Some of Phil’s Words Lack a Sense of Order

When I heard that Phil Jackson had told the media they should go to Iraq, I marveled once again at the Zen Master’s self-control, knowing what he really meant.

The media, of course, have become the Lakers’ problem.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no problem with sending sports columnist Bill Plaschke to Iraq, but I can see where Jackson is going with this media harangue. If the Lakers stumble this season, it will be because the media became too big of a distraction to overcome.

“It’s something I’d like to address,” Jackson said Friday on Media Day. “We have a world that’s filled with a lot of things. People are dying in Baghdad and Iraq and situations around the world are much more disastrous and dangerous and the focus of the media to spend so much energy [on Kobe Bryant] just throws me into a loop sometimes.”

Sounds like someone who needs to relax and spend some time in the hot tub with Jeanie, because the Lakers haven’t even played a game that means anything yet, and the way these guys approach the regular season they won’t be playing one of those kinds of games anyway until some time in April.

Jackson went on to say, “There are a lot of things politically that we could talk about, there are issues that could be dealt with and energy could be spent on that, rather than celebrity chasing that is really crazy, really insane.”

Unfortunately, based on my experience with the Lakers and trying to chase down their players in the limited time that we’re given, I’d hate to waste those precious moments with Devean George chatting about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s transition team.

“And I think we’ve got to kind of shape it up in this country ... ,” Jackson continued, and I hate to think what he might do to straighten it out.

You see, Jackson talking about anything but basketball is probably not a good idea. Remember that Kobe fiasco a couple of years ago when Jackson suggested to a Chicago columnist that maybe Kobe had thrown high school games so he could make the big shot to win them?

Well, it was a two-part series, and in Part 2, which received little attention because of the Kobe controversy, Jackson was talking about discipline and former Indiana coach Bobby Knight and some things politically that were best unsaid. He told the Chicago Sun-Times columnist in a story published March 22, 2001, “The point is, people want decisions made by somebody else.... This is why people like Bobby Knight.... The discipline someone like that brings, brings a sense of order. Mussolini and Hitler brought that sense of order. It was what the people needed at the time.”

When I read that two years ago, I called Jackson and we talked about it, and he felt I was infringing on his freedom of speech for telling him that was a pretty stupid thing to say. I think I put it this way: “Is there a lightbulb in that head of yours? Do you know how some people might react to someone saying something like that?”

We talked some more, I told him I thought he’d just apologize for what he said and then I wouldn’t make mention of it in the newspaper, but instead he began giving me a history lesson. I reminded him he’s only a basketball coach, and there are still a lot of people mourning the loss of folks who probably really didn’t need Mussolini and Hitler in their life.

At the end of our conversation he said he wasn’t sure he mentioned Hitler’s name. I called the guy who wrote the story and he remembered Jackson saying Hitler’s name -- a case of he said, he said, I guess -- so you can see what might happen if the sportswriters covering the Lakers were to start talking with Jackson on a regular basis about some of the current political issues.

Maybe the coach should just stick to what he knows best, and that’s basketball, or the media might have one more story to chase.

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I DO not believe Dodger General Manager Dan Evans should be fired. Someone is going to have to fetch coffee and answer the telephone so Billy Ego, ah, Billy Beane has the time to assemble a roster of players who can hit.

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SO FAR the only question about prospective Dodger owner Frank McCourt is his financial wherewithal, which is a pretty significant question. News Corp., of course, had all the money in the world, but wanted the payroll cut.

A new tightwad owner suggests more problems on the field, and when you take into consideration this guy’s background as a land developer, you have to wonder if McCourt will be more interested in what happens off the field, which might include building a new baseball stadium.

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WHEN USC quarterback John David Booty squawked earlier about making a cameo appearance and maybe throwing away a redshirt year, I was worried he was telling us he isn’t going to be very good. Don’t most really good college football players leave a year early from school these days?

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NORTHERN ILLINOIS won again, is now 6-0 and USC appears to be running from the Huskies. Both USC and NIU are shy a game next season with Sept. 11 remaining an open date. A USC spokesman said the school is working on another deal, without being any more specific. Hard to root for a bunch of chickens, but I’m still doing my best.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Steve Jackson:

“You make fun of Frank Lyons [TVG’s horse racing analyst], but on his worst day he’s still going to forget more than you know. I can’t believe you had the nerve to call him, ‘Lyons the Loser,’ you loser.”

After using his picks to bet on the horses all I had left was nerve.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com.