Caught in a Triangle

Phil Jackson always has this air about him, as if he knows more than you do and he knows he knows more than you do.

We can only wonder what he’s thinking, but my guess is that he has seen the future of the Lakers and has come to the conclusion that it doesn’t involve him.

Jackson’s contract expires after this season, negotiations for an extension were called off in February and there are no rumblings of renewal, his relationship with Kobe Bryant is barely on this side of compatible and owner Jerry Buss sounds infatuated with Bryant and bored with Jackson.

That doesn’t add up to long-term job security.

Or Jackson could decide to walk away on his own. If he wins a championship it will be the 10th of his coaching career, which would break his tie with Red Auerbach and give him the most championships of any NBA coach.

Just one more thing to pile on a Laker plate already loaded with eight potential free agents as they pass through the postseason buffet.

“We’re really excited about these playoffs, and yet, knowing that there’s still a lot to be decided after these playoffs as far as my future goes,” Jackson said after the regular season ended in Portland

He’ll allow himself to look at all the playoff trimmings, to hear the sounds of the crowd and to savor it.

“This could be the last one I ever go through,” he said. “So it’s just kind of fun.”

Jackson, 58, has said that he doesn’t want to coach any team but the Lakers. But I’m sure that could change with some time off and the opening of another intriguing position.

Because it’s clear that he still loves to do this. Injuries deprived him of a full roster of superstars for the entire season -- how can you enjoy driving the Ferrari when the tires keep blowing out? -- yet somehow, through all the roster shifts and mood swings that have defined this season, he kept the same upbeat outlook, the same unflappable demeanor, the same wry sense of humor.

Of course there are always extra issues here, because these are the Lakers, and they seem intent on outdoing any story line the town’s best screenwriters could crank out.

So on top of everything else Jackson is dating the team’s executive vice president of business operations, who happens to be the owner’s daughter.

When Jeanie Buss and Jackson began their relationship during the 1999-2000 season, she knew the day might come when her boyfriend and her team could be at odds and she would be caught in the middle.

“And here I am, right in the middle, just like what I feared,” she said. “But I think Phil is a professional, my dad is a great owner of a team. I don’t think it’s been a distraction, or as bad as it could have been. There’s so many other distractions. It’s like a little mini-distraction in a world of distractions.”

We know of at least one benefit to the relationship: Jeanie was the one who insisted that Jackson see a doctor when he complained of chest pains last year, and it turned out he had an artery that was almost completely blocked and needed to be cleared right away.

But looking back, she wonders if her personal life might have been a barrier to communication, that words might have gone unsaid between Jerry Buss and Jackson because of her presence.

“You look at somebody like Phil, I don’t think people think he needs to hear that he does a good job,” Jeanie Buss said. “Because it’s like, ‘He’s self-actualized and he doesn’t need any of it.’ But I still think that he’s an employee and it’s important for him to be told he does a good job. And I don’t know if there was ever that connection made between the two of them. And I don’t know if it was because I was in the middle that they didn’t. [They thought] everything was understood through me.”

Buss says that she is “optimistic” that a new contract can be reached between Jackson and the Lakers. She’s aware that Jackson went through his final two championship seasons in Chicago without a new contract in place. That doesn’t do anything for her.

“This is all new for me,” she said. “I, of course, being a woman, want to know what the future is. And it’s not in my control. So I just have to accept things will hopefully work out.”

Unlike personal relationships, every professional sports relationship has to end eventually. Pat Riley once said that players start to tune out a coach after five years -- right where Jackson is now. Riley probably peaked with the Lakers in 1985, his fifth year as their coach. By his seventh and eighth seasons they had grown tired of him, feeling put on the spot by his guarantee of back-to-back championships in 1987 and worn down by his nonstop intensity.

Jackson spent nine years in Chicago, but his two three-peat teams were almost entirely different groups. The only players involved in both runs were Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen -- and it’s possible that the best thing that happened to the Bulls was Jordan’s 1 1/2-year retirement in between. That gave Jordan a break from Jackson, and caused Pippen to go from being jealous of Jordan to appreciative of him.

Perhaps the Lakers would have benefited in the long term if Bryant had taken this season off to concentrate on his legal battle in Colorado. It would have cost them a shot at the championship this year, but it might have allowed Bryant to restore the Phil-Shaq-Kobe triumvirate at a later date, presuming he is not convicted of his felony sexual-assault charge.

Instead, these last seven months pushed the relationship between Bryant and Jackson to the brink. Bryant stated for the record that he didn’t like Jackson as a person, and became openly defiant of him in practice and in the locker room.

Jackson, aware of the pressure Bryant felt because of the court case, always refrained from criticism in his public comments about him. But in the final weeks, as big games approached and Bryant’s play swung from overshooting to mysterious undershooting and back, Jackson finally started to call upon Bryant to play team ball. Sometimes in blunt terms.

Listening to Jackson as he kept a steady hand on the helm with a healthy dose of humor during last week’s Kobe storm, it dawned on me that this season would have been even more messed up with any coach but Jackson.

How many coaches could have kept their wits amid all the drama? How many could absorb the curse-outs from superstars without feeling the need to lash out in retaliation?

When Houston’s Steve Francis discussed his intense coach, Jeff Van Gundy, recently, he said: “Everybody is pretty much on edge and anxious, playing not to make a mistake.”

That’s one element that doesn’t come into play with the Lakers.

Perhaps we’ll find out if Byron Scott or anyone else can do it as well next season, because it appears a Jackson-free life will be part of the Lakers’ pitch to retain Bryant -- in case $140 million isn’t enough to sway him.

For now, Jackson is concentrating on the Lakers. Something kicks in with him at the start of the playoffs. He’s more in tune. A simple question about matchups can prompt him to launch into an extended analysis.

“You can tell as a player when Phil is starting to pick up his intensity,” Laker guard Derek Fisher said. “It’s not something he does necessarily for himself. I think it’s something that he tries to do to make sure that we understand how important it is to really take that type of approach with every game in the playoffs.

“I think he’s really stayed focused on the task at hand. Even with that stuff, I think what he’s trying to do is understand that today is what’s important. Don’t worry about last week or next week or what’s supposed to happen or what could happen in the summer.”

Then again, why worry about it if you already know the outcome?

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande go to latimes.com/adande.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Those Championship Seasons

Career coaching record of Phil Jackson (NBA title-winning seasons in gray):

REGULAR SEASON & PLAYOFFS

*--* SEASON TEAM WON LOST PCT WON LOST PCT 1989-90 Chicago 55 27 671 10 6 625 1990-91 Chicago 61 21 744 15 2 882 1991-92 Chicago 67 15 817 15 7 682 1992-93 Chicago 57 25 695 15 4 789 1993-94 Chicago 55 27 671 6 4 600 1994-95 Chicago 47 35 573 5 5 500 1995-96 Chicago 72 10 878 15 3 833 1996-97 Chicago 69 13 841 15 4 789 1997-98 Chicago 62 20 756 15 6 714 1999-00 LAKERS 67 15 817 15 8 652 2000-01 LAKERS 56 26 683 15 1 938 2001-02 LAKERS 58 24 707 15 4 789 2002-03 LAKERS 50 32 610 6 6 500 2003-04 LAKERS 56 26 683 1 0 1.000 TOTALS 832 316 725 163 60 731

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