The Lakers won their sixteenth NBA championship last night, outlasting the Celtics 83–79 in a gloriously ugly game seven of the NBA Finals. It was, as the great Ken Tremendous of Fire Joe Morgan (and Mose Schrute and Parks and Recreation fame) said over Twitter, "Congrats to the L.A. Lakers for winning what appears to have been some kind of ceremonial free throw shooting contest." Lakers fans will take it. Specifically, the two legends on their team who are collecting trophies like they're scoping for metal on a beach.
Kobe Bryant won his fifth championship last night, which, kind of amazingly, is just one behind Michael Jordan. Sure, Kobe has had the benefit of big men Shaquille O'Neal and Pau Gasol — whereas Jordan had Bill Wennington and Will Perdue — but a universe in which Kobe has more rings than Jordan, which very well could happen, is a strange and disorienting one.
But we're going to focus on Phil Jackson right now. Jackson, the "Zen Master" who drove both Pat Riley and Jeff Van Gundy crazy when they were Knicks coaches, has now won eleven championships as a coach, two more than Red Auerbach. Jackson has a total of thirteen rings now, thanks to the two he has as a player from the Knicks. (Watching Jackson limp around is another reminder of just how long it has been since the Knicks won a title: since that old man played.) And remember: He wanted to coach here, rather than in Los Angeles. To quote:
If New York hadn't squeaked into the playoffs in 1999 and then upset top-seeded Miami on the way to the NBA Finals, Phil Jackson thinks there's a chance he would have returned to coaching with the Knicks instead of the Lakers. Jackson recalled that New York president Dave Checketts had contacted him late in the season when his team was floundering in ninth in the standings.
"I told them if you get in the playoffs and beat out Cleveland for the eighth spot, the team was built to beat Miami," Jackson said. "Sure enough, there was an 8–;1 upset and they went to the finals that year. Those talks immediately ended when they started rolling in the playoffs."
Jackson didn't come here and was rewarded with five more titles. (That man, if he returns to the Lakers, will be going for his fourth three-peat next year. That's crazy.) The Knicks, meanwhile, brought in Isiah Thomas. Let's stop talking about this now.