The Los Angeles Lakers are a mess and he’s not going to be walking through the door any time soon.
That’s basically the message Hall of Fame Coach Phil Jackson gave to the L.A. Times this week as he candidly discussed the state of an organization that could end up paying as much as $80 million in luxury taxes alone next season for violating the league’s stringent salary cap rules.
“They have to get that straight right away,” Jackson added, though he keenly noted the issues hardly end there.
The team is still trying to make sense of the Dwight Howard free agent situation and what it may take to keep him in L.A. Howard and first-year coach Mike D-Antoni openly clashed this season and since the Lakers were sweep out of the first round of the playoffs by San Antonio the team’s star center has incessantly complained he feels he was misused for much of the year.
Clearly, the organization has many issues that need resolving; they just shouldn’t be expecting the answers to come from the man who brought the franchise five NBA titles.
"Sometimes I feel I can still get out there and do it but the reality is I'm kidding myself," he told the Times of any chance he may return to coaching. “It's those long flights and three o'clock nights -- getting up after five hours of sleep and going back to work, those are the things that wear you out."
In fact, Jackson told the paper there is just one scenario in which he could see himself reemerging.
"The Lakers are going through crisis and if they ask me to come and sit and just listen to what's going on, I'm willing to do that," he said. "As of right now there's not a position that's open there, in which to have an influence -- so I understand that."
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