NBA Championship this fella was in the regular rotation.
Most modern-day NBA fans will know this week’s #FanTeaser solution – Phil Jackson – not from his playing days but from his stellar work on the sidelines coaching some of the game’s most successful franchises.
But before Jackson was the Zen Master helping guide the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers to a total of 11 NBA Championships, he was a 12-year player in the league, including the first 10 with the New York Knicks.
won two rings as member of the New York Knicks (1971 and 1973).
(New York Daily News Photo)
It was there that he tasted his first professional success, winning an NBA title in 1973.
Jackson played his college ball at the University of North Dakota for a future Hall of Fame coach, Bill Fitch. He became a second-round pick of the Knicks in the 1967 NBA Draft. He immediately became a rotational player with the Knicks, averaging nearly 15 minutes a game as a rookie. And that, in a nutshell, was what Jackson was during the majority of his time in New York. Only once did he start more than 25 games in a season (1974-75) and he never averaged more than 30 minutes per game.
He did, however, nab a ring with the 1973 Knicks’ team when he chipped in an average of eight points per game over 17 minutes per contest during the Knicks’ 4-1 Finals victory over the Los Angeles Lakers. (New York also won it all in 1970, but Jackson missed the season while recovering from spinal fusion surgery.)
As a coach, Jackson won three consecutive NBA titles three times! The 1991-93 Bulls, the 1996-98 Bulls, and the 2000-02 Lakers. He added a back-to-back with the Lakers in 2009 and 2010. Oh yeah, he also took two other Lakers’ teams to the Finals but wound up falling short (2004 and 2008).
One final amazing statistics. At the moment, there have been 80 NBA Championships. If you include Jackson’s two as a player (he was on that Knicks roster while recovering from surgery) that means he’s won 16.25% of those!
Just to review, The Fan Teaser was the creation of former Ann Arbor News Sports Editor Geoff Larcom. Longtime friend and fellow Ann Arbor News alum, Pat Schutte, took it to heights previously unknown. We aim to keep it alive here at The Sports Fan Project. The cropped photo and the accompanying clue give you an idea as to who or what the image is of. We invite you to use the Comment option to take a crack at solving the Teaser and, if you’re so inclined, participate in some good-spirited banter with your fellow sports fans. The Fan Teaser will appear each Friday morning with the reveal coming to you Sunday.