Jeanie Buss, his girlfriend, will be there, and so will ex-wife June.
His kids and their significant others will be there, along with his grandkids, another group of 13. His former teammate and roommate, Bill Bradley, will introduce him along with his longtime coach and friend, Tex Winter.
The whole group will be something of his own personal basketball congregation, which perhaps is the appropriate metaphor for Phil Jackson’s induction Friday into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
“Basketball has been an adventure,” Jackson ruminated the other day after his summer haircut as he prepared for the trip east. “My basketball life, like me, became more family and togetherness, the long nights in North Dakota driving 200 miles on icy, two-lane roads to play basketball, the CBA [coaching and driving the van], coaching in Puerto Rico summers, it all gave me the background and the endurance to stick with it with great support from my family.
“It was a team. You took one of us, you took us all [with four children]. That was the most special thing (Jackson will read a poem by son Ben at his induction about the minor-league coaching times). It was emblematic of what I wanted to be known as being a coach. Teaching a team philosophy.
“I definitely didn’t think I’d be here. I tried to get out many times. I always hoped I’d have a higher calling. My mother wanted me to be a minister. … I always told my mother, ‘I may not have a congregation, but I have 12 disciples.’ With the rosters now at 15, I can’t use that anymore.”
But that concept stands as testament to one of the most remarkable and successful coaching careers in professional basketball history.
Jackson will be the first Bulls player, coach or executive to be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Michael Jordan, who retired after the 2002-03 season, and Scottie Pippen (’03-04) figure to follow soon as they become eligible after five years out of the game. Jackson remains coach of the Lakers but became eligible this year after 25 years of coaching.
His 2007 class will include the 1966 NCAA tournament champion from Texas Western, North Carolina coach Roy Williams, WNBA coach Van Chancellor, the late referee Mendy Rudolph and international coaches Pedro Ferrandiz and Mirko Novosel.
But Jackson clearly is the lead figure after winning six NBA championships with the Bulls between 1991 and 1998 and three more with the Lakers. Jackson also was part of NBA champions as a Knicks player in 1970 and 1973.
He is the all-time NBA leader in winning percentage in the regular season and playoffs, and in the Bulls’ run of the 1990s coached perhaps the last dynasty in U.S. team sports.
Jackson knows he has had the good fortune to get the teams and players he has coached, but it’s also not so easy to succeed when you are supposed to. Jackson’s teams did, generally embodying the characteristics of good team play, hard work and commitment, always rallying around their spiritual leader, Jackson.
“I was fortunate,” Jackson said. “There probably were more qualified people. … I was given a chance — though I was not that young (44 when he took over the Bulls in 1989) — to coach a team ready to win a championship. I was relatively inexperienced as an NBA coach, but I felt experienced in those situations. I’d had playoff success my whole basketball life. I remember Jerry Krause asking me to wear my [Knicks] championship ring. He felt it would show that young Bulls team what we were going for.
“I thought that team was my calling. It seemed natural with Michael to incorporate team play with that one-man superstar. Michael recognized it.”
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Though one of the most celebrated and successful coaches of the last two decades, the trip to the Hall of Fame for Jackson seemed unlikely for a counterculture rebel of the 1970s who mostly was ignored by the NBA until Krause took a chance on him as a Bulls assistant in 1987.
Often chided for his fondness for Eastern religions and Zen, a smoldering competitiveness continued to drive Jackson to where opponents left shaking their heads in despair and defeat.
He credits the acquisition of Bill Cartwright as the key to filling out the Bulls’ first championship group.
“I lobbied for the trade,” Jackson said. “But it also gave Krause confidence I knew what to do with personnel and gave him confidence in me to hire me as coach [when Doug Collins was fired].
“Then getting [Dennis] Rodman when Orlando became a power in our conference and changing our style of play by moving Ron Harper to point guard were changes that led to the best record ever in the NBA,” Jackson said of the 72-10 team in 1995-96. “That was the best Bulls team, but the 1991-92 team (67 wins) was deeper with athletic talent. I felt it was time to go [after 1997-98]. If Michael and Scottie wanted to stay, we probably could have eked out one more title and I would have stayed, but the wheels were kind of falling off that team.
“The Lakers were another big windfall. Del Harris is a solid coach with a great reputation, but he left and there was an opening. It just seemed preordained, meant to happen.”
Now Jackson isn’t quite sure again.
He is entering the final season of his three-year $30 million contract with the Lakers. But after a second hip surgery, he still limps and uses a cane. He has been offered an extension but says he declined to sign it.
“It has been a long recuperation,” said Jackson, who turns 62 later this month. “If I can’t be active, aggressive and inspiring as a coach and doing things on the floor with the players, making the team play the kind of game I want it to play. … I have to look at that on whether to keep going.”
There’s also Kobe Bryant’s uncertainty about returning to the Lakers and Jackson admitting there is “mending” to do between Bryant and his teammates. Could this be Jackson’s last season?
If it is, it’s been quite a run.
“It’s great to have a good team and good fortune,” Jackson said. “The success the [Bulls] had was unparalleled. It’s one of those things I look back on and I’m amazed at. Even sometimes I’m watching classic ESPN and see all those great wins and the team opportunities provided to me … “
Jackson gave back as well, helping lift his team when it seemed all so unlikely. Basketball immortality only seems appropriate.
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