Zen? How about rapture?

DaRizzle · Jan 29, 2009

For Phil Jackson, endings have always been much more powerful than beginnings.

But what would you expect from a guy who was raised by two itinerant fundamentalist preachers? Jackson grew up a son of the Northern Plains, in one Montana community after another, always facing “the rapture,” the belief that the world was soon coming to its glorious end.

“Every Sunday since I was born, the apocalypse has been coming next year,” Jackson once told Knicks teammate Bill Bradley in trying to explain his parents’ view of life. Jackson’s young world would be shaped by a growing awareness of his mother’s intense devotion and her focus on the moment of Christ’s return, what she called “the rapture of the saints,” and he would spend his childhood years anticipating that rapture.

Those childhood experiences brought him moments of terror, he once revealed.

And so he learned the power of endings. Anyone who doubts that only has to recall how he used the “end game” to motivate and focus a crazily fractured and distracted Chicago Bulls team to win the 1998 NBA championship. Jackson employed every mind game possible to squeeze a sixth title out of that club and even gave it a tagline as he was doing it, “The Last Dance.”

Hey, he’s a guy who’s made millions off a book titled “The Last Season.”

So Jackson’s recent noise about retiring after the 2010 campaign has to be taken with a grain of context. And that context is this: With Phillip Douglas Jackson you never know where the mind games end and the stark reality begins. That’s part of his motivational success in a business where you’re trying to shape, guide and control headstrong young millionaires in short pants.

We do know this fact. Tex Winter has worked with Jackson closely for years. He’s the guy’s mentor. Winter says that he’s never seen Phil tighten down the control like he has this season.
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¹²³ · Jan 29, 2009

Great, great read. Thanks 'Rizzle.

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Zen? How about rapture?

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