NBA FINALS: PISTONS v LAKERS

June 6, 2004

Phil Jackson

COACH PHIL JACKSON: No, it's not the most difficult personal season I've had. I've had more difficult seasons. As a team, I think it's the most difficult season, the team that I've coached, has had. I think that ranks right up there as overcoming some adversity for this basketball club, dealing with a number of players that missed, injuries, and other situations that caused players to miss. It would be, I think, a very rewarding victory for us, but we are not thinking about that. We're thinking about one game at a time right now as we go through this. We have the end goal in sight, but it's not anything that we can do about, just being right here and being in the now and the first game and trying to find a way to play this basketball club, we think is a great challenge.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: I asked his father to come out to Pine Ridge, South Dakota to do a clinic about 35 years ago and I think I did have some influence in Luke's upbringing just from that situation. He's a kid that knows basketball, he's a kid that has a pulse for the game, and I think that's the connection.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: Well, it's a critical game and it's extremely important. Puts a lot of pressure on the team, you lose the first game or a home game in a series that's a 7-game series like this when it's 2-3-2. However, we know that Larry's Philadelphia team was able to come in here and win in an overtime game, the only game that the 2002 Laker team lost, I believe, in that series, or in that season, post-season as they went through that in remarkable fashion. We think that it's a difficult game to play. It's a week off for us, seven days, and six days for them. Both teams are a little bit out of rhythm, but more so from lack of familiarity. The league is structured now with 30 teams -- 29 teams this year, 30 next year, it's difficult to find a rhythm in the schedule so that you have ability to create the rivalries that occasion when the East meets the West in the Finals. Our situation was simply chaotic in November. We played each other within four days, and was a year ago.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: I wasn't always able to do that. The process, we've looked at a certain period of the year where January, we knew we were going to be without players. We had three players, key players, in Kobe, Shaq and Karl were injured in that moment. We just said, we'll play through this and find a way, when you guys are healthy, to get ourselves back again on the floor. Without being able to see that, we kind of trusted the fact that we would be all right. Karl's injury went from a short week of missing games to 40 games. Kobe was injured twice severely, badly with a shoulder injury and once with a finger injury that caused him to miss games in that period of time, so there was never any continuity for the team. But we saw down the road in the schedule, that after the All-Star break, we would have one more long road trip and then we would be back for a considerable period of time. We kept saying, when we get back from this road trip, that seemed to be unending in the months of January and February, we are going to put it together. But right now, let's play these kids and get an opportunity for you guys to mature a little bit, and that's what happened with some of the younger players. We won some games that were important for us, we kept the momentum going, and we're able to keep our head above water.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: Well, the NBA had a test that you took at that particular time for retired players, and the three things that popped out was one, outdoor expedition leader, minister/psychologist, and house husband. Those were the things that stood out. (Laughter). So, fortunately, I found another profession.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: No, Larry is consistent in what he does as a coach. I think that Philadelphia team was a very good defensive team. They kept very good pressure on you. They had very good pressure guards in Iverson and Snow. The consistency of what he does with his players I think is pretty obvious. They play with great intensity. They have a lot of ability to move the basketball, by air as well as dribbling it. They will front in the post. There's some things they do on screen rolls that you have to be prepared for. They are always willing to set up a trap or pressure in situations. Those things are consistent and we can prepare for those. We cannot prepare for the personalities that have taken over those roles. Rasheed, coming in, for example, to play a very active power forward position is something we have not experienced. We know he is a good defender from our many occasions against Portland when he was there, so we have a feel for his individual activity, but not when he's coached by Larry.