Jackson, Auerbach best of their eras

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist

The one that has hovered over these playoffs even before they began months ago.

Namely, does what will be Lakers coach Phil Jackson's record-tying ninth NBA championship — his third three-peat — earn him a place on the all-time coaching pedestal alongside Boston's Red Auerbach?

Does the Zen Master's collective 12-year body of work with the Chicago Bulls and Lakers merit the hanging of another portrait in the hall of great NBA coaches?

Auerbach, just as feisty and arrogant at 84 as when he was choking victims with the smoke from nine NBA "victory" cigars between 1957 and '66, has said a resounding no.

He has said a lot of other things, too, mostly belittling Jackson's accomplishments to this point as being the product of "ready-made" teams. Nor has Auerbach been alone. University of Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins — he of no titles, NCAA or NBA — among others, has echoed Auerbach's sentiments and added a few of his own.

A debate over who is the better coach — Auerbach or Jackson — is an argument without purpose because they are men of vastly different eras if sometimes similarly smug personalities. One from the formative NBA of eight and nine teams, the other of multi-layered expansion to 29 teams. One won in a day when just taking two series could get you a title; the other in a period when the playoffs stretch into summer with a four-series gauntlet.

In his day, Auerbach was a consolidator of talent, a man whose keen eye for finding and developing players allowed the Celtics to win nine titles in 10 amazing seasons.

Jackson's accomplishments, which include winning 23 consecutive playoff series, are no less remarkable. They're of a man who has mastered a different place and time.

While Jackson inherited his core of stars — Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen at Chicago; Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant at L.A. — he did so in the midst of a transitory free agency and salary cap era.

In Auerbach's day, not much removed from the two-hand set shot, there were no mega-buck contracts and fewer egos of Zeppelin-like proportions to contend with. A large number of NBA players held second jobs in the off season.

How Jackson has, at both Chicago and L.A., nurtured a productive coexistence among superstars and built role players around them to allow two teams to dominate in two decades is no less praiseworthy than what Auerbach accomplished on the parquet in Boston.

The best coach? Each is the tops during his NBA period.

Period.