If one loudmouth calls another loudmouth a name, is it news?

Apparently.

After Phil Jackson commented on the loss of Mavs forward Caron Butler…

“He just leaves a vacuum that’s going to be very hard for them to fill,” Jackson said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

…the hypersensitive Cuban fired back…

“I love that Jeanie Buss’ boy-toy had something to say about us,” Cuban said while sweating on the stair-stepping machine in the Mavs’ workout room. “I don’t know if it was his thought or Jeanie’s thought, but it’s nice to know that she lets him speak in public about other teams.”

I’m happy Cuban is in the league because if nothing else, he’s entertaining. I prefer his brash and energetic style over the stodginess of most NBA owners. It’s better to have an owner sitting behind his team’s bench cheering his fool head off than to have him up in a luxury box sipping a glass of Merlot.

But if Jackson wants to make a comment about the Mavs, Cuban shouldn’t get so defensive. Doing so only confirms that Jackson got under his skin. And I’m not even sure that was Jackson’s intention with these comments about Butler. He was asked about the injury and responded with a completely valid opinion. Cuban resorted to a personal attack about Jackson’s love life.

Bush league.

In a rather unsurprising turn of events, Phil Jackson will return to coach the Lakers next season.

“Count me in,” said Jackson. “After a couple weeks of deliberation, it is time to get back to the challenge of putting together a team that can defend its title in the 2010-11 season. It’ll be the last stand for me, and I hope a grand one.”

Love or hate the Lakers, NBA fans have to respect Jackson’s ability to coax the best out of the great teams that he has coached. If the LeBron/Wade/Bosh dream comes to fruition in Miami or some other locale, they’ll have a powerful foe to overcome, as the two-time defending champs will be at full strength led by the Zen Master.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Phil Jackson told the media on Wednesday that he’s leaning towards retiring instead of returning to the Lakers to defend their latest NBA title.

From the Orange County Register:

Jackson said he told Lakers owner Jerry Buss and select players such as Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher about his leanings.

“Take a week and then make a decision,” said Jackson, who also is awaiting results from various medical tests he took Monday.

Jackson seemed confident that he was ready to do something else in a quest for “making the next phase of my life” an accomplishment also. Jackson had said previously that it’d be hard to turn down the chance to go for a fourth set of three consecutive championships, and he acknowledged that ongoing desire Wednesday in referring to that temptation as “a fly in the ointment.”

But Jackson is trying out this mentality of not coaching anymore and waiting to see “if something turns me around.”

Jackson said he wouldn’t rule out coaching again if he stepped away but didn’t envision it.

“I have to sit on it and do the right thing for myself,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that I’m 95 percent or 50 percent sure. This is what I feel right now.”

Among his many accomplishments, Jackson has won 11 NBA championships as a coach and two more as a player. He was the 1996 NBA Coach of the Year, owns the most NBA titles as a head coach and has the most wins in NBA playoffs history. (Not to mention he also has the most wins in Bulls and Lakers’ history, which is incredible given the history of both franchises.)

What I’m saying is that he doesn’t have much to prove anymore. The only reason to return would be because coaching is still fun for him and he can make it through the grind of another 82-game season. If he’s not up for it, then there’s no reason to continue.

We’ll just have to wait and see what he decides.

Photo from fOTOGLIF
]]> http://www.scoresreport.com/2010/06/23/report-phil-jackson-leaning-towards-retirement/feed/ 0 http://www.scoresreport.com/2010/06/14/current-nba-finals-odds/ http://www.scoresreport.com/2010/06/14/current-nba-finals-odds/#comments Tue, 15 Jun 2010 01:00:28 +0000 John Paulsen http://www.scoresreport.com/?p=41245

One internet bookmaker currently has the Finals at a pick ‘em, largely because the Lakers’ home court advantage offsets the Celtics’ 3-2 lead. Here are a few stats to chew on heading into Game 6:

- Phil Jackson’s 47-0 series mark after winning Game 1 is in serious jeopardy.

- Teams trailing 3-2 in the Finals have won just six times in 40 tries. However, since the league has gone to a 2-3-2 format, the team down 2-3 has only had home court advantage six times and have gone 2-4 in those series.

- The Celtics are 11-0 in the franchise history when leading 3-2 in the Finals.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

I wrote earlier today about Jackson’s willingness to field questions about his future in the middle of the Western Conference Finals, and now CBSSports is reporting that a person close to Jackson believes that the coach would be unwilling to take a major pay cut to stay with the Lakers.

While Jackson reiterated his hunch Tuesday that there’s a 90 percent chance he’ll either be coaching the Lakers next season or retiring, a person with close ties to Jackson told CBSSports.com that it’s too early to set odds. If Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss insists on a massive pay cut, the person said, Jackson would not return. Published reports have indicated that Buss is seeking to pay Jackson $5 million next season, a pay cut of $7 million.

The source close to Jackson indicated that the question of how much Jackson’s pay would be reduced is, to some degree, semantics. Given that he is close to retirement age, a significant portion of Jackson’s salary could be deferred in the form of retirement benefits that he would see without penalty in two years.

Another person with knowledge of Jackson’s situation said it would be difficult to imagine him leaving the Lakers with Kobe Bryant in the prime of his career and having just signed a three-year extension. The person equated it to overtures that frequently came Jackson’s way when he coached Michael Jordan in Chicago, saying Jackson never would’ve left Jordan in his prime, either.

But one of those sources said circumstances could change with the possibility of Jackson becoming bait to lure LeBron James to the Bulls, who have maximum salary-cap space to sign him and a quality roster that Jackson views favorably. The person said the Jackson/LeBron situation was plausible, considering Jackson would have the chance to complete a potentially irresistible trifecta – coaching Jordan and Bryant, and then capping his career with James.

The bit about the “irresistible trifecta” is interesting. Jackson has been fortunate in that he has been in a position to coach some of the league’s greatest players, but if he were able to join forces with LeBron and win his 11th (or 12th) NBA title, it would certainly cap what has already been a remarkable career. Yes, he has been fortunate in the quality of player that he has coached, but it takes more than great players to win championships, and Jackson’s ability to manage massive egos and get 12 players pointed in the same direction is, for lack of a better word, uncanny.

He’s not going to grind out 50+ wins with an inferior roster like Jerry Sloan does year in and year out, but if Jackson has the most talented roster, he’s a good bet to be the last coach standing at the end of the postseason.

And that’s probably worth $12 million a season.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Before last night’s Game 4, Phil Jackson shot down the rumors about a possible return to Chicago.

“I have no, at all, desire to go back to Chicago and coach the Bulls,” Jackson said, responding to an ESPN.com report from Monday night that the Bulls had reached out to Jackson through back channels to gauge his interest in a return.

Jackson went on to say that the “probabilities are great” that he’d be coaching the Lakers next season, though the franchise has made it clear that they expect him to take a pay cut.

The timing of this is curious. The Lakers are still in the playoffs, and Jackson is fielding questions about his 2010-11 salary and a possible job change. Sometimes he gets caught up in using the media to tweak his players or tweaking the media just for fun, but there’s a possibility that this is becoming a distraction to a Laker team that came to Phoenix looking invincible and is leaving the Valley of the Sun knotted in a 2-2 series and licking its proverbial wounds.

With the media in a tizzy trying to predict the landing spot for LeBron James and several other big-name free agents, these questions are going to come up over and over again. Sometimes the best way to answer is just to say “no comment.”

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Per ESPN…

Late Thursday night, Artest’s account posted a string of tweets expressing frustration with Lakers coach Phil Jackson.

The first unedited tweet, posted around 9 p.m. PT, read: “Finally Phil Jackson didn’t mention me in media before talking me Now I can build on game 2. Hopefully he talks to me before the media.”

The next unedited tweet, posted approximately an hour later, read: “Ever since phil mention things about me in media before coming to me first I was weird . So every pray he can somehow close his yapper.”

Artest’s brother claimed that the account was hacked, but when a reporter paraphrased the tweets and asked Artest about it, he said:

“No, no, you have to read it exactly. That’s exactly what I said? If you can’t get it exact, then I can’t answer it.”

“I’m here to talk about basketball, basketball, all basketball,” Artest said. “Twitter is for my fans, not for [media].”

For his part, Jackson says that he spoke directly to Artest about the issue at hand — his terrible three-point shooting.

“So, you know, we expect him to break out of it at some point, but he’s got to be discriminative in what’s a good shot and what isn’t.”

Jackson, who described Artest as a “naïve, innocent lamb” during the first-round series against Oklahoma City said, “I guess he might be a little sensitive,” on Friday.

“I usually tell the truth,” Jackson said of his thought process behind commenting about his players to the media. “I usually don’t pull punches, so, I mean, a person has to withstand that. If they’re hearing it on TV in front of a massive audience, they must understand that their coach saying it to them will be probably a little bit more harmful, a little more hurtful perhaps. They have to be tough enough to take that and move on.”

Jackson tweaks, he doesn’t tweet. He relishes needling everyone — players, coaches, officials — through the media, though I doubt he’s ever run into someone like Ron Artest. The Zen Master should tread carefully.

Photo from fOTOGLIF