Lakernoise

Yes, we all know that Phil Jackson is the smartest basketball coach in the known universe. So it stands to reason that, with his prodigious memory, lofty IQ and exquisite deductive powers, Jackson just doesn’t screw up very often.

Yet when he does make a mistake, it’s often a real lulu, a stupendous boner.

For example, there was the time late in his tenure with the Chicago Bulls that ole PJ decided to send a special lady friend some of that fancy Victoria Secret style underwear. The only problem was, according to team employees who laughed themselves silly over the incident, he allegedly put the wrong address on the package. When the carrier couldn’t deliver the underwear and returned it to his office, Jackson’s secretary assumed it was something he had purchased for his wife and directed the package to her.

A hard rain fell after that one.

Those same Bulls employees swore that the wayward underwear had originally been sent to a lady in Arizona.

You’d think that would have been enough to teach Big Chief Triangle a lesson. Leave the state alone, son.

But Jackson likes to get into those tweak-the-opponent modes during the play-offs, so now we have the great immigration caper. Jackson apparently forgot his bad karma with the desert and committed one of the silliest mistakes of his venerable career when he opened his mouth about Arizona’s controversial new approach to enforcing  immigration laws.

Worst of all, Jackson decided to address the issue just as his Lakers were about to take on the Phoenix Suns in the Western Conference finals. Strangest of all, Jackson, who has a progressive, liberal image dating back to his hippie days playing for the New York Knicks, seemed to support the hard-line approach of Arizona’s Republican governor, who has pushed the crackdown.

All of a sudden here’s PJ coming across like one of those angry tea-bagger militants, and like that he’s driven a wedge into a Lakers fan base that once worshiped the Zen Master. Instead, Jackson was greeted for Game 1 of the Western Conference finals by Lakers fans protesting his political posturing.

And that doesn’t even touch the miffed and hurt co-workers in the Lakers organization and on the roster (see Kobe Bryant’s wife) offended by his statements.

How bad is it?

Well, Jackson girlfriend Jeanie Buss and her sidekicks — I’ll call them the Jackson inner core — went to work soon after his blunder with a major damage control effort that included contacting all the media and spinning the situation as best they could. They employed that old Lakers PR flack John Black in getting the word out and phoned all their personal media connections.

Heck, they even contacted me, which suggests how desperate they are. They knew I’d probably do something like drag up the silly underwear episode, but, hey, they needed to control the damage with Jackson’s all-important base — Lakers fans.

Fortunately, Jeanie Buss is absolutely fantastic at damage control because all of the Los Angeles media are sweet on her, not to mention the fans themselves. Even I admit to falling under her lure.

“She’s some kind of gal,” Tex Winter once told me after he met Jeanie for the first time. If she can snare Tex’s affection, she can have mine any day.

So here I go helping the PJ cause with a bit of spin mixed in with my own observations.

One of the issues is that Jackson and Jeanie’s father, team owner Jerry Buss, have a stand-offish relationship that has left to question whether Jackson will return to coach the Lakers next year. His contract is up, and Jerry Buss doesn’t seem overly fond of Jackson, who has something of a history stirring up the shit with owners and organizations.

Jackson’s only true power against Jerry Buss is Jackson’s own popularity with Lakers fans. He and Jeanie used that popularity to help him get rehired in 2005 after Jerry Buss fired him in 2004.

So it’s not smart that Jackson offended his base with his stance on immigration. And it’s not smart that he would do so during the playoffs when the team is trying to build the tremendous championship focus that Jackson’s great teams have been known for.

Does all of this give Jerry Buss more leeway in cutting Jackson loose after the season? It sure seems like it could. If Jackson pisses off the fans, well, he’s in trouble.

However, that’s not entirely the case. To get a breakdown on the Jeanie spin and other inside dope, we’ll turn to my usual reliable source. He’s tight with Jeanie and Phil and always knows exactly what’s going on. They rely on him to get the inside word out, and he does. We’ll call him The Pernicious Phil Insider. Maybe this will make Mark Heisler of the L.A. Times happier. Heisler gets so frustrated that all the inside poop escapes him. Heisler runs around trying to throw water on all the Internet stories, which leaves him hardly any time at all for doing any real reporting. But I digress…

“I think he made a rookie mistake,” the Pernicious Phil Insider said of Jackson. “It’s a no-win situation all over the place. He misread the crowd and he misread the politics and he got outside of his game.”

Then the Insider started talking about Phil’s “nuanced” language being misunderstood.

Plus, the Insider said, Phil was just searching for something to tweak the Suns, because their organization had come out strong against the new immigration enforcement.

I told him I thought that was a silly defense for Phil. Why spin it?

Personally, I think that Phil should just come out and say, “Look, I’m a dope. I’m not really as smart as I try to act all the time. I did something really stupid by opening my mouth about this immigration thing. I have no idea what I’m talking about, so if it’s OK with everyone I’ll get back to what I do know, and that’s basketball.”

Yes, it would require Jackson humbling himself, which may be physically impossible with the size of his ego. But if he did that, people would forget all this in about three hours, less than a single news cycle.

Jackson, though, has been so goofy and coy in his news conferences that reporters seem intent on asking him lots about it and holding his feet to the fire.

As for the whole thing providing Jerry Buss with ample reason not to bring Phil back next year at his exorbitant salary of $12 million per season, the Insider did point out some things that make sense.

Jerry Buss has been reminded during these playoffs of just how good a coach Phil Jackson is. “With any other coach, they don’t survive that first round against Oklahoma City,” the Insider says.

After all, Phil uses Tex Winter’s triangle offense to get such a high degree of efficiency out of the team’s role players that he’s worth every penny of his big bucks.

Will Jerry Buss really want to gamble on another coach next season? That, of course, is the question.

Jackson himself seemed to be pouting a bit in the wake of the uproar over his comments and suggested to one radio interviewer that he just might retire after the season.

The Insider reminds us all that Jackson is cranky this time of year and it’ll take only a week back in Montana during the off-season before he’s bored and wants to coach again.

If that’s the case, Phil, do yourself a favor and leave immigration policy to people who understand the full range of human issues involved. While you’re at it, don’t send off any more fancy underwear either. And most important of all, look out for those Celtics. They got something nasty coming for ya.

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, recently released by ESPN Books.