Free Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson, Hugh Delehanty Page A

called and told me that he needed my help to work with the younger players. “I know you’re at the end of your career,” he said, “but coming to New Jersey could be a good bridge between playing and coaching.”
    I wasn’t that interested in becoming a coach, but I was intrigued by Loughery’s maverick style of leadership. After training camp, Loughery said he wanted to move me over to assistant coach, but before that could happen forward Bob Elliott got injured and I was activated as a player. Nevertheless, I got a chance that year to work with the big men as a part-time assistant coach and take over for Kevin as head coach when he was thrown out of games by the refs, which happened fourteen times that season.
    Loughery, who had won two ABA championships, had an exceptional eye for the game and was gifted at exploiting mismatches. But what I learned from him was how to push the envelope and get away with it. Loughery was the first coach I knew who had his players double-team inbound passers at half-court, a high-risk move that often paid off. He also adopted Hubie Brown’s ploy of double-teaming the ball handler and made it a regular part of the defense, even though it wasn’t strictly legal. One of his biggest innovations was developing out-of-the-box isolation plays for our best shooters. That tactic didn’t exactly align with Holzman’s model of five-man offense, but it fit the Nets lineup, which was loaded with good shooters, and opened the way for new forms of creativity to flower in the years to come.
    Our star player was Bernard King, an explosive small forward with a superquick release who had averaged 24.2 points and 9.5 rebounds per game as a rookie the year before. Unfortunately, he also had a substance-abuse problem. One night that season he was found asleep at the wheel at a stop sign and was arrested for drunk driving and cocaine possession. (The charges were later dropped.) This incident pushed Loughery over the edge. He was known for being good at managing self-absorbed stars, but he felt he wasn’t getting through to King and was losing control of the team. So he threatened to quit. When general manager Charlie Theokas asked Loughery to suggest a replacement, he put my name forward. I was a little stunned when I heard this, but it felt good to know that someone of Kevin’s stature thought I could handle the job. Eventually Loughery backed down. Several months later, the Nets traded King to the Utah Jazz, where he spent most of the season in rehab.
    At the start of the 1979–80 season, Loughery told me that he was going to cut me from the active roster but offered me a job as a full-time assistant coach at a substantial pay cut. This was the moment I had always dreaded. I remember driving my car to the Nets’ training center in Piscataway, New Jersey, and thinking that I was never going to feel the thrill of battle again. Sure, I said to myself, I might have some high moments in the future, but unless I had to go through a life-and-death crisis of some kind, I’d probably never have another experience quite like the one I’d had as a player in the NBA.
    Being a coach was not the same, or at least that was how I felt at the time. Win or lose, I’d always be one step removed from the action.
    Somewhere on the outskirts of Piscataway, I found myself having an imaginary conversation with my father, who had died a few months earlier.
    “What am I going to do, Dad?” I said. “Is the rest of my life going to be total drudgery, just going through the motions?”
    Pause.
    “How can anything else ever be as meaningful to me as playing basketball? Where am I going to find my new purpose in life?”
    It would take several years for me to find the answer.

5
    DANCES WITH BULLS
    Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.
    CHARLIE PARKER
    T his wasn’t the first time that Jerry Krause had called me about a job with the Bulls. Three years earlier, when Stan Albeck was head coach, Jerry had invited