Knicks & Lakers Ex Phil Jackson: Why I'm Not Watching 'Wanky' NBA Playoffs - Politics
As a player with the New York Knicks and then as a Hall of Fame coach with the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers, Phil Jackson always impressed us as an open-minded and out-of-the-box thinker.
But his mind is closed when it comes to today's NBA - yes, apparently even the participation of the Knicks, Lakers and Bulls in these NBA Playoffs - because of what he terms the insertion of “politics” into the game via the NBA bubble during the height of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020.
"I am not enjoying the game; that's too bad,'' Jackson said. "There's a whole generation that doesn't like the game. No, I don't (watch basketball).''
And why not? Jackson used the word "wanky'' when describing how the NBA decided to "cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience to the game,'' as he put it on the Tetragrammaton podcast with Rick Rubin. "And they didn’t know it was turning other people off. People want to see sports as non-political. Politics stays out of the game. It doesn’t need to be there.''
The "it''? Social statements in the place of nameplates on jerseys and etched into the playing floor of the gyms.
"They had slogans on the floor and the baseline,'' he said. “They had things on their back like ‘Justice,’ and a funny thing happened like, ‘Justice went to the basket and Equal Opportunity knocked him down.’ Some of my grandkids thought it was pretty funny to play up those names. I couldn’t watch that.''
It is Jackson's belief - no matter his personal view on social issues - that allowing players to wear slogans on the backs of their jerseys caused the NBA to add to the political polarization at that time in the United States ... and maybe at this time in this country as well.
So his old teams, like the Knicks (vs. the Cavs, in a series that continues this week) and the Lakers, play on ... and Phil Jackson finds something else to do.
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