History has shown that Phil Jackson has always been reluctant to give rookies any sort of significant playing time on his teams. One might have speculated that this was due to the complex Triangle offense, or maybe Phil's insistence that his players play at a certain level on the defensive end of the floor before they are awarded any serious minutes.
It turns out that neither of those things are the real reason. The fact of the matter is, Phil just sees rookies as some sort of lower life form, which he happily told us about in discussing whether he would be sending Coby Karl and/or Javaris Crittenton to play in some D-League games this season:
"I tell kids when they come into the team that rookies are lower than plankton, and they have to understand that. That's the lowest point in the world. There's an entitlement about this game. There's a learning process. We've talked about that."
I guess it's kind of cool that Phil still goes with that old school mentality that players have to earn their playing time as opposed to getting it just handed to them. But it's much easier for him to stick to this philosophy when we're talking about players like Crittenton and Karl. I mean, if Kevin Durant were on the roster, I have a feeling that Phil would have no problem changing his way of thinking.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-25-2007 @ 2:08AM
frozenlemonaide said...
Phil Jackson is plankton... and does he not know by now that his minute verbage does not do anything to any situation? What does he gain from this? It doesn't work now that he has a team that cannot claim to be invincible or by any means any good.
Reply
11-25-2007 @ 2:09AM
froze said...
Phil Jackson who? Oh yeah, that coach who thought his team was invincible and the Spurs showed him..Does he not know that his silly verbage does not do a thing to anyone? He needs 'rookies' and if you took the top 10 rookies this year and had them play the Lakers.... They would totally blast them..
Reply
11-25-2007 @ 3:29AM
dwarfelk said...
I'm not really a fan of sitting rooks. Can someone please free BWright?
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/stats?statsId=4286
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/players/hollinger?statsId=4286
Reply
11-25-2007 @ 11:42AM
Don Dada said...
Let's not build pillars of salt here, friend... the "triangle" is a funny way of saying "get out of the way, and let Kobe or Jordan hold the ball for 15 seconds every possession."
In the same vein... I wouldn't play Colby or Javaris, either.
Reply
11-25-2007 @ 8:48PM
GARY said...
How are these "rookies" ever to get a chance to prove themselfs? i mean...like the way they have been playing..lol..what would it hurt to let them play?? Might get lucky?
Reply
11-26-2007 @ 1:02AM
ELMA said...
Phill needs to go to the d league to learn how to coach,every game the lakers play when they are up he takes out the players and puts in luke walton who always finds away to looses the ball or do something dumb thenall of a sudden the points are gone then he takes luke out after he tunrned the ball over several times instead of sending the new players to the d league he needs to go they need to get rid of lamar who is a once in a while player,k brown got rid of his self for a while chris m is hopeless and ramanavich should have stayed with the clippers thats why they got rid of him. and did anyone notice when kurt rambis was coaching the team the lakers were winning.get rid of phil and the triangle offense
everybody knows how it works.
Reply