Phil Jackson, the mentor.
 
Phil Jackson, the guru.
 
Phil Jackson, the fraud?
 
These are the thoughts traveling through my mind as I try to write about this series (yes and I do apologize for the time off, my day job came in and took me offline for a bit).
 
Anyway, my writing job could be easily compared to Jackson’s coaching job: absent and non-existent (two words to say the same thing is obviously a better way to explain it…lol). 
 
Nobody is going to deny that Phil Jackson is a hall of fame coach.  He’s a first ballot guy, and anybody with a plus-Gump basketball I.Q. knows that he is part of the proverbial cream found at the top.  But I can’t shake this thought that he may have been the beneficiary of players, more so than the collective “us” has attributed to his success.
 
Case in point #1: Phil Jackson cannot coach X’s and O’s basketball.  Question: when Phil does something completely retarded is he being given a pass because us basketball writers believe he is “testing his team”?  I watched a game last year when the Lakers are down by 3 with under 3 seconds to go.  Kwame Brown and his 50% free throw percentage are left in the ballgame.  That doesn’t catch your eye immediately (other than the fact that Kwame Brown shouldn’t be in the NBA let alone on the court at the end of a game) but when you see the Lakers peel off out of their out-of-bounds play to clearly inbound the ball specifically to Kwame who is designed to throw immediately to Kobe for a 3 point shot…..you stop and ask yourself: If Jackson is the great coach then why would he draw up a play to pass the ball into somebody that the defense is surely going to foul?  The reason is simple.  Jackson undervalues the impact that matchups have on the outcome of a season, at the expense a single play (or playoff series).  When I say "undervalues" I mean that when he makes errors they come as a result of his deficiency in seeing that regardless of his goals, whether they be to create an atmosphere where players can both mentally and physically compete at a winning level or to individually impact a player’s psyche by either benching him or keeping him on the floor, he will maximize his team’s output on some (or most) occasions, but when he miscalculates he will have undervalued the impact that placing players in the correct matchups will have despite the impact those decisions may have on a player’s or team’s psyche. 

Whoa.  I feel like I just hung out with Philly-Phil on the Freedom-Train at the Rolling Stones concert in 1969.  Kwame should not have been on the court.  He was fouled correctly and went on to miss both free throws.  Kobe took the brick rebound at the sidelines and hit a falling into the bench 3 to tie the game and send it into overtime where they won.  Anyone want to bet that the writers in the press-pit after the game didn't grill him that hard?
 
Enter the 2008 NBA Finals.  The Lakers have more matchup problems than the Celtics do.  However, with correct coaching and matchup decisions they can shut the Celtics down enough to let their offense do the talking.

Starting with Kevin Garnett, the Lakers do not have a player that can match him, period.  Luckily, neither Boston nor Garnett wants to exploit that so the Lake Show has a chance in this series despite being down 3-1 (and now 3-2).  But rather than throw the team’s best cover onto Garnett (Turiaf) Phil wants to maintain the team’s identity by starting Radmonivich.   This leaves Gasol (or Odom) on Garnett which poses a multitude of problems.  Starting with the fact that Gasol can’t cover him, box him out, or even bother him you have a player on the court in KG who can essentially do all “positive” things with whether that be run the offense, initiate the offense, (gulp) shoot, or rebound.  Surprisingly, the mental guru doesn’t recognize the impact that getting beat on most plays is going to have on Gasol, or at a minimum the foul trouble.  Odom is also serviceable on KG but he doesn’t have the quickness nor the height to do anything, that is if KG used his quickness or height to get to the rim.  (Note: This is a very strange phenomenon, KG having the athleticism to get to the rim but not ever taking the ball there, so the D has to respect the quickness although it never does become a factor.  I wonder if teams just stopped defending the drive if KG would be able to adjust or if he would look like Derek Fisher trying to shoot a layup….anyway, I digress). 
 
So then you might expect me to mention Paul Pierce as the next worst matchup problem for the Lakers but it’s simply not true.  Kendrick Perkins is the next most difficult cover.  Reason being, the Lakers have these “bigs” to play down low: Gasol, Turiaf, Odom, Radmonivich, and Walton.  None of them can cover him on the block, period.  Now Perkins is unproven and may be out of the series due to injury, however, he could (and should) be covered by Gasol who can at least dominate him with his height while foot-speed won’t be as much of an issue. 
 
So you throw Turiaf on KG and Gasol on Perkins.  So far so good, right?  Apparently not.
 
Then you have Paul Pierce, the broke and homeless Kobe Bryant.  This guy is slow and unskilled.  Obviously there’s a bit of hyperbole there, however, the question that I’d pose to GM’s is how much would you pay for this guy even if the Celtics win the title this year?  How many forwards would you grab in front of him?  The list would be long and distinguished and absent a title this year Pierce will likely find himself on the bottom of it sometime soon.  Now that’s not to say that he isn’t a good talent.  I’m just having a difficult time seeing how he can “quote” “dominate” (in air quotes) when there’s a Kobe Bryant on the other side.  Surely it would be nicer to have Kobe remain fresh and foul-free while putting the clamps down on the fearsome (gulp) Rajon Rondo.  But if you can keep Garnett shooting jumpers over Turiaf, keep Perkins from dominating inside, and keep Pierce struggling with Kobe you’ve got to be going in the right direction. 
 
Ray Allen, meet Derek Fisher.  Fish isn’t going to be beat off the dribble consistently and he’s good enough to bother the outside shots.  We've seen what Ray-Ray does when he's not in transition these playoffs (i.e. nothing).  Rondo can be covered by either of the Sasha/Farmar combo (who can be switched out for freshness and to monitor who is actually playing well).  If you can't bury a jumper then you can't be effective in the NBA, sorry Rajon, keep working on it.
 
So I guess you can say that Radmonivich is the problem here.  But Phil wants to keep his 3-point threat on the court, in theory, to stretch the defense.  But it goes deeper than this.  Phil is trying to convey a message to his team that all of them belong on the court.  He uses a player like Sasha to convey to the team that confidence and swagger are all that you need to succeed.  The problem is that the team’s key players like Odom and Gasol aren’t getting the message, and now it’s too late.  Sasha and Farmar are not going to be the Steve Kerr’s and John Paxson’s of the Lakers if Odom and Gasol aren’t getting 40 points and 20 rebounds together.  But maybe the problem is that the Lakers can't get into the offense as effectively when they're pulling the ball out of the net.  Or maybe Odom and Gasol can't play well when the pressure's on (I bet more of you subscribe to that theory).  Maybe when they're getting manhandled defensively they lose their cool.  That's why the defensive matchups can sometimes be more important than the offensive ones.