Forget, for a moment, the merits of Phil Jackson’s decision to hire Jeff Hornacek as the next coach of the New York Knicks — we’ll address that topic in a separate standalone piece.
One aspect of this story which is fascinating to contemplate is that two men from different generations both rose to prominence at the same moment in NBA history; then competed directly against each other for a championship (twice); and must now depend on each other to become remembered as successes in their new roles.
That’s a lot to unpack. Let’s take apart that long, multi-pronged sentence.
Phil Jackson did, of course, gain a measure of national attention as a role player on the early-1970s New York Knicks, the one glistening era in the franchise’s otherwise-miserable history. Yet, on a roster with Reed and Frazier and Monroe and DeBusschere and Bradley and Lucas, Jackson took a back seat to his more prolific teammates. Jackson’s central claim to fame came as a head coach, and it was in 1990 that he entered the cauldron of playoff pressure in a suit and tie, not a tank top and shorts.
Jackson took over for Doug Collins as Michael Jordan’s head coach in Chicago. Not yet known as the Zen Master, Jackson spent that 1989-1990 season learning how to effectively motivate and inspire his players. The 1990 Eastern Conference Finals became a complete nightmare for Scottie Pippen, as the Chicago Bulls lost to the Detroit Pistons in seven games. That series presented a simple truth in front of Jackson: He had to give Pippen the resources to make him a calmer, more confident player who could endure withering playoff pressure and scrutiny. Jackson’s success in that particular task — and in pushing the right buttons with role players such as Bobby Hansen and (years later) Steve Kerr and Jud Buecheler — enabled him to walk with Michael on the road to six NBA championships.
The 1990 season became the teachable moment from which Jackson’s coaching conquests emerged.
Meanwhile, in the other half of the NBA during that 1990 season, these two men were teammates in Phoenix with the Suns:
The Knicks’ new coach and the man who had been the Knicks’ interim coach (and was thought to be the favorite for the permanent job by some) played on the same team. That 1990 season didn’t even reach the NBA Finals for the Suns — they’ve made only two Finals in franchise history, 1976 and 1993 — but after the two Finals seasons, no other season is remembered as fondly in the Valley of the Sun.
The 1990 Suns, coached by Cotton Fitzsimmons — a beloved figure in Phoenix — created a permanent place in the hearts of local fans. They authored the feat which mattered more to Phoenicians than any other non-championship achievement: They BEAT L.A.
Yes, the 1990 Suns — with Hornacek at the heart of the effort and Rambis mostly along for the ride — became the first Phoenix team to defeat the Lakers in the playoffs. Phoenix defeated a Laker team which was a No. 1 seed in the West (again), but felt a little out of place in the first year of the post-Kareem Abdul-Jabbar era. The Suns took charge of that series and never let go — it was Hornacek’s finest hour to that point in his NBA career. He tasted what it was like to look greatness in the eye and defeat it.
In 1990, Phil Jackson — as a coach — and Jeff Hornacek (as a player) learned how to compete in the NBA.
Seven years later, they would take all their lessons and match them against each other; they would do the same dance yet again, one year afterward.
The 1997 and 1998 NBA Finals became cutthroat confrontations.
The Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz did not play elegant basketball, but they definitely went at each other with complete and unreserved defensive ferocity.
With the conspicuous exception of Game 3 of the 1998 Finals (in which the Jazz scored a Finals-low 54 points), and with the slight exceptions of Games 2 and 3 in 1997 (won by 12 and 11 points), the Bulls and Jazz played a steady stream of neck-and-neck games, mostly in the 80s. Nine of the 12 Finals games between the teams (two six-game series) were decided by five points or fewer. Neither team found jump shooters hot enough to be able to pull away from the other, but virtually every player on the floor in that series knew where to be on defense. Easy baskets simply weren’t found very often in those two Finals.
Phil Jackson and Utah coach Jerry Sloan inspired total trust from their players. Jeff Hornacek, no longer in Phoenix, had come to Salt Lake City to join Karl Malone and John Stockton in pursuit of his first NBA title, and Phil Jackson stood in his way. Both Phil and Hornacek had grown so much in the seven years separating them from their 1990 threshhold-entering moments. Now, they tried to figure out how to thwart each other.
Jackson won both series and the championships which accompanied them; Hornacek absorbed and internalized a lot of the lessons which would enable him, like Jackson, to make the jump from a playing career to a coaching career.
Jackson — now an executive instead of a coach — took a vacation in the West and faced all sorts of choices in his attempt to remake the Knicks, just months after his abrupt decision to cut short the tenure of Derek Fisher in its relative infancy. The names of Frank Vogel and David Blatt joined Rambis in the mix; the decision to pick Jeff Hornacek therefore rates as a curveball relative to what the New York media and the national press corps expected.
What it also shows: Jackson holds immense respect for a former Jazzman who tried to deny him his fifth and sixth NBA titles as a coach. These men, who formed so much of the NBA’s history in the 1990s and have carried their basketball careers from one iteration to another, have now united in New York.
They wanted each other, and starting with Phil’s draft-and-free-agency adventure in the coming months, they’ll certainly need each other if they’re going to make this project work.
Forget about the merits of the move; we’ll address them in another piece. For now, merely sit back and appreciate the nature of the journeys these two men have taken to get to Madison Square Garden, holders of the destiny of a franchise which is starving for a relevance not tasted since Phil Jackson donned a basketball uniform 43 years ago.
