The End of an Era "Final Farewell to the Zen Master"

1,155 Wins

229 Playoff Wins

11 time NBA Champion ( 6 with Bulls, 5 with Lakers)

Hall of Fame Coach

                                                                                             

 

          Those are just the highlights of Phil Jackson's career as an NBA coach for the past 20 years with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers. He will easily go down as one of the greatest coaches of all time. Jackson's 11 rings put atop the coaching ranks for most rings in his career. He coached some of the greatest in the game including the all time great Michael Jordan, he coached Scottie Pippen, Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O/Neal. Great coaches make great players even better, and Jackson did exactly that in his 20 years as an NBA coach.
  In his 9 seasons with the Bulls, Jackson went 545-193 (.738 winning percentage) to go along with 6 Rings, the best regular season record of all time (72-10). He led a team with the greatest player of all time in Jordan, along with other great pieces in Pippen, Steve Kerr, Dennis Rodman, and many others. He finished as the greatest coach in the teams history and likely would have been there longer if not for the friction between himself and Bulls GM Jerry Krause. After winning his 6th Ring, Jackson retired from coaching vowing to never coach another game again. But his coaching career was far from over, and his success was only going to continue.

 Jackson only took a year off from coaching before he returned to coach the Los Angeles Lakers who were loaded with talent. In his first season as Lakers coach the team went 67-15, and the team went on to win the Finals for Jackson's 7th ring. In the next 10 years Jackson would go on to win 4 more NBA Titles, and coached MVP Kobe Bryant, who many have compared to Jackson's former star player Michael Jordan.
 The end of Jackson's career finally arrived on Sunday, May 9th after the Lakers were swept by the Dallas Mavericks, being the first time in Jackson's coaching career his team was swept. The final game will be one that Jackson would like to forget, not only because of the beating the Lakers took in Game 4 (122-86), but the complete disrespect Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum showed towards the end. With 9 minutes to go in the 4th Lamar Odom purposely shoved Dirk Nowitzki to the floor, and was ejected by the refs immediately after. Then minutes after when J.J Barea went up for a layup Andrew Bynum threw up an elbow into Barea's shoulder sending him to the floor and leaving him down for several moments. It was two moments that reflected very poorly on the Lakers organization and left a bad taste in the mouth of NBA fans and Hall of Famer's.
   Phil Jackson will go down as the greatest coach of all time, not only because of his success in the playoffs, and his success with the great players he had. Many critics will say that it was easier to win so many rings, when you have some of the greatest players in NBA History over a 20 year span. But looking at the history of the NBA the most successful teams had the best players, and in order to win a ring you need great players AND a great teacher. Phil Jackson was that in his 20 year career as a coach, and because of that he should go down as the greatest coach and most successful coach of all time
My Hat is off to you Phil Jackson, you are the greatest of all time, and enjoy retirement.