Phil Jackson and L.A., together a-Zen
Life is an ongoing cycle of rebirth and death. Buddhists preach that, Laker fans have lived that, and perhaps Phil Jackson is back as the purple-and-gold’s head coach to make sure Los Angeles got the point.
The Zen master’s return raises all sorts of urgent philosophical questions: Which part of the cycle exactly is he here for? A triumphant third act to relieve the city of its Lakers-not-in-the-playoffs misery? Or as a loud and furious, but ultimately irrelevant, footnote that will drop fans down to the next level of Kobe hell?
We won’t know the answers until next season, but we can state this with some certainty: He may have been born in North Dakota and enjoy the solitude of Montana, but Phil Jackson was born to coach in Los Angeles.
Let’s start with the fashion statement made at a press conference earlier this week -- an expensive suit with a T-shirt, beads and sandals. Isn’t Los Angeles the perfect city for an awkward, gangly kid from the Midwest to find himself and the right clothes?
“Most cities are very set in their fashions. You have to dress a certain way,” said Abi Ferrin, a 27-year-old L.A. fashion designer. “Phil is one of those people who has evolved in L.A. He is who he is. He’s not pretending to be anyone else. If you want to wear sandals and socks, you can go for it here.”
Brahmin and bohemian all at once. Other coaches may look like tired businessmen, dressed in rumpled off-the-rack suits. But not our Phil.
On the other hand, Tanya Taitt, manager of the Casual Male Big & Tall store in Westwood, would cast Jackson out of the ‘70s Zen garden and into L.A. circa 2005. Her advice? Wear a suit -- the whole thing.
“He looks good in a suit,” she said.
But Jackson’s fashion statement didn’t faze her too much. “I’ve seen a lot worse than Phil looked the other day. Hawaiian shirts. How about short socks and sandals?”
And maybe that’s the point. What other city could handle Phil, his funky fashion choices, his odd musings, and his stranger-than-Hollywood story?
“Where else would you fire the coach [while] he’s dating the owner’s daughter?” said Jim Heaney, 33, of Huntington Beach at Staples Center while purchasing season tickets. “It’s a movie. It’s perfect for L.A.”
Talk about story arcs. The first Los Angeles Lakers coach in history to three-peat is poised for further greatness after assembling a true “Dream Team,” then watches the season disintegrate amid in-fighting, monster egos, and a star player -- whom he later said was “uncoachable” -- on trial for rape. Then there’s the girl. The aging coach with a heart condition is shacking up with the owner’s daughter, a team executive who once posed for Playboy magazine.
“As dramatic narrative it’s beautiful. It’s classic Hollywood,” said Richard Walter, a UCLA professor of screenwriting. “But if a student made this up in my class, I’d flunk them.”
The story has so many threads, Walter would cut out some of the subplots. The father-son dynamic with Kobe? The possible even more dramatic return of his other son, Shaq?
“There’s enough for a miniseries here,” laughed Walter. “You’ve got too many disparate elements. You have to focus the story. Otherwise you might as well have aliens land next to the Staples Center.”
Certainly, the announcement of Jackson’s jubilant return was a publicist’s dream. It knocked the other Jackson off the front pages and the 59-year-old coach didn’t have to dance on Oprah’s couch or break up with Jennifer Aniston to do it. Perhaps there was an element of revenge in the announcement’s timing as well -- the hoopla it created overshadowed Tuesday night’s Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and the champion Detroit Pistons.
Like so many tales in Hollywood, this was a movie that almost didn’t make it to the audience. NBA teams in Cleveland, Sacramento, even New York, were courting Jackson, one of the most successful coaches of all time, over the past year. But it didn’t take a philosophy major to figure out that one step in a cow pie in a cow town, one outing in sandals in Central Park snow or one look around Cleveland, and Phil would find a way to come back to L.A.
Really, he had to come back to L.A. Like Billy Martin in New York, Jackson through his trials and tribulations is forever tied to this city. It’s his destiny. After all, this is a guy who explains his beads are to help his heart condition.
“Phil fits here,” said Todd Boyd, a USC professor of critical studies who’s written about the NBA. “L.A. is more open and tolerant and everybody has got their own thing. That kind of diversity is what draws people here. His quasi-spiritual guru image as a coach is perfect for L.A. I can’t imagine the fans of the Utah Jazz would be receptive of such a thing.”
“I think he did it because of the fans,” said Emmanuel Morales, 19, of Los Angeles. “He’s a great coach. L.A. needs him, to be honest. First of all, when he came before, the Lakers won three championships.”
Said Jake Bell, 29, a Lakers fan visiting from Tennessee: “I love it.... I had a feeling even after he left he’d be back.”
How might the Jackson sequel in L.A. end? It depends who is behind the picture.
A Disney finish would have Kobe patching things up with Shaq at a Palm Desert day spa, and wind up hoisting Phil on their shoulders to cut down the nets at the NBA Finals.
A Quentin Tarantino take -- say “Kill Phil Vol. 2” -- has everybody losing a limb.
But the most likely finale steals from the Roman Polanski classic “Chinatown.” The Lakers shoot themselves in the foot, with the last words spoken to Jackson being, “Forget it, Zen master, it’s L.A.”