Phil Jackson was in Santa Barbara because… I don’t know but it is one of the great vacation getaways in the United States so he can choose pretty much any reason he wants.
TMZ cameras were in Santa Barbara because, well, they are TMZ. They are everywhere.
So the result is you have got TMZ asking Jackson about how the Lakers coaching search went down (hat tip to Sports City).Phil Jackson says he’s NOT bitter at the Lakers for passing him over for the head coaching job earlier this month ... claiming Lakers brass decided to go with Mike D’Antoni in a “midnight coup.”
The Zen Master was out in Santa Barbara this weekend ... when he was asked if he felt the Lakers treated him unfairly during the negotiations. Jackson explained, “We never discussed any terms ... so there was never anything unfair about it.”
Phil -- now 67-years-old -- also made it clear ... the chances of him ever coaching in the NBA again are “slim and none.”
Outside the use of the word “coup” here there is nothing really new, nothing he hasn’t said already.
Jackson got interviewed for the job not because Jim Buss — son of owner Jerry and the guy running the show — really wanted him but because they thought he would say no the asked him for PR reasons. Except he didn’t say no, then they were in a PR bind. But in the end Buss went with the guy he wanted.
As I’ve said, my issue with how it went down was simply that this was not well thought out and planned out. If you fire a coach once the season has started you put out feelers and have your replacement plan rolling already and in place when the axe falls. Be like an attorney in the courtroom — do you work in advance so you only ask questions you already know the answers to. That didn’t happen, the Lakers were reactionary. They were playing checkers, not chess.
But in the end, they ended up with a better coach than the one they had. Now we’ll see how that plays out.