This Time, Jackson Can’t Find Way to Bring Out the Greatness

The zen has been zapped. The triangle has been trashed. The wise one cannot be heard above the wisenheimers.

From the looks of things here on skidding row, the heir to Red Auerbach is being outcoached by Snowy White Auerbach, and what a way to go.

If Coach Phil Jackson’s brilliant five-year sprint with the Lakers is indeed ending, it is doing so with unseemly confusion and uncomfortable anger.

As the Lakers were losing a second consecutive second-round playoff game to the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday, the monument that is Jackson was losing a couple of more bricks.

It was Spurs 95, Lakers 85, Jackson’s aura less than zero.

Jackson could be leaving the team this summer, pushed away by an unsatisfactory contract offer and owner Jerry Buss’ declaration that he would support Kobe Bryant in their personality clash.

If that is the case, then his last days are a shame and a sham.

More demeaning than the notion that the Lakers’ four future Hall of Famers have yet to even compete with San Antonio is the fact that these Lakers cannot seem to play for a future Hall of Fame coach.

Nine championships, and they don’t listen.

Michael Jordan’s mentor, and they’re not buying.

Five minutes left in the third quarter Wednesday, and did you see what happened?

Karl Malone had just made a bad pass, Tim Duncan sneaked behind everyone for a dunk, and Jackson angrily called a timeout. He was yelling at all the Lakers as they came to the bench. He was yelling at Malone once they arrived. Malone was yelling back.

It was heated, it was passionate, it was the sort of rare anger from Jackson that used to inspire his teams.

Did you see what happened next? They returned to the floor, Bryant threw up an airball, and they were hit with a 24-second clock violation.

That must have been some pep talk.

It was typical of an evening where the biggest bricks were not free throw attempts but Jackson’s coaching attempts, clanking loudly off those hardened Laker egos.

“We had some miscommunications tonight, and some of that was my fault,” Jackson said.

Some of it, certainly. At times, it indeed seems as if nobody has grown sicker of this madly careening season than the man whose knuckles have grown pale while clutching the wheel.

But much of it also lies with the players, whose general selfishness may have finally penetrated the most bulletproof coach of all.

Remember the old knock? Jackson is a great coach because it’s easy to coach great players?

May that forever rest in peace.

He was a success in past years because he was able to extract that greatness. He is clearly an out-of-sorts coach this year because he cannot.

He should not be remembered this way, but he may not have a choice.

“This has been typical of the year, this miscommunication as a team,” Malone said. “Maybe all of us are stubborn.”

Or something like that.

It started Wednesday with the results of Jackson’s brainstorm to fly the team home Sunday after Game 1, returning here Tuesday night.

The players weren’t thrilled with the travel, and guess what? They committed three turnovers in their first seven possessions and the early rout was on.

It continued Wednesday with a repeated lack of adjustments made by veterans who just didn’t get it.

On one possession, Tony Parker beat Gary Payton and Bryant so badly on a back-door layup, the two men just stared at each other in disgust.

On another possession, Bruce Bowen was left so wide open for a three-pointer that he had time to twirl the ball on his hands like a Globetrotter before throwing it in the net.

This time of year, Jackson’s teams have always shown composure. Was anything less composed than Malone’s foolish bump of Bowen at the end of the third quarter, leading to a technical foul that allowed the Spurs to get a fourth-quarter jump?

Yeah, Jackson yelled at him then too. “I was irritated at that,” acknowledged Jackson. “I was in Karl’s face about it.”

This time of year, Jackson has always been able to reach Bryant. But was anything more disconnected than the timeout, early in the fourth quarter, when Jackson sat on the bench and just stared at his star?

Can anybody ever remember the last time Jackson sat during a timeout, period?

Yeah, Bryant was at his most irritating, bringing the team back within six points and five assists in the third quarter, then spacing out in the fourth by holding the ball too long and trying too hard to be the hero.

“We have some space out there where we can do what we want,” Jackson said. “Somehow we’re losing sight of how to get that accomplished.”

This impaired vision was most unsettling in the final stages of the fourth quarter, when, for the second consecutive game, Gregg Popovich’s Spurs were a machine and the Lakers were a mess.

No apparent plays. No obvious plan. A bunch of guys taking turns playing one-on-one, either shooting too quick or passing too late. For one of the first times in a playoff series in more than a decade, a Phil Jackson team looks poorly coached.

As he said, some of it is certainly his fault. For $6 million a year, there must be some accountability.

But as this noxious mix of players has shown, is there anybody out there who could coach them?

We’ll probably never know. And one can hardly blame us for not wanting to stick around to find out.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. For previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.