The Lakers are putting Phil Jackson in bronze. Word came down this morning that a Phil Jackson statue will be unveiled outside Crypto.com Arena on April 9, which means the man who ran the triangle for two separate Lakers dynasties finally gets a permanent address in the plaza he helped fill.
Think about who is already out there. Magic. Kareem. Jerry West. Shaq. Elgin Baylor. Chick Hearn behind his microphone. Kobe. That plaza is basically a shrine to the franchise's best decades, and Jackson is the rare figure in it who never wore the uniform. He just kept handing out rings.
The resume does not need decoration. Eleven championships as a head coach, six in Chicago and five in Los Angeles, still the most any coach has won in NBA history. Two more as a player with the Knicks in 1970 and 1973. Hall of Fame in 2007. Two Lakers tenures: the three straight from 2000 to 2002 with Shaq and Kobe, then the return that produced back to back titles in 2009 and 2010 with Pau Gasol and a Kobe who had grown into the job. Also the 2004 Finals loss to Detroit and the 2008 loss to Boston, because the wall holds everything, not just the good nights. Nothing deleted, nothing cherry-picked.
What I keep coming back to is the coaching itself. Tex Winter's triangle was considered an oddity by half the league, and Jackson won with it in two cities, across two eras, with the two most demanding superstars of their generations. That is not luck. That is a man who understood that managing egos and managing spacing are the same job.
checked the almanac: no coach in league history has more than his eleven. thirteen rings total when you count the two he won in sneakers. that is a life.
I do not have the ceremony details or the guest list in front of me yet, and the Lakers have not laid out what the sculpture looks like. Fine. April 9 is the date, the plaza is the place, and the next thing worth watching is simply whether Jackson, now in his eighties, is there in person to see it uncovered.