Like Red, ex-Knick has knack
LOS ANGELES -- He has never fought back. Phil Jackson is comfortable and secure. He's got a great job as coach of the most visible professional sports team in a starstruck town. He's got five grown children and a reputation as the Zen master of basketball. So it was never necessary to defend himself when he'd get ripped by the late Red Auerbach.
Red's been gone for two weeks and Jackson continues to take the high road when he speaks of the Celtic godfather. It can't be easy. Red didn't like the idea of a former member of the New York Knicks closing in on his record of nine NBA championships as a coach. When Jackson was getting close to clinching his own No. 9 with the 2001-02 Lakers, Red had a hard time being gracious. Old Arnold said Jackson was a guy who "picked his spots." Red reminded us that he'd assembled his teams all by himself. There were no scouts and no assistants.
"It's a very different game now," Jackson said, reluctantly defending his record. "It's hard to compare eras. The Celtics ran six plays. They won 11 championships. They had five or six variations off those plays. But it's not like today where there's 30 different offensive sets. But basketball is still basketball. It's fundamentals. It's execution. It's determination. It's defense."
He doesn't mention that Red conveniently dismissed the notion that it was easier to win championships in a smaller league with fewer rounds of playoffs.
None of it would have mattered with Red. Auerbach simply didn't want Jackson beating his record of nine titles and -- as is the case with Celtic dancers -- it's somehow appropriate that Red never lived to see anyone beat his record.
Jackson's got an outside chance if he sticks around for long enough with these Lakers. He's in the second year of his second tour in LA, and his Lakers look pretty good thus far. They've got some good young players, Kobe Bryant (now wearing No. 24) is on the mend, and they take a 4-3 record into tonight's game against Memphis at Staples Center. Not only that, but Laker games are events in this town. The stars come out. The media arrives in full force. It's like Celtic games were in Boston in the 1980s.
Jackson's been around pro basketball since he was drafted by the Knicks in 1967. He knows Red hated the Knicks -- a grudge dating to the 1930s, when Red's George Washington University was snubbed by the then-prestigious National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden. Jackson was a member of the 1973 Knick team that beat the Celtics in a seventh game at Boston Garden. When fans and experts would compare the Knicks of the early '70s to Red's dynasty of the '60s, the smoke didn't come off the tip of Red's cigar, it came out of his ears.
Red might have been OK if one of his guys -- Don Nelson or K.C. Jones perhaps -- came close to his records. But a former member of the Knicks? No way.
"Without a doubt, it was a New York vs. Boston thing," Jackson said as he stood in the Laker locker room last week. "It was never about an individual. It was about New York, but not about me. When I got to the Knicks there was still all that innuendo about how many times the Celtics had beaten the Knicks over the years. How Allie McGuire would stand up on the training table and say, 'I'm going to shut out Bob Cousy,' then he'd foul out in six minutes and say, 'See, he didn't score on me.' It was the whole Celtic-Knick rivalry. We'd look up in the stands and see the students from New York fighting the kids from Boston. It was very heated. There was a mystique about it. A fire alarm went off at 3 in the morning when we were there in '73."
Really? That's the same complaint Pat Riley submitted when he brought the Lakers to Boston for the finals in 1984, '85, and 87.
"The 1980s Lakers were not the first team that that happened to," said a smiling Jackson.
As for Riley's contention that his Lakers were mistreated -- all the stuff about Red shutting off showers and turning on heat in the old Garden locker rooms? Jackson's got the same memories from his days with the Knicks.
"I'm sure the competitive nature guides you, but Red Holzman [Jackson's coach with the Knicks] was gracious about it," said Jackson. "When we played the Celtics in the playoffs in '73 we were in four different locker rooms in four different games. They had us outside in a hallway where there had never been a team before. All the little things you went through that were irritating with the Celtics. They'd won 68 games that year. It was an amazing team. But when we finally beat them, Red Holzman came over to me and said, 'This is one of those times when good overcomes evil.' "
Ouch. Now that's a shot. But Phil is quick to go back to high ground.
"The day after Red passed away, we had a little meeting and I told my players some stories about Red and his legend in the NBA," said Jackson. "I told them about all the rules that he changed. It used to be if you called time out in the backcourt, you lost the ball. Well, in the playoffs against the Celtics, we trapped Don Nelson in the backcourt and he called time out and they lost the ball. The rule was changed the next year. Red could do those things. When [ Dave ] Cowens became the center, there were no more jump balls every quarter. Red had a way of getting the rules changed in his favor."
Jackson played under Bill Fitch at the University of North Dakota, then played 12 years in the NBA with the Knicks and Nets. He was a player/assistant coach in his final two NBA seasons, but his first head coaching position was with the Albany Patroons of the Continental Basketball Association from 1982-87. His Patroons won the championship in 1984. It was in his capacity as a CBA coach that he first sensed that Red didn't like him.
"I'd been around him a little bit after I came into the league because my teammate, Bill Bradley, had a relationship with him from his time as a page in Washington," said Jackson . "Bill was in Washington in the summers and Red was a presence on the city courts in D.C. So I was familiar with Red's reputation and who he was. Years later when I was coaching the Albany Patroons, my son and I made a trip to Boston to watch the Celtics play the Chicago Bulls. My son was a Michael Jordan fan. The Celtics were playing the Bulls near the end of the year, so we drove over from Albany. I had seats I'd gotten from Jimmy Rodgers, who was an assistant with the Celtics then. The seats were right above where Red sat. Well, Red saw me and gave me one of those 'What are you doing here?' looks. Even though I was retired, he was still giving me hell. I said, 'I see you're still as gruff as ever.' He asked me how I got the seats. He softened a little bit, but he still had to put up that gruff exterior."
It would not be the last time Jackson saw Jordan. Jackson took over as coach of the Bulls in 1989, and won his first six championships while sitting on the bench watching perhaps the greatest player ever. He took a year off after the last banner was raised in Chicago. Then he joined the Lakers, replacing Del Harris in 1999. Los Angeles had a center named Shaquille O'Neal, but the Lakers had been unable to win a championship in Shaq's first three seasons in LA. Everything changed with Jackson in charge. The Lakers won back-to-back-to-back titles, giving Jackson rings 7, 8, and 9.
"When I was a kid, I looked at statistics and saw the nine championships Red had won," said Jackson. "It was like looking at the records set by John Wooden and Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Babe Ruth. You'd always think there's no way anyone's ever going to touch that. It's a remarkable thing to have the opportunity to win that many times. You look back. It's remarkable to have your name mentioned in the same breath as Red Auerbach."
They didn't see much of one another in the final years of Red's life. Jackson remembered seeing Red at a scouting combine in Chicago, but said he hadn't been face to face with the Celtic legend in more than 10 years.
But he always knew Red was there . . . sending none-too-subtle smoke signals from Boston and Washington.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is dshaughnessy@globe.com. 
