More Than a Game

Though Phil Jackson won six NBA titles in eight years as coach of the Chicago Bulls, many an analyst opined that his success had less to do with his much-discussed "Zen" approach to basketball than with the presence of Michael Jordan on the Bulls roster. So in 1999, when Jackson took over a beleaguered Los Angeles Lakers team, the sports world was watching closely. As it turned out, Phil Jackson was observing himself and his new team closely, too, collaborating with his good friend Charley Rosen on a firsthand account of the 1999-2000 season and an exploration of his lifelong pursuit of the purity at the heart of the game.

Throughout the season—which culminated in the Lakers winning the NBA Championship—Phil and Charley got together frequently to tape conversations about the challenge of bringing discipline and focus to a talented Lakers team that had failed to achieve its potential. Phil wrote his own account of the Lakers' game-by-game progress and his views on the state of the NBA; Charley added his novelist's impressions of the Lakers, Los Angeles, and the league. Together they bring you the fascinating inside story of the founding of a new Lakers dynasty and the triumph of Phil Jackson's hardwood metaphysics.