Michael Ventre

Perhaps it’s fitting that Phil Jackson was voted into the Basketball Hall of Fame during the season in which he’s doing his best coaching job. And maybe his worst coaching job.

Before the All-Star break, Jackson was getting some Coach of the Year consideration for doing yeoman’s work with the undertalented Lakers. It’s not like he turned the current Memphis Grizzlies into the current Dallas Mavericks or anything. But considering what he had to work with, the fact that the Lakers were 30-24 at the All-Star break was cause for hardwood canonization.

Since then, the Zen Master has barely passed muster. His charges are 11-16 since the break and they needed every ounce of effort to simply qualify for the playoffs. And few expect them to give their first-round opponents — probably the Phoenix Suns — any kind of resistance at all. Amare Stoudamire came out and said as much, and got not even a peep of protest out of the Lakers’ camp.

Still, the man to whom Jackson is most often compared is Red Auerbach, and with respectful apologies to the departed patriarch of the Celtics clan, what Jackson has accomplished up to this point is more impressive as a coach than what Red did.

Blasphemy? Get over it. Simply put, Auerbach coached during a simpler time, and while he no doubt was one of the greatest ever, he might not have fared as well today in an era that requires the constant smoothing of egos, the complications of the salary cap and free agency, the sniping over minutes, the intrusion of mass media, the expanded travel, the erosion of fundamental skills and the sense of entitlement that permeates professional athletics.

Red was a basketball genius. But basketball is only part of the job today. If all Red had to worry about was basketball, he’d be fine.

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In most cases, it’s foolish to compare individuals from different eras. But with Red, it’s imperative to point out that he was feisty, arrogant, abrasive, demanding and authoritarian. His personality wouldn’t be different today. Therefore, it’s unlikely he would be able to adapt. He’d get canned the first time he got into a public tiff with a star player who was coming up on free agency. And there’d be plenty of tiffs.

As brilliant a coach as Auerbach was, he was probably an even better evaluator of talent. That’s how he was able to build teams that won nine championships with him as head coach. Today it would be different. He’d be at the mercy of the modern system and wouldn’t be able to flim-flam executives from other teams for the services of star players. This era wouldn’t mesh with Red’s skill set.

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Jackson had Michael Jordan, which helped. Jordan, Scottie Pippen and the rest of the Bulls — and yes, Jerry Krause did a fine job as general manager putting together those pieces — collaborated on six titles during an era when the NBA has expanded to its current 30 clubs from the 11 that were in existence when Auerbach began as a head coach of the now-defunct Washington Capitols in 1946.

Coaching people like Jordan and Pippen might not have been such a challenge if those players had performed in the ‘40s and ‘50s. But in the ‘90s, Jordan wasn’t just a player, he was a rock star, an icon, and the ensuing attention created a complex web of ego, jealousy, greed, ambition and competitiveness that only someone with Jackson’s philosophical and psychological approach could get the most out of.

That same set of conditions existed when Jackson took the Lakers’ job for the 1999-2000 season. He walked into the midst of the Shaquille O’Neal-Kobe Bryant rivalry, kept them working together through tense times, and managed to win three straight titles even though his two stars wanted to beat each other’s heads in.

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