Letting Jackson Leave Would Be a Big Mistake

I don’t know about you, but I don’t understand this whole business about Phil Jackson maybe not returning to coach the Lakers, or Jerry Buss’ decision to possibly let him go.

If I had to hire a coach and pay him more than $6 million a year, I’d love the opportunity to write that check out to my future son-in-law. Anything to get him out of frozen foods, if you know what I mean.

But something weird is happening in Lakerland, weirder than the weird we have become accustomed to accepting with crybabies the likes of Gary Payton, Karl Malone, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.

OK, so maybe not as weird as pleading “not guilty” to sexual assault early in the afternoon and then hours later putting on a crowd-pleasing show on the basketball court, but still strange.

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JACKSON WALKED into Tuesday night’s pregame news conference appearing depressed, as if someone had told him he would have to shave his soul patch.

Since Sunday, when I pointed out the Lakers still have O’Neal & Bryant & Jackson, I’ve had the Lakers pegged to eliminate the San Antonio Spurs in Game 6 here, and I’d be surprised now to learn Jackson has stopped listening to me after getting him this far in his run with the Lakers.

The daughter who can’t get a date will get the chance to attend the sixth game with a male companion, and you never know.

But Jackson showed up Tuesday like a man who knew he might disappoint me and the daughter who can’t get a date. A writer from the Chicago Tribune, who had covered Chief Sitting Bull for years, said Jackson appeared “subdued.”

The Lakers were an hour and a half away from their biggest game of the season, but unless Jackson started hitting the Red Bull heavy -- you had to wonder about that pep talk he was going to give the players before the game.

He offered only one-word answers to most questions poised at the news gathering until the session turned to his health. Everyone likes talking about themselves, so he became more expansive, said his health was fine and would not factor into his decision to keep coaching.

So why wouldn’t Jackson want to keep coaching the likes of Shaq, the greatest center in the game today, and get paid more than $6 million to do it?

Times’ Laker beat reporter Tim Brown learned Jackson had addressed the team at the morning shoot-around to clarify his earlier remarks to the team that had left some players believing he has already decided to retire. He told them that decision hasn’t been made, so now they’re as confused as the rest of us.

Jackson is the NBA’s best all-time coach, and you could argue it’s as important to see him sitting there in his usual spot doing nothing as it is finding Jack Nicholson where he belongs. He’s clearly the best there is at doing nothing, and you just can’t find people out there in the basketball world who know how to do that.

All this talk about the outdated triangle, Payton’s desire to play for someone who will let him play and Bryant’s inability to warm to Jackson are ridiculous. Bryant’s problem is with Shaq, and Shaq isn’t going anywhere, and Buss has made it clear he intends to do whatever he can financially to make sure Bryant goes nowhere. And who cares what Payton wants?

That’s why I don’t understand why there is any mystery surrounding Jackson’s future, which leads me to believe there’s something fishy going on here.

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NO MYSTERY surrounding Bryant’s basketball skills other than the fact that it seems to irritate most of the L.A. media, who seem hell-bent on running him out of town. Bryant’s Tuesday night performance here in the entertainment capital is why Buss can charge almost anything he wants for tickets.

And as much as Michael Jordan meant to Jackson’s career, I can’t imagine Jackson passing on the chance to ride a maturing Bryant in the next few years.

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FINISHED THE day waiting to talk to Shaq after starting it with a round of golf with jockey Alex Solis. The long and the short of it is, if I had everything I owned riding on whether Shaq made a free throw or Solis a putt, I’d like the opportunity to step to the microphone and tell everyone, “I consider myself the unluckiest man to have ever lived.”

Solis claimed victory in our golf match, but he had 17 clubs in his bag, three over the legal limit, and I would have called him on it, but with everything he had in that bag, I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t go to the whip.

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THEY TOLD me Posh was in attendance at the Laker game. No kidding, just look at the folks sitting at courtside. Then someone explained Posh is one of the Spice Girls and married to David Beckham. Then they had to explain to me who Beckham was.

Beckham is in Spain, I was told, playing soccer and fending off rumors that he’s had a couple of flings. Posh was at the Laker game with the guy who came up with the idea for “American Idol.” It was getting very complicated.

Muhammad Ali was also at the game. I didn’t have to ask any questions.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes via my answering machine from Robert Gunther:

“I was reading your article on Ernie Banks, and you should be so lucky to even know the man, OK. You say you’re from Chicago -- you’re not a true Cub fan. How can you downgrade this man? You are not a true Cub fan. And I really don’t like what you said in your article. You should be disowned and thrown out of the business. You have no right telling us what you think about Mr. Cub.”

Mr. Cub struck out 1,236 times in his career, and I’m the one who let you down?

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.