Legendary head coach Phil Jackson is no longer watching professional basketball.
Jackson made a recent appearance on the Tetragrammaton podcast to talk about the current state of the NBA and he made it clear that he is not much of a fan of the league after the bubble in Orlando experience.
The reason? He didn’t like the slogans on players’ jerseys or on the court.
“I am not enjoying the game; that’s too bad. There’s a whole generation that doesn’t like the game. No, I don’t (watch basketball). I watched the game evolve, and then they went into the lockout year and did something that was kind of wanky; they did a bubble down in Orlando,” Jackson said.
Back in 2020, the league found a way to finish out the season with the “NBA Bubble” in Orlando during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jackson revealed he wasn’t a fan of how the league went about handling its business.
“All the teams that could qualify went down there and stayed down there, no audience, and they had things on their back like ‘Justice’ and a funny thing happened like ‘Justice went to the basket and Equal Opportunity knocked him down,’” Jackson said. “Some of my grandkids thought it was pretty funny to play up those names; I couldn’t watch that.”
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The NBA agreed to let players wear slogans such as “Justice,” “Equality,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Say Their Names,” “Vote,” “Peace” and others on the back of their jerseys instead of their names during the bubble in 2020 as a show of support for fighting racial injustice in the United States.
That decision came as a result of massive protests during the 2020 summer after the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, and Breonna Taylor, an unarmed Black woman who was killed in her home. Games had to be postponed when players refused to play in the wake of the killing of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was shot in the back by Wisconsin police.
Before his coaching career, Jackson played for the Knicks for several years.
Jackson is a prominent former NBA player and head coach, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest coaches in league history. Jackson won an impressive 11 NBA championships as a head coach, six with the Chicago Bulls and five with the Los Angeles Lakers.
With the Bulls, Jackson had the privilege of coaching Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman, among other talented players. Together, they created one of the most dominant dynasties in NBA history, winning six championships in just eight years.
After leaving the Bulls, Jackson coached the Lakers, where he continued his success and won five more championships with players like Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal. Jackson officially retired from coaching in 2011.
