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MINDGAMES
Phil Jackson’s Long Str ange Journey

Roland Lazenby

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Copyright © 2002 by Roland Lazenby. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of
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DOI: 10.1036/0071400028
 C ON TEN TS

Acknowledgments v
Introduction ix
1 Epiphanies 1
2 The Different Drummer 13
3 Son of the Northern Plains 41
4 Monkey Time 71
5 The Professional 83
6 The Assistant 111
7 Michael’s Coach 145
8 Strange Days 181
9 The Hard Road 235
10 The Last Dance 281
11 The Middle Path 341
12 A Polite Coup 391
Index 409

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iii
This page intentionally left blank.
 AC K N O W L ED G M E N T S

Phil Jackson is one of the most complex

figures in the history of American professional sports. Widely adored and
held in the highest of esteem by fans in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and
the world over, Jackson has built a career on finding success through a vari-
ety of unconventional approaches.
Interpreting his actions and discerning his motives could easily prove a
daunting task for any biographer. If anything redeems this effort, it is the
insight offered by Tex Winter, who has granted me numerous candid inter-
views over the past half dozen seasons. Long known for his frankness about
the high-priced stars he coaches, Winter has taken the same approach with
his own boss. He admires Jackson yet never hesitates to criticize him.
Jackson, for his part, seems to accept this criticism as part of his rela-
tionship with his mentor. In fact, the coach clearly relies on Winter’s frank-
ness, in spite of the fact that it frequently annoys him.
“Phil would like to control me,” Winter offered during an interview in
February 2000. “But he knows he can’t.”
Jackson has complained privately that I somehow duped Winter into pro-
viding inside detail for my 1998 book about the Bulls, Blood on the Horns.
Yet it was Jackson himself who volunteered most of the truly sensitive
information during our interviews. It was Jackson who told me of the bath-
room battles between Michael Jordan and Bulls VP Jerry Krause. And it was
Jackson who revealed Scottie Pippen’s drunken verbal assault on Krause on
a team bus in Seattle that year.
I’ve interviewed Jackson several times over the years and have always
found him to be forthcoming about events, even when the information he
provides casts himself in a negative light.

v
vi • Acknowledgments

By no means is this an authorized biography. As much as Jackson would

prefer that I not write it, he has taken no steps to restrict my access to his
team or to people who might provide information about him. As a result,
Winter has offered some refreshing insight into a complicated figure.
I have also drawn heavily on Jackson’s own published works, especially his
first autobiography, Maverick: More Than a Game, a rawer, more daring
account of his early life than his 1995 title Sacred Hoops provided.
Beyond Winter and Jackson’s own works, my effort was aided immensely
by a host of interviews and published material.
My accounts of Jackson’s early years were greatly aided by interviews
with Leon and Audrey Olson, Jim Simle, Bob Sathe, Peter Porinsh, Bill She-
morry, Dean Winkjer, Tom Kvamme, and Chuck Johnson. Also of great
value were the archives of the Williston Daily Herald and the Grand Forks
Herald, as well as Douglas S. Looney’s work in The National Observer, and
David Halberstam’s fine biography of Michael Jordan, Playing for Keeps.
Also helpful in discovering the history of Jackson’s home region were Mon-
tana by Norma Tirrell and The Smithsonian Guide to Historic America: The
Plains States by Suzanne Winckler.
Reporters Tim Layden, Mark Singelais, Tim Wilkins, and other staff
reports from the Albany Times-Union provided excellent accounts of Jack-
son’s days in the Continental Basketball Association, as did the reporting of
Chris Young, who covered the CBA for the Toronto Star. Jackson’s Sacred
Hoops was also useful.
Phil Berger’s book Miracle on 33rd Street provided a fascinating look at
the New York Knicks during Jackson’s playing days. Also helpful was Berger’s
illustrated history of the Knicks. In addition, Berger was kind enough to
answer my follow-up questions, and Walt Frazier provided detail of his and
Jackson’s early years in the league in an interview.
Much additional help came from the host of periodicals and newspapers
covering the Knicks during that period, including The New York Times,
Sports Illustrated, Sport, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Daily
News, and The Sporting News.
As for Jackson’s success in Chicago, I have witnessed much of it first hand
and conducted many interviews over the years.
Additional recent interviews for this project include Johnny Bach, Bill
Wennington, Luc Longley, Michael Jordan, Jim Cleamons, and Winter.
Jackson’s Chicago period received perhaps the most intense press cover-
age in the history of professional basketball, which was no small factor in my
research. I was aided immensely by the work of a range of writers and
 Acknowledgments • vii

reporters, including Paul Ladewski of the Southtown Economist; Sam Smith,

Terry Armour, Melissa Isaacson, Karen Klages, and other staff writers at the
Chicago Tribune; Lacy Banks, John Jackson, Rick Telander, Jay Mariotti,
Mark Vancil, J. A. Adande, and other staff writers from the Chicago Sun-
Times; Kent McDill and other writers from the Daily Herald; Greg Boeck,
Roscoe Nance, and David DuPree of USA Today; Roy S. Johnson, Dirk
Johnson, Thomas Rogers, George Vecsey, Ira Berkow, Sam Goldaper, and
other staff writers from The New York Times; Richard Hoffer, Jack McCal-
lum, L. Jon Wertheim, Frank DeFord, Jackie MacMullen, Ian Thomsen,
Marty Burns, and other writers from Sports Illustrated; Dave D’Allesandro,
Paul Dottino, Bill Pennington, and other writers from the Bergen Record;
Peter Richmond and Mark Vancil from The National; Dave Kindred from
The Sporting News; Terry Pluto from the Akron Beacon Journal; Jeff Coplon
from The New York Times Magazine; Gary Binford from Newsday; Tom
Callahan from U.S. News & World Report; Rachel Alexander and Michael
Wilbon from The Washington Post.
For Jackson’s tenure in Los Angeles, I am indebted to many who granted
me interviews, including Kobe Bryant, Derek Fisher, Rick Fox, Jim Cleamons,
Winter, Robert Horry, Shaquille O’Neal, Brian Shaw, Scot Pollard, Tim
Kawakami, Howard Beck, Jerry West, Walt Frazier, Eddie Jones, Kevin
Loughery, Tyron Lue, John Celestand, John Salley, Glen Rice, Ron Harper,
Devean George, A. C. Green, and Travis Knight.
I was aided greatly by the fine coverage provided by Tim Kawakami, Randy
Harvey, J. A. Adande, Bill Platschke, Lonnie White, and Mark Heisler of the
Los Angeles Times; Howard Beck, Karen Crouse, and Tom Modesti of the
L.A. Daily News; Kevin Ding, Janis Carr, Mark Whicker, Randy Youngman,
and Steve Bisheff of the Orange County Register; Steve Brandon, Jim Beseda,
Geoffrey Arnold, and Kerry Eggers of The Oregonian; Conrad Brunner, Mark
Monteith, Bill Benner, and Phil Richards of the Indianapolis Star-News.
I was also aided by the work of dozens of writers who have covered the
NBA, including Mitch Albom, Terry Armour, Jesse Barkin, Terry Boers,
Clifton Brown, Kelly Carter, Mitch Chortkoff, Robert Falkoff, Bill Gleason,
Bill Halls, Scott Howard-Cooper, Mike Imrem, Bernie Lincicome, Bob
Logan, Jay Mariotti, Corky Meinecke, Mike Mulligan, Skip Myslenski,
Glenn Rogers, Steve Rosenbloom, Eddie Sefko, Gene Seymour, Ray Sons,
Paul Sullivan, Mike Tulumello, Bob Verdi, and many, many others. Their
work has been invaluable.
Extensive use was made of a variety of publications, including the Balti-
more Sun, Basketball Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Defender, Chicago Tri-
viii • Acknowledgments

bune, Chicago Sun-Times, Daily Southtown, The Detroit News, The Detroit
Free Press, Daily Herald, Hoop Magazine, Houston Post, Houston Chron-
icle, Inside Sports, Los Angeles Times, The National, New York Daily News,
The New York Times, New York Post, The Charlotte Observer, USA Today,
The Oregonian, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Antonio Express-News, Sport,
Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, Street & Smith’s Pro Basketball Year-
book, and The Washington Post.
Also vital were many books, including From Muscular Christianity to the
Market Place by Albert Gammon Applin II; Holzman on Hoops by Red
Holzman and Harvey Frommer; Sacred Hoops by Phil Jackson and Hugh
Delehanty; Still Crazy About the Cats by Jamie H. Vaught; The Glory and
the Dream by William Manchester; The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith; Tran-
sition Game by Melissa Isaacson; Why We Win by Billy Packer with Roland
Lazenby; Trial by Basketball by Mark Bender; Cousy on the Celtic Mystique
by Bob Cousy and Bob Ryan
Beyond these contributions, I owe much to all the folks at Contemporary
Books, publisher John Nolan, sales director Neil McNish, editors Rob Tay-
lor, Marisa L’Heureux, and Julia Anderson, artists Nick Panos and Pam
Juarez, and publicist Brigid Brown. Also a special thanks to Jorge Riberio for
his support and outstanding editorial advice, and to Ken Samelson, plus the
friendship and insight of Mitch Chortkoff, Larry Burnett, Mike Ashley, Mike
Hudson, Greg Boeck, and Bill Adee.
 I N T R O D U C T IO N

It was the same routine after every

Bulls game: The publicity assistant would bring the two cigarettes and the
beer. The coach would draw deep on the first cigarette, then take a drink of
beer. Then a deep breath. A sigh would follow, the sort of sigh that seemed
to contain all of Phil Jackson’s pent-up energy from the game. Then he would
gaze at the stat sheet, replaying the events in his mind as he read and smoked
and drank. Nearby, Tex Winter, his longtime assistant, would be fussing
over travesties . . . poorly thrown passes, errant shots, defensive breakdowns.
Never mind that they had won by a dozen, that the team had long sustained
a virtual orgy of winning—Winter still bubbled with indignation, which
Jackson somehow managed to ignore and comprehend all at the same time.
His predecessor in Chicago, Doug Collins, was a nice guy who became a
screamer, a raw, raving, frenetic man on the sidelines, thrusting his entire psy-
che out there for public view. Johnny Bach, Collins’s old friend and assistant
coach, laughed just recalling the difference between the two. “This guy
would be worn out. Sweat was pouring off of him, veins were bulging. Doug
had given every ounce of his energy. Phil, on the other hand, had this abil-
ity to sit there through the evening. He could walk off afterward and nod to
people. He might have reached that same fever pitch as Collins had during
the game. Phil had reached that pitch internally, but he never showed it
externally.”
Bach had his conflicts with Jackson, yet the older assistant had great
respect for the younger coach’s approach—especially during games, in the
heat of battle. “Phil was at his best in that cauldron,” Bach said. “Like the
psychologist that he is, he’s going to find a very different approach to solv-
ing problems. He will not get in your face and say, ‘Let’s get this settled
now.’ ”

ix
x • Introduction

During games both Bach and Winter would beseech him to call timeouts.
“Phil would just look at me,” Bach recalled, “and he’d say, ‘Johnny, I heard
you, I’m just not gonna do it.’ ”
Bach said that he and Winter would request a timeout twice, and if he
didn’t respond they would give up. “He has this strength, this resolve,” Bach
said, “to endure whatever the results are.”
It was Jackson’s calm on the sidelines that immediately appealed to
Michael Jordan. Dean Smith, Jordan’s coach at the University of North Car-
olina, had displayed a similar presence of mind, and Jordan found it as com-
forting as he found Collins’s frothing disconcerting.
Later, when Jackson joined the Los Angeles Lakers, Rick Fox, another for-
mer North Carolina player, was struck by how much Jackson’s calm
reminded him of Dean Smith. There was, however, one substantial difference.
“Phil swears,” Fox explained with a chuckle.
Whereas Smith did not like foul language, Jackson decorated all of his
expressions with it. “You could fuck up a one-car funeral,” he told Toni
Kukoc one night. (Jackson was later contrite about the comment.)
Both of Jackson’s parents were fundamentalist preachers who tightly con-
trolled his childhood, so it stood to reason that drinking, smoking, and
cussing would bring him a liberating sense of satisfaction. Thus, he had to
have the quick smoke, the quick beer, after each game before he could even
address the team. Jackson called the smoke and the drink “getting his space.”
In his early years of coaching, that space came in the cramped bowels of Chi-
cago Stadium, the old sandstone sarcophagus. In later years he would have
the comforts of fancy offices in the United Center and Staples Center. Wher-
ever it was, his ritual was mostly the same: the smoke, the drink, the replay-
ing of events, the sigh, the quiet releasing of all that pent-up emotion from
the game.
“He needed that few minutes of space before he could even talk to the
team,” recalled an associate. “After he talked to the team he would need
another few minutes of space before he could talk to the media.”
Jackson was always firm and direct in talking to his players after games,
rarely raising his voice. And after tough losses he could be especially con-
soling, commending their great effort, telling them it just wasn’t meant to be.
Later he would spend hours reviewing the videotapes and picking apart
the performance play by play, isolating exactly what had gone wrong and
why. But his verdicts were hardly ever delivered with anything that resembled
insistence or stridence.
 Introduction • xi

“He is a hands-on manager, but with a different approach in every way,”

Bach said. “It’s deeply psychological. It’s from the heart, except that he’s able
to separate it from his emotions. He’s sort of a mystery to the players because
he is not predictable. He doesn’t overreact, or sometimes even react at all. Yet
he has a firm hand. The great strength of Phil is that he is always very aware
of what is happening. He could see things on the bench, or in the locker
room, but he never moved too quickly to fix things. He would only do that
after he had thought about it. Then he would do just what was needed to
calm the situation and the problem.
“The most important thing is that he has never sought their love. There
are many coaches who want to be loved, who have to be loved, and go down
in flames as a result of it. Pro athletes just aren’t going to do that. They aren’t
going to give you that love if you seek it.”
Because he seemingly never sought it, Phil Jackson got what other coaches
craved. He saw that on game nights, sitting there watching his players—first
the Bulls, then the Lakers—execute his marvelously disciplined vision of the
game. He would toast the results in private—the cigarette, the beer, the sigh,
his communion in that mystic realm that only he understood.
This page intentionally left blank.
 1

E P I PH A N I E S

He ate the LSD for breakfast. It was

one of those seamless Malibu mornings in mid-May 1973, just days after the
New York Knickerbockers had defeated the Los Angeles Lakers, four games
to one, for the National Basketball Association championship.
Phil Jackson was twenty-seven years old, and although the ’73 Knicks
were the first pro championship team he had played for, he was hardly in the
mood to celebrate. First, he had a philosophical problem. He viewed the
journey itself as the real celebration. Just getting to the championship round
and winning it was the joyous thing—not all that whooping and hollering
and hugging with people you hardly knew or didn’t know at all. He wanted
no part of that, thank you.
Then there were the injuries. He had performed well over the season, the
best so far in his six years as a pro. He averaged 17 minutes of playing time
per game, as well as 8.1 points, with better than 4 rebounds and an assist
each outing, a superior contribution for a frontcourt reserve. He increased
his scoring average to 8.7 points per game during the Knicks’ title run, the
second straight year he had done so. During New York’s drive to the 1972
NBA Finals Jackson had averaged 9.8 points and better than 5 rebounds,
though they ultimately lost that ’72 series to the Lakers. The Knicks returned
to the championship series in 1973 with the goal of completing unfinished
business. But Jackson suffered a leg injury during Game 3, and his mood
darkened. He craved being an essential part of the team, and in his mind the
injury served to remove him from that essence.

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2 • Mindgames

His pro career had brought a series of physical challenges, and this was
yet another. In 1969, he had undergone spinal fusion surgery after a serious
disk injury. The recovery had been long and painful and had caused him to
miss the Knicks’ 1969–70 championship season. Instead of contributing to the
most fascinating, magical moment in the franchise’s history, he was left hang-
ing at the edge of the group, dressed in street clothes, watching games from
the stands or snapping photographs for a purported book. All in all, it was
quite a miserable experience that left him feeling as if he had done nothing
to contribute. It was no wonder that he felt an odd detachment from the
euphoria that engulfed the team and its fans during that 1970 championship.
Beyond that separation from the group, the injury had increased his
already substantial discomfort with his unusual body, one that as an adoles-
cent had left him tagged with the unwanted nickname “Bones.” The coat-
hanger shoulders sat atop a 6
8 frame, and his 40-inch sleeves included an
absolutely deadly set of elbows. Even Jackson himself didn’t know when and
where those elbows would strike next. This seemingly uncontrollable factor
kept his Knicks teammates full of fear at practices.
“He seemed to be off-balance constantly. He seemed to be caroming off
unseen opponents,” teammate Bill Bradley wrote in his book Life on the
Run, adding that it was as if Jackson’s arms “served as separate sides of a
scale which never achieved equilibrium. . . .”
As one might imagine, this imbalance would lead to frequent foul whis-
tles and complaints from opponents that he was a dirty player. Jackson
would contend that he was not, but those sorts of helpless arguments only
contributed to the stereotype.
Despite this liability, Jackson had worked physically and mentally to get
into the flow of this very good Knicks team. Somehow he had managed to
help the team without ever really finding a comfort zone with his body. He
had learned to fit himself into the changing pro game, a task that wasn’t easy
for a white player from a small college. But he had done that, and he was
immensely proud of it. He could defend, he possessed a nice shot, and he
knew how to move the ball and how to move himself without it. As a result,
Knicks coach Red Holzman liked to introduce Jackson to the proceedings
whenever New York needed to change the game’s pace, to step up the pres-
sure in hopes of producing turnovers. Jackson played well in the open court
and usually helped produce the desired results.
His ballhandling, however, was more than suspect. Holzman jokingly told
his players that everyone on the team but Jackson was allowed to dribble.
 Epiphanies • 3

Regardless, he had willed himself to be a valuable part of the team. It wasn’t

easy for Jackson to be a defensive forward in the NBA, but that was his job.
He wasn’t strong enough to defend the power players, and he was too much
of a roamer to stay glued to the shooters. But he had survived, then thrived,
by learning to rely on his assets—his long arms, his mind, and his intensely
competitive spirit. The long arms he used to deny his man the ball and to flick
into the passing lanes for quick steals or even blocked shots. The mind he
used to figure a means of adapting. The competitive nature provided gump-
tion. Little by little his teammates began to trust him, then respect him,
defensively. And little by little Jackson had worked himself into the Knicks’
offensive equation, finding the places where he could fit in and use his jumper
effectively.
The whole package had begun working nicely for him in 1972 and ’73—
until, once again on the eve of a championship, injury had separated him
from the group. More than anything, the fiercely independent, individualis-
tic Jackson seemed to crave being a part of the group, just one of many
ironies in his curious makeup.
On the other hand, Jackson’s need for the group was logical. Like other
young inhabitants of that tumultuous time, he was in a search for identity.
What would set him apart was the deeply complex nature of his search and
the circuitous route he would take, finding and losing himself again and
again over the years to come.
In that May of 1973, his personal life was a mess. He was in the process
of coming to terms with the idea that he had a closeness problem with
women. He suspected that it had something to do with his fundamentalist
upbringing on the plains of Montana and North Dakota. His father, Charles,
was a kind, Bible-believing Pentecostal preacher and church superintendent,
a man large enough to live his life for the meager $100 weekly wages earned
at the foot of the cross. Beyond his church life, Charles Jackson relished the
earthy pursuits of an outdoorsman, the hunting and fishing, the things that
defined his manhood.
At key moments, the elder Jackson could be stirred from his warmth to
correct his children with a fiery discipline, but the real spark came from Phil’s
mother. Elisabeth “Betty” Funk Jackson was herself a Pentecostal preacher
whose life was governed by the sure belief that the second coming of Christ
was impending, that she, her family, and everyone she met should be prepared
for that second coming. Of German heritage, with striking blonde hair and
deep blue eyes, she was a proud, determined woman, a missionary brimming
4 • Mindgames

with integrity and toughness and commitment, as comfortable chopping

wood as she was citing Scripture or speaking in tongues. She was also com-
petitive—a characteristic inherited by Phil, the youngest of her three sons.
Betty had captained her high school basketball squad and loved to win,
whether the competition was a theological argument or a game of Scrabble.
Betty Jackson had a strong, manipulative nature that she used for a vari-
ety of purposes, mainly to ensure that her children observed the strict tenets
of her religion. In time, that same talent for manipulation would become her
youngest son’s strongest and most unusual talent. In 1973, however, Jackson
was more concerned with his problems than his promise. He had become
increasingly aware of his fear of closeness. He certainly enjoyed the variety
of women available to pro basketball players, particularly members of the
New York Knicks in the early ’70s, but he considered those brief encounters
mostly expressions of physical prowess and male ego. His problem mani-
fested itself in his relationship with his young wife, Maxine. He found him-
self alternately pushing her away from him, then pulling her back. Over the
six years of their marriage, this process had proved emotionally exhausting
for the couple and their young daughter, Elizabeth.
Jackson would later acknowledge that the couple’s problems were clouded
by his own insecurities and by his identity crisis, which he had sought to
resolve with extramarital relationships, including an affair with a flight atten-
dant and what he described as a desire for “a variety of sexual partners.”
It seems little wonder then that during the 1972 offseason the young cou-
ple had decided to end their marriage, and by the spring of 1973 Phil Jack-
son found himself in divorce proceedings with Maxine. At the same time, he
was pursuing a relationship with the woman who would become his second
wife. He had met June at a pinochle game in 1972. She was enchanting,
earthy in her own way, with a strong personality and a penchant for astrol-
ogy. She had just graduated from the University of Connecticut and was
working a difficult job at New York’s Bellevue Hospital. They traveled and
camped together for a time and she later moved into his loft in Chelsea on
the lower west side of Manhattan. This, too, added to his anxiety because
he was legally separated from Maxine but technically still married to her.
All of this only brought more turbulence to his private spiritual journey.
In his first days in high school, he had begun the long process of reject-
ing his fundamentalist upbringing, an exercise fraught with guilt, anxiety, and
confusion. With his thirtieth birthday on the horizon, with his relationships
in tangles, Phil Jackson recognized that he was more than a little lost that
 Epiphanies • 5

spring of 1973. He was far from alone in those feelings. It was a time of
posers, populated by millions of young people moving from one pretension
to another in their search for new identities.
The strains of ’60s counterculture had somehow moved mainstream by the
early ’70s, except that the idealism had burned away, leaving mostly confu-
sion. Kids in high schools and colleges across the country smoked pot,
dropped acid, ate mushrooms, and snorted coke without really being sure
why, except that it was something new and different. For many, the move
toward recreational drugs was an answer to despair. The Vietnam War
seemed to have the country caught in an inexhaustible pit of ugliness. Rocked
by the National Guard’s killing of four students at Kent State University in
1970, the antiwar protest movement had already lost much of its steam as the
baby boom generation turned its focus to partying and redefining the essence
of hip. At the University of California, Berkeley, a young editorialist com-
plained that students were moving away from the activist mode in favor of
a junkie lifestyle. The detachment of being strung out on drugs offered a
strange allure, a freedom from the hassles of caring. “God isn’t dead—he just
doesn’t want to get involved” read a pin popular among college students at
the time.
Wearing a medallion and sporting long curly hair and a beard, Jackson fit
right in with the times, at least in the eyes of Knicks fans. He was portrayed
as the team hippie, and in that context he was clearly more radical than his
teammates. But June Jackson actually found him to be on the conservative
side, as opposed to the real freaks and radicals she had encountered in her
undergraduate life. Jackson was “not nearly as radical as the people I knew
in S.D.S. [Students for a Democratic Society] at the University of Connecti-
cut,” she recalled later. “He never dropped out, he always had money.”
“I think the myopic way I grew up—and that’s the best word to describe
it—led to my experimentation,” he would say later, trying to explain his drug
usage. “Everything that happened to me in the 1960s was in tune with my
background. The whole psychedelic experience or an LSD trip was, as Tim-
othy Leary said, ‘a religious experience.’ ”
For many, many others, the drug was a brain burner, a synapse-popping
dance with psychosis. Jackson might well have been one of these victims had
he not been so earnest about defining his relationship with God. Although
he had rejected the fundamentalism of his parents, he retained their leanings
toward mysticism. Part of his liberation in college had come with the read-
ing of William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. That comfort
6 • Mindgames

with mysticism left him free to sift through the many new religious and spir-
itual offerings that bubbled up in the rapidly evolving popular culture of the
period. Jackson embraced a host of alternative thinkers, including the writ-
ings of Carlos Castaneda, and Joseph Chilton Pearce’s The Crack in the
Cosmic Egg.
His pursuit left his teammates with the notion that he loved the knowl-
edge more than he loved the game. “He could have been a better player if he
had applied himself to it more, as much as he applied himself to his books,”
Walt Frazier would later observe. “He’d read those weird books. They were
weird to us anyway. No one else ever read them.”
Jackson, however, was consumed by these new ideas, and they in turn fed
his awareness of his own unfolding intuitive nature. In time, his substantial
intuition would become a key factor in his success as a basketball coach. But
in his twenties, Jackson was discovering his intuition as a child discovers
walking. Shortly after coming to the Knickerbockers out of college in 1968,
he had learned that one sure way to explore this intuition and his mystical
nature was smoking marijuana. In time, friends and associates would caution
him against smoking too much pot. And he would agree with them that the
drug could be damaging. But he loved its effect on his mind, how it would
allow him to see events and relationships in new and different ways . . . how
the buzz lifted and pushed his intuition to places he had never imagined.
He greedily explored his mind, unrepentantly slipping into its recesses,
which helps explain his foray into the popular recreational head drugs of that
period. At the time, drug experimentation still offered a relative innocence,
based on the ’60s idealism that marijuana, mushrooms, peyote, mescaline,
and stronger shades of hallucinogens could help people experience alternate
realities and discover their kinder, gentler nature. Within five short years,
those notions would quickly dissolve, leaving in their place a hard-edged drug
culture adorned with guns and street gangs and a burgeoning human toll.
Jackson, though, in 1973 approached the drug culture with the innocence
and idealism of a hippie, like millions of other baby boomers. He was on the
road to find out, eager to be cool, to get high, to confront whatever God
tossed in his path.
On that May morning in 1973, it was LSD.
Jackson later described it as the window-pane variety. He also noted that
it was “good acid,” which at least suggests more than a casual familiarity
with the subject. If so, he was hardly alone in fancying himself a connoisseur
of the hallucinogen. Young hipsters of the period faced an array of LSD con-
sumer options. Purple haze. Sunshine. Orange barrel. Purple microdots.
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