Eleven Rings

by Phil Jackson

Kobe and Fish kicked off the first day of training camp with a speech about how the upcoming season would be a marathon, not a sprint, and how we needed to focus on meeting force with force and not allowing ourselves to be intimidated by physical pressure. Ironically, Kobe was beginning to sound more and more like me every day.

It’s a mysterious juggling act that requires not only a thorough knowledge of the time-honored laws of the game but also an open heart, a clear mind, and a deep curiosity about the ways of the human spirit.

Some coaches insist on having the last word, but I always tried to foster an environment in which everyone played a leadership role, from the most unschooled rookie to the veteran superstar. If your primary objective is to bring the team into a state of harmony and oneness, it doesn’t make sense for you to rigidly impose your authority.

One thing I’ve learned as a coach is that you can’t force your will on people. If you want them to act differently, you need to inspire them to change themselves.

My approach was always to relate to each player as a whole person, not just as a cog in the basketball machine.

What attracted me to the triangle was the way it empowers the players, offering each one a vital role to play as well as a high level of creativity within a clear, well-defined structure.

The essence of coaching is to get the players to wholeheartedly agree to being coached, then offer them a sense of their destiny as a team.

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are the greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.

obsessing about winning is a loser’s game:

The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome.

What matters most is playing the game the right way and having the courage to grow, as human beings as well as basketball players. When you do that, the ring takes care of itself.

One thing that fascinated me about Red was how much of the offense he turned over to the players. He let us design many of the plays and actively sought out our thinking about what moves to make in critical games. Many coaches have a hard time giving over power to their players, but Red listened intently to what the players had to say because he knew we had more intimate knowledge of what was happening on the floor than he did.

“Practice doesn’t make perfect,” he used to say. “Perfect practice does.”

This forced me to start thinking of the game as a strategic problem rather than a tactical one. As a young player, you tend to focus most of your attention on how you’re going beat your man in any given game. But now I began to see basketball as a dynamic game of chess in which all the pieces were in motion. It was exhilarating.

What I liked about basketball was how interconnected everything was. The game was a complex dance of moves and countermoves that made it much more alive than other sports I played. In addition, basketball demanded a high level of synergy. To succeed, you needed to rely upon everybody else on the floor, not just yourself. That gave the sport a certain transcendent beauty that I found deeply satisfying.

“Life can be found only in the present moment,” he writes. “The past is gone, and the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.”

“What you do for yourself—any gesture of kindness, any gesture of gentleness, any gesture of honesty and clear seeing toward yourself—will affect how you experience the world,” she writes. “What you do for yourself, you’re doing for others, and what you do for others, you’re doing for yourself.”

After training camp, Loughery said he wanted to move me over to assistant coach, but before that could happen forward Bob Elliott got injured and I was activated as a player. Nevertheless, I got a chance that year to work with the big men as a part-time assistant coach and take over for Kevin as head coach when he was thrown out of games by the refs, which happened fourteen times that season.

Just because you’re not a drummer, doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.

In contrast, the triangle not only required a high level of selflessness, but was also flexible enough to allow players a great deal of individual creativity. That suited me perfectly.

One thing I liked about Tex’s system, from a leadership perspective, was that it depersonalized criticism. It gave me the ability to critique the players’ performance without making them think I was attacking them personally.

I wanted to create a culture of selflessness and mindful awareness at the Bulls.

You can devise a foolproof defensive strategy and prepare your players for every possible eventuality. But if the players don’t have a sense of oneness as a group, your efforts won’t pay off. And the bond that unites a team can be so fragile, so elusive. Oneness is not something you can turn on with a switch. You need to create the right environment for it to grow, then nurture it carefully every day.

I often reminded the players to focus on the journey rather than the endgame, because if you give the future all your attention, the present will pass you by.

Rather than squeeze everybody into preordained roles, my goal has always been to foster an environment where the players can grow as individuals and express themselves creatively within a team structure.

Transparency is the key. The one thing players won’t stand for is a coach who won’t be honest and straightforward with them.