Lakers News: Why Phil Jackson Hasn't Watched NBA Since Bubble Season

Could the former five-time title-winning LA head coach be any more insensitive?

It's weird to pull for this, but based on his recent comments during a wide-ranging conversation with compression-obsessed music producer Rick Rubin, Los Angeles Lakers fans may have to hope that Phil Jackson is going senile.

Otherwise, it turns out he may just be a jerk, or worse.

While chatting with Rubin for the latter's podcast Tetragrammaton about the 2020 Disney World "bubble" campus season restart in Orlando, Jackson vomited out some really tone-deaf criticisms.

“They did something that was kind of wanky, they did a bubble down in Orlando and all the teams that could qualify went down there and stayed down there,” he said. “And they had things on their back like, ‘Justice.’ They made a funny thing like, ‘Justice just went to the basket and Equal Opportunity just knocked him down.’ … So my grandkids thought that was pretty funny to play up those names. So I couldn’t watch that.”

Following the horrific police murders of Black citizens Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, the league had opted to highlight the Black Lives Matter movement by painting that missive on the hardwood throughout the bubble. Players were also able to select special social justice phrases on the backs of their jerseys in place of their names. Most also kneeled during the national album in a form of peaceful protest originated by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

Lakers All-Star LeBron James, that season's eventual NBA Finals MVP en route to capturing his fourth championship and LA's 17th during that season restart, did not use a catchphrase for his jersey, but was a key negotiator in discussing how the league would respectfully pay tribute to the movement.

The 77-year-old Jackson, who has won 11 titles as a head coach (six with the Chicago Bulls and five with Los Angeles) and two championships as a New York Knicks role playing power forward, felt that the messaging would alienate some viewers.

“It was catering, trying to cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience into play,” he said. “They didn’t know it was turning other people off. People want to see sports as non-political.”

All life is political. Choosing not to acknowledge the gravity of that moment would have been the mistake.

Longtime NBA veteran forward-turned-ESPN broadcaster Jalen Rose offered up a powerful rebuttal to Jackson's comments today.

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I'm with Jalen on this one.

It's incredibly disappointing to hear Phil Jackson be so out-of-touch about a very important public movement. The whole contention of Black Lives Matter is focused around Black Americans being treated with care and respect, a criticism of deep-seeded systemic inequities that extend everywhere from housing to policing. This is not rocket science. The fact that Jackson sees the notion of NBA players, incredibly public personalities with a great platform in a majority-Black league, standing up for basic justice with the fairly innocuous gesture of these temporarily-renamed jersey as some kind of offensive political statement is deeply disappointing to hear. 

There's no question that Jackson, the most decorated head coach in league history in terms of his title count, is one of the best coaches the game has ever seen. But there's no question these cringe-worthy remarks are, at best, woefully out-of-touch with very real and obvious issues.

Scottie Pippen once claimed Jackson was a racist for the way he prioritized Toni Kukoc in late-game situations over Pippen. The Hall of Fame Chicago Bulls swingman may have been right, after all.

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