Buck Harvey: Been there, blown that -- Zen's defense

Web Posted: 06/14/2008 09:30 PM CDT
By Buck Harvey
bharvey@express-news.net

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/basketball/nba/spurs/stories/MYSA061508.BuckColumn.en.3bae843.html

LOS ANGELES — He's gone from being the Zen Master to what a headline in the Los Angeles Times called him. The “Master of Disaster.”

Phil Jackson has lost six of his last seven Finals games, and other headlines have said more about His Asterisk. “Celtics' Rivers outcoaching Lakers' Jackson thus far” is how USA Today put it.

Few cities enjoy this as much as San Antonio. But all of it is an overreaction. No one knows this better, or what Jackson was dealing with Thursday, than someone who is Jackson's spiritual opposite.

Gregg Popovich.

That doesn't change the enjoyable sidebar of these Finals, which is the resurgence of Doc Rivers. He's taken considerable heat over the years, with a lot of Celtics' fans wanting him fired a year ago.

This is what Rivers said then: “I know I know what I'm doing. You just wait for the day when you have the tools to prove that. I was laughing with someone the other day. I said, ‘How did Gregg Popovich get Tim Duncan?' They had a terrible record and he was the coach. Could he coach that year or did he become a better coach all of a sudden?”

Popovich sees these things the same way. That's one reason Popovich, when he was the Spurs' general manager, signed Rivers.

“It's easy for Doc to garner respect,” Popovich said Friday. “He has a great way about him, and how he makes people feel comfortable, but with a firm side. Some coaches try to please every player. He doesn't.”

Rivers was a late arrival in 1994 with the Spurs. But when Popovich had a problem, such as with Dennis Rodman, Popovich sought the counsel of only two players. Avery Johnson and Rivers.

So Popovich always knew Rivers would be a natural as a coach. Coincidentally, Peter Holt thought the same. When the Spurs struggled in 1999, Holt was a few losses away from replacing Popovich with Rivers.

Popovich and Rivers would joust over Duncan's free agency, too. But none of this changed how they saw each other, and Popovich says he's happy that Rivers got “the tools” to prove himself.

“As we always say as coaches when we've won in San Antonio,” Popovich said, “we didn't screw it up. Doc hasn't screwed it up, either.”

Rivers takes the same stance when asked if he's outcoaching Jackson. “Phil to me is the best coach, at least of my generation — him and Pat Riley and Gregg Popovich are the three best. I'm not in that class and don't deserve to be in that class ... This is a players' game. It always will be, and it really should be. They did not invent this game for us to be talking about coaches.”

Jackson, in contrast, likes to be talked about. He's cultivated the perception that his psychological manipulations have been the backbone of his championship teams.

Jordan, Pippen, Shaq, Kobe — how could they have done it without him?

Today his image is reversed. Jackson has never had this kind of criticism, and he's never had a Los Angeles columnist wonder “how a man with nine championship rings can allow his team to blow a 24-point lead.”

The answer: Jackson is still a smart coach, as good as there's been, but he's just a coach. And there are times he's as powerless as the next guy.

Sometimes stuff happens. With Rajon Rondo limping, Rivers had to go with little-used Eddie House. House spread the floor, made some shots and helped Thursday's comeback.

Was that brilliant strategy? Or happenstance? The same was there in 2003 for Popovich. Steve Kerr would have never saved the Spurs in the Western Conference finals against Dallas if Tony Parker had not been ill.

Popovich has been on the other side, too, and he was just a few weeks ago. Then the Spurs had a 20-point lead in Game 1 against the Lakers midway through the third quarter and lost. Yes, many said then that Jackson had outcoached Popovich.

So there were the Lakers with the same 20-point lead Thursday night, also midway through the third quarter, also on the same floor. And Popovich, watching from his home in San Antonio, identified with what followed.

He's always said a large, early lead is a coach's nightmare, because he knows what can happen. The game becomes too easy for his players; when the lead erodes, and the other team builds confidence, they can't find the energy and approach they had before.

Popovich had several excuses in his collapse. Unlike the Lakers, the Spurs were on the road, and they were coming off their charter sleepover after a long series against New Orleans. The Spurs also had some injuries, whereas the Celtics were the ones with that.

Still, Popovich saw in his huddle what Jackson saw Thursday. “Dejection,” Popovich said. “They look at you with blank stares. You're trying to get them not to think about what just happened, because it will affect what happens next. But some of them are so psychologically damaged that you can't get it back in a timeout. If you could stop it all and go back to the locker room for 10 minutes, you might have a chance. But you don't have that time.”

That said, Popovich added that just one shot can still change everything. The Spurs didn't get one against the Lakers, and the Lakers didn't Thursday. But in Game 2 in Boston, when the Celtics were blowing a 24-point lead, Paul Pierce drove late, drew a foul and reversed all headlines.

That made Rivers the smart one.

That made Jackson and Popovich, with 13 titles between them, who Rivers sees as the best in the business, the masters of disasters.