If the LA Lakers are serious about re-hiring Phil Jackson as head coach, they might want to invest in one of those automated La-Z-Boy recliners that helps you stand up again.
After all, Jackson ended his career after the 2011 season using a special, larger chair to protect his surgically repaired back.
The LA Times reported earlier today LA is “95 percent” sure Jackson will return to lead Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.
“I think it would be great,” new Lakers center Dwight Howard said. “He’s a guy I could learn a lot from.”
Sources told the Times that the decision belongs to Jackson, and the team is not looking at other candidates.
Jackson is 67 now and he’s 6-foot-8, meaning the daily grind of an NBA season appears to affect him more than others.
However, he’s also one of the most successful coaches in NBA history, with a career record of 1026 wins and 431 losses.
He won 11 NBA championships as coach of the Chicago Bulls and Lakers, and two as a player in the early 1970s.
He left the Lakers after the 2004 season due in part to contract demands and his deteriorating relationship with Bryant, but returned in 2005 after Rudy Tomjanovich’s brief stint leading the club.
LA fired Mike Brown on Friday after the Lakers managed just one win. The team responded on Friday night against Golden State, thumping the Warriors 101-77.
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“We just had to focus on our execution. It was about coming out and playing hard,” Bryant said Friday night, Reuters reported.
“We really just went out there and played almost like a pickup game.”
Much is being made, by fans and journalists covering the team, that Bryant wasn’t happy with Brown.
He all but confirmed that on Friday night, according to ESPN’s J.A. Adande.
“You guys know how I feel about Phil,” Bryant told reporters after the GSW game. “The one thing that's kind of always bothered me is the last year [of
Jackson’s tenure] I wasn’t able to give him my normal self, you know what I mean, because I was playing on one leg.
“He’s too great of a coach to kind of have it go out that way. … That’s kind of my personal sentiment.”
With Bryant healing from knee surgery, and Jackson’s health better now, too, it appears only a matter of time before the Lakers reintroduce their new old head coach.
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