including current Laker assistants Tex Winter, Jim Cleamons and Frank Hamblen--are unmatched when it comes to making mid-series adjustments.

With 82 games around the country compressed into six months, the regular season is more about coercing players to give maximum effort than devising strategies. When it’s five or so games against the same team, tactics come into play--and that’s what Jackson loves about the playoffs.

“I think that’s what it’s all about for coaches,” said Jackson, who will try his hand with the Lakers for the first time after winning six championships in Chicago.

“Obviously it’s real important for teams to be able to absorb that. This is one of the challenges with this group. How much they can make the adjustments. The fortunate thing for me is I had some footage from past playoffs that spoke to that, their inability to make adjustments during the course of a playoff.”

He probably dug up the tape of the Utah Jazz using the pick and roll again and again and again in the 1998 playoffs while the Lakers watched helplessly.

Of less relevance to this group of players, but probably still in the minds of Los Angeles fans, was the way Jackson waxed Mike Dunleavy in the 1991 NBA finals. After the Lakers won Game 1, Jackson switched things by having Scottie Pippen defend Magic Johnson over the whole court. The Bulls sent double teams from under the basket, instead of from the perimeter, because they knew the Laker post players liked to make their moves toward the baseline. Dunleavy never countered, and the Bulls won the next four games.

There have been so many other moves that meant so much through different playoff matchups. Denying Charlotte every other option and forcing Muggsy Bogues to take jump shots in a 1995 series against the Hornets. . . . Making Orlando come up the right side of the court to delay the Magic from getting the ball to Shaquille O’Neal at his favorite spot on the left side in a 1996 conference finals sweep. . . . Switching Jordan’s defensive assignment to have him guard point guard Rod Strickland in a 1997 series against Washington. . . . Changing the method of defending the pick and roll from game to game against Utah. . . .

“All of these things are just gimmicks, if you will,” said Cleamons, a Bull assistant from 1990-1997. “But they’re based on tendencies that you pick up in scouting. ‘This is the way they like to play the game; can they change? Do they have versatility built in within their scheme or within their personality?’ If they don’t, then you try to take advantage of it.”

For all of the hype about Jackson’s Native American and Zen methods--and that famous ride across the New York harbor during a series against the Knicks--it’s the old-fashioned coaching concept of watching game tapes until his eyes get bleary that helps him the most.

“He’s going to find what’s going to work and he’s going to watch the film and study it until it happens,” said Sacramento King reserve Bill Wennington, who played in Chicago for four seasons. “He wants to be prepared. He’s one of the coaches, I think, that is really prepared and really takes the time to go above and beyond.”

“As a player you don’t like that, because you sit in film rooms for hours upon hours. That’s not a lot of fun. He tries to make it fun by picking a theme for each round of the playoffs and incorporating different movies and stuff to try and lighten it a little bit and try to make it more relaxed.”

One year Jackson used “What About Bob?” in which Bill Murray follows his psychiatrist on a vacation and refuses to leave him and his family alone.

And the relevant theme was . . . ?

“I think it was just persistence,” Wennington said. “We just had to be persistent.”

Among other movies Jackson has used are “Pulp Fiction” and “King of Hearts,” a 1967 French film set in World War I about a Scottish soldier who comes to a French village occupied by inmates from a local insane asylum. (The movie is an “Obvious parable for war’s madness,” according to the “Blockbuster Guide to Movies and Videos” CD-ROM).

To Jackson, the movie interludes are “a lively distraction from basketball nonsense.”

And if that doesn’t work, he can always take the team and hop on a boat to Catalina.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com

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Playoff Full-Phil-ment

Phil Jackson’s coaching record in the postseason. The Chicago Bulls advanced to the postseason in each of Jackson’s nine seasons:

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Season Record Result 1989-90 10-6 Lost to Detroit in Eastern Conference finals 1990-91 15-2 Defeated Lakers in NBA finals 1991-92 15-7 Defeated Portland in NBA finals 1992-93 15-4 Defeated Phoenix in NBA finals 1993-94 6-4 Lost to New York in the second round 1994-95 5-5 Lost to Orlando in the second round 1995-96 15-3 Defeated Seattle in NBA finals 1996-97 15-4 Defeated Utah in NBA finals 1997-98 15-6 Defeated Utah in NBA finals Total 111-41 Six NBA championships

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