“Basketball is a sport that involves the subtle
interweaving of players at full speed to the point where they
are thinking and moving as one.”
Phil Jackson, Sacred Hoops
Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson—by percentage
(.738) the winningest coach in NBA history—is renowned for
his ability to turn megastars into team players. And his secret
is spiritual. “The most effective way to forge a winning
team,” he writes in Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of
a Hardwood Warrior, “is to call on the players' need
to connect with something larger than themselves.”
Blending principles from Zen Buddhism and the teachings of the
Lakota Sioux with his experience from over twenty years as a
professional player and coach, Jackson led Michael Jordan and
the Chicago Bulls to three consecutive titles not once, but
twice, from '91 to '93 and '96 to '98. Then he did it yet again
with the Lakers and Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, from '00
to '02. Before Jackson arrived, both the Bulls and the Lakers
were teams that, despite the presence of breathtaking talent,
had failed to achieve the harmony needed to win championships.
Yet under his guidance, schooled in his characteristically
unselfish, team-oriented style, they went on to record-breaking
success. So what does this remarkable head coach have to say
about the heightened group consciousness that can awaken when
teams come together beyond the divisive forces of the ego?
WIE spoke with him last December, as the Lakers were
coming off a ten-game winning streak, to find out.
WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT?: In Sacred Hoops
you write about “the energy that's unleashed when players
put their egos aside and work toward a common goal.” You
also refer to “a powerful group intelligence [that]
emerges that is greater than the coach's ideas or those of any
individual on the team.” What is that powerful energy and
intelligence that emerges in a collective when the ego is set
aside? How is it experienced?
Phil Jackson: When a player surrenders his
self-interest for the greater good, his fullest gifts as an
athlete are manifested. He's not trying to force a shot, or do
something that's not in his repertoire of basketball moves, or
impose his personality on the team. It's funny—by playing
within his natural abilities, he activates a higher
potential beyond his abilities, a higher potential for
the team. It changes things for everybody. All of a sudden, the
rest of the team can react instinctively to what that player is
doing. And it just kind of mushrooms out from there—the
whole begins to add up to more than the sum of its parts. We see
this a lot in critical situations. When players are totally
focused on the team goal, their efforts can create
chain reactions. It's as if they become totally connected to one
another, in sync with one another, like five fingers on one
hand. When one finger moves, the rest of them all react to
it.
For example, we have a ballplayer on this team who loves to
chase balls for steals on defense. If he's worried about scoring
points at the other end of the floor, or worried about what
happened on the last play, he won't do it. But when he commits
himself on defense, his teammates react to his natural
opportunism and come to cover for him, because they know
intuitively what he's going to be doing. Everybody is activated,
and good things start happening. It's interesting—the
other players are consciously aware of the fact that
they're anticipating their teammate's behavior. Somehow,
mysteriously, they just know the timing is right. They simply
feel something out ahead of themselves and make their move. It's
not an out-of-body experience or anything like that. They just
feel the tremendous pull of an activity, of what has to happen
next. At that moment, they're called to activate themselves. I
think that's what players mean when they say “I had to go;
I had to commit.” It doesn't even occur to them that they
shouldn't.
WIE: What does it take to bring about this shift,
this conscious shift of attention from the concerns of the
individual to the success of the team? Superstars, especially,
tend to have big egos and to want to stand out from the group.
How have you managed to convince them to, as you put it,
“surrender the 'me' for the 'we'”?
Jackson: Well, one has to demonstrate that if a
person does this, they're rewarded for it, because the team
succeeds. The fact is, selflessness is the soul of teamwork. We
have a practical rule in our game: when you stop the basketball,
when it resides in your presence and you hold it for longer than
two counts, you've destroyed our rhythm. When the ball is in
your hands, you become the focal point. And when you
become the focus, our system breaks down. It's that simple.
Suddenly the defense can catch up, and the spacing is destroyed.
So it's the unselfish players—players who are more
interested in reading what's happening and keeping the flow
going on the floor—who are the most valuable players that
you have. They may only be averaging seven points a game, four
points a game, or whatever, but their ability to play in a
selfless manner gives the team its real opportunities. In those
individuals, the power of we instead of me is
more advanced. They feel more responsibility to the group, and
that's why you're better off with maybe two very, very talented
and perhaps selfish people on the team than five or six or
seven. That's why teams that are less talented but more selfless
and group-oriented can have more success. You might say the San
Antonio Spurs were a successful team last year because of that
ability that they had. The Bulls were a very successful team
because of that ability. And the Lakers, when I first started
watching them in the late nineties, were not
successful—even though they were very, very
talented—because they couldn't do that.
You see, the real reason the Bulls won six NBA championships
in nine years is that we plugged into the power of
oneness instead of the power of one man. Sure, we had
Michael Jordan, and you have to credit his talent. But at the
other end of the spectrum, if players 9, 10, 11, and 12 are
unhappy because Michael takes twenty-five shots a game, their
negativity is going to undermine everything. It doesn't matter
how good individual players are—they can't compete with a
team that is awake and aware and trusts each other. People don't
understand that. Most of the time, everybody's so concerned
about not being disrespected. But you have to check that
attitude at the door—that defensiveness, that protection
of your own image and reputation. Everybody needs help in this
game. Everybody's going to get dunked on. We're all susceptible
to falling down and being exposed. But when we lose our fear of
that, and look to each other, then vulnerability turns into
strength, and we can take responsibility for our place in the
larger context of the team and embrace a vision in which the
group imperative takes precedence over personal glory.