Jackson Gave the Lakers Their Swagger

It should have been obvious at the time, but it took four years, a replay and a brief conversation to fully appreciate what Phil Jackson meant to the Lakers from the very first season.

They showed Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference finals on NBA TV a couple of weeks ago. Here were the Lakers, down by 15 points to the Portland Trail Blazers early in the fourth quarter, the party about to end before it had even started.

They weren’t champions yet, had no collective reservoir of triumphs to draw from when things went bad. They didn’t have that we’ve-been-here-before-so-we-can-do-this knowledge that led them past a superior Sacramento King team in the conference finals two years later. If anything, they had a collection of failures, including sweeps administered by Utah and San Antonio the two previous seasons

Despite all that, those 2000 Lakers had confident looks on their faces. They had faith, belief without evidence, as if they knew they were about to mount a comeback for the ages.

I tossed that observation at Rick Fox the day after watching the replay, and he smiled as he nodded in agreement.

“That came from Phil,” Fox said.

Of course the Lakers came back, won, and went on to the first of three consecutive championships.

Phil Jackson always came out on top. He infused the Lakers with that same confidence. After so many nights when Jackson let them play on through their own struggles instead of calling timeout, the Lakers realized that they usually came out on top as well.

You could even talk trash and crank out the bulletin-board material along the way. Jackson likened the Trail Blazers to a bunch of “jackals” for the way they had celebrated a victory earlier in the series, and before that he described the citizens of our state capital as “redneck” and “semi-civilized.” This was all new for Fox. He liked it, and adopted it himself.

Jackson brought that confidence -- and yes, arrogance -- to the Lakers. He chose to join them, right? Didn’t that mean they had to be good if he selected this job from all the alternatives, including a cushy life of leaving the Montana ranch only to make lucrative corporate speaking gigs?

And who was he to think he could succeed where Del Harris and Kurt Rambis had failed? Why, Phil Jackson, of course. The man who won six championships with the Chicago Bulls. The Zen Master.

Shaquille O’Neal had gone upstairs to demand an A-list coach, and the Lakers got one. Now there were no more excuses for this group. And no more options, either.

As soon as Jackson signed that five-year, $30-million contract in 1999, it immediately removed the coach’s firing as a possibility whenever things went bad for the next four years. No way Jerry Buss was going to keep shelling out that type of money to a guy who wasn’t around.

Some people say Jackson won nine championships because he was around great talent.

Name one coach with multiple championships who wasn’t.

Red Auerbach had Bill Russell. Russell was such a great player that he even won a championship for himself as a coach.

Only three coaches won championships from 1991-2003: Jackson, Gregg Popovich and Rudy Tomjanovich. Each did it with players who have most-valuable-player trophies on their shelves.

Larry Brown made his first trip to the Finals on the back of a reigning MVP, Allen Iverson, and this year’s defense-oriented Pistons had a former defensive player of the year in Ben Wallace.

Winning with great talent and the accompanying great egos is easier said than done.

Somewhere in those Buddhist readings, Jackson learned that, at times, the best way to gain control is to yield control. Giving the team over to the players led to victories. Victories added to his stature. The stature gave him even more power when he chose to wield it.

But power is power only if others acknowledge it. The people can elect a president; their representatives can impeach him too.

With a chance to opt out of his contract after this season, Kobe Bryant wanted to test his own power. He challenged Jackson in practice, by either showing up when he wanted or cursing out the coach.

When the Lakers abruptly cut off contract-extension talks with Jackson in February, Jackson felt blindsided and took it as a sign he would be sacrificed to appease Bryant, the first step toward Friday’s announcement that Jackson and the Lakers had parted ways.

With rebellion from below and no backing from above, Jackson was a lame duck. When he candidly discussed Bryant’s need to conform to the offense and play with his teammates right before the playoffs, it came off more as a plea than a demand.

Through it all, amid Bryant’s round-trip game-day flights and the team’s internal fights, Jackson maintained his poise and humor.

But he might have lost some of his fighting spirit. In the latter part of the season he frequently canceled practices. Some of the lineups he sent into action right through the very last game of the Finals suggested he was waving a white flag. Some players wondered whether he still cared.

Jackson could have asked them the same thing. He came close to doing that when, after dropping the first two games of the conference semifinals to the Spurs, he reminded them how tenuous and fleeting this group’s time together was. It was his last great move as the Lakers’ coach. They responded to their pending doom and a couple of strategic shifts by beating the Spurs four consecutive times.

By the NBA Finals, he had only one card left, an early turn to Luke Walton that saved Game 2.

Ultimately, the Detroit Pistons looked more athletic than the Lakers and were better prepared by Larry Brown. Brown took the Pistons to the next level. If you’re going to fire the reigning coach of the year who took his team to the conference finals, as the Pistons did with Rick Carlisle last year, you’d better get a coach of Brown’s caliber who can deliver the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

That’s the challenge the Lakers face now, trying to find a way to match the Detroit Pistons.

We don’t know what the future will bring to Lakerland, but we know how to sum up the five years that just ended: The Lakers were better for having Phil Jackson.

*

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