Legendary Coach Phil Jackson Blasts the Woke NBA, Says He Doesn't Watch Games Anymore

Eleven-time NBA champion coach Phil Jackson has lost interest in the basketball league because it’s simply gotten too political.

The former coach of the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers appeared on the “Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin” podcast earlier this month and said he didn’t stop watching the game immediately after stepping away from coaching—it was the league’s woke messaging during the 2020 COVID lockdowns that turned him off.

Although the conversation was recorded on April 5, it’s gone viral on social media over the weekend.

Listen:

Phil Jackson, widely seen as the greatest coach in NBA history, says he doesn’t watch the NBA anymore because of all the political slogans introduced in 2020. He’s not alone in this. My oldest daughter and I used to love watching but it got too political to watch. pic.twitter.com/bV6Sb0qvrK

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) April 22, 2023

Jackson describes when he thought the Association went off the rails:

I watched some of the game evolve and decided…. and they went into the lockout year and they did something that was kind of wanky. They did a bubble down in Orlando and all the teams that could qualify went down there and stayed down there.

I remember it well. It was an almost surreal feeling watching games that had no fans in attendance. Jackson:

And they had things on their back, like, you know, Justice, and yeah… You know, I mean a funny thing, like “Justice just went to the basket and Equal Opportunity just knocked him down.”

And somebody had another name for a guy who has a jersey, on the back of the jersey, had some other slogan, some of my grandkids thought that was pretty funny to play up those names.

So I couldn’t watch that. And then Lakers won. [Laughing.] Actually, they won that year.

First look at NBA players wearing social justice messages on the back of their jerseys. pic.twitter.com/g34t41cRRx

— ESPN (@espn) July 30, 2020

Asked whether he thought the NBA game had become a slideshow, Jackson said politics and sports simply don’t mix:

They even had slogans on the floor. On the baseline. It was catering. It was trying to cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience into play. And they didn’t know it was turning other people off. People want to see sports as non-political.

You know, we’ve had we’ve had a lot of different type of players that have gone on to be like, you know, Bill Bradley was a senator, a number of baseball players have been representatives and senators and political, but their politics stay out of the game.

It doesn’t need to be there. [Emphasis mine.]

Jackson, notoriously quirky and sometimes referred to as the “Zen Master,” is nonetheless one of the greatest coaches of all time—in any sport. Take a look at this resume, courtesy of the Chicago Bulls:

All in all, Phil Jackson was an NBA Head Coach for 20 seasons, nine in Chicago and 11 in Los Angeles. He is the game’s winningest coach with 11 titles. He also ranks 7th all-time with a regular season won-loss record of 1,155-485 (.704), and first with a postseason mark of 229-104.

He won six titles with the Michael Jordan-led Bulls, and five with the Lakers, who were powered by Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal (although Shaq departed for the Miami Heat after the first three trophies). Jackson also played 10 seasons in the NBA, winning two championship rings with the New York Knicks.

Jackson’s take is spot-on. My interest in the league faded during the bubble also, and although I’ll watch a playoff game here or there, my passion for the NBA simply faded away. The problem with injecting politics into sports is that you will most likely offend at least half your audience. While ratings aren’t terrible for the league this year, it’s notable that the 2023 NBA All-Star game was the least-watched in history.

As Jackson said, a political angle simply “doesn’t need to be there.”