Jackson Can Show Mastery Once and for All

With the face of a quirky grandfather and the gait of a wounded deer, he will clop onto the Staples Center floor tonight as the hottest coach in postseason history and the most accomplished coach of his era.

Yet some say he’s not even the best coach in the gym.

He has jazzed Jordan, pushed Pippen, straightened Shaq, corralled Kobe.

Yet he is lately best known for bussing Jeanie.

With the pockets of those faded jeans already bulging with seven championship diamonds, Phil Jackson has much more at stake this week than jewelry.

This is not about a ring, but a reputation.

These NBA Finals between his Lakers and the Philadelphia 76ers, while seemingly the stuff of exclamation points, is really about a question.

Once and for all.

Is Phil Jackson lucky or good?

Is he a great coach, or has he simply coached great players?

It is a question that has wafted around him like incense--that is incense, right, PJ?--since he joined Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in 1989 and won his first NBA championship the next season.

Is Phil Jackson driving this train, or simply flashing peace signs out a passenger window?

Some say this question, much like the one about whether a patch of hair under a lower lip actually gives an old hippie more “soul,” will never be answered.

I say it is answered beginning tonight.

This is a seven-game series that could turn Jackson’s most difficult season into his greatest, or most grotesque.

If the Lakers sweep the 76ers as expected to become the first NBA team to go unbeaten in the postseason, who can argue that he has pulled off the best pressure coaching job in history?

If the Lakers win the championship by any margin, can anyone ignore how he defied gravity to halt an impending league-shaking collision between its two brightest stars?

Think of how this same core group looked two years ago when Jackson stepped into their galactic rubble. Think of how they look now.

Can anyone argue with Ron Harper?

“These guys were here before Phil got here, and they were not doing a damn thing,” Harper said. “Now, they’re doing all kinds of damn things.”

Of course, if the 76ers win the series from the Lakers in the biggest upset since Shaq called Kobe his idol, well, the one Phil Jackson question is replaced by other questions.

Why doesn’t he get off the bench more? Why doesn’t he yell more? Why doesn’t he coach more?

And, oh, yeah, why isn’t he more like Larry Brown?

That’s the other boss in the arena tonight, the one that many people think may be the best in basketball.

You could call them peers except, well, Jackson does roofs and Brown does basements.

Said Jackson: “My expertise is probably taking teams to the next level.”

Said Brown: “I have only gotten jobs if nobody wanted it and they were not real successful.”

While there is more glamour in making great teams better, there is more nobility in making bad teams good. This makes Brown the favorite of the gym rats who call the talk shows and push the agenda.

While Jackson enjoyed Air Jordan, Brown once coached Chocolate Thunder.

Jackson works for Jerry Buss, while Brown once worked for Donald Sterling.

Brown is making his first NBA Finals appearance after 18 seasons, while Jackson required only two. Yet many folks think Brown is a better coach because during those 18 seasons with various collections of losers, he produced 12 winners.

Brown, understandably, is one of those folks.

At various points during the last two years, he has wondered out loud whether Jackson would succeed with a team like Vancouver, and questioned whether the coach ever uncrosses his legs.

On Tuesday, he said some of that stuff was just kidding. But this wasn’t:

Twenty years ago, when Brown became coach of the New Jersey Nets, he did not retain an eager young assistant named Phil Jackson.

You probably already know this, considering Jackson has publicly mentioned it, oh, about 200 times in the last two days.

“Well, obviously I was dumb,” Brown said Tuesday, laughing. “But, you know, I only lasted two years there. He probably would have been the head coach of New Jersey and had a terrible career.”

Even in the joke, there was a jab. Phil Jackson can coach the Bulls and Lakers, but not the Nets?

Even Red Auerbach, whose record of nine championships will be flattened at Jackson’s current pace, piled on earlier this week.

Speaking of Jackson’s effect on the Laker success, Auerbach told The Times’ Tim Brown: “What he had to do with it, we’ll never know.”

This could be the series where those jabs end for good.

Or the series that ensures they will continue forever.

“I think Phil actually enjoys pretending he doesn’t do anything,” said Steve Kerr, one of Jackson’s former favorites. “He likes to mock coaches who jump up and scream and call every play and orchestrate the whole thing. He loves making fun of that NBA stereotype.”

Jackson initially did not want to proffer a defense of his career Tuesday, but when pushed, he noted that basketball is not all about timeouts and tantrums.

“It’s convincing the players they have to play together,” he said, later adding, “The other thing is the intensity of the team, to play with the preparedness too, so that they are not confused and quick to the ball and they are active around the basketball.”

Jackson certainly does all that. He may not scream or hug or sweat, but he convinces.

And coaching is still about convincing, right?

Phil Jackson has done as much with his players.

This is the week he leaps off the bench and hops down the sidelines and screams at the rest of us.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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NBA Know-How

Comparing Laker Coach Phil Jackson’s NBA coaching career with that of Philadelphia’s Larry Brown:

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JACKSON and BROWN 7 Titles 0 668 Wins 788 .741 Winning % .563 137 Playoff wins 60 .737 Playoff winning % .504 11 Seasons 18 11 Winning seasons 15 1 Coach of the year 1 2 Teams 6

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