Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson, Hugh Delehanty

won’t be changing coaches anytime soon.” I had to smile. I didn’t care, because we were on our way to the Eastern Conference finals. The Bulls had come a long way from their 40-42 record the year before I’d joined the team.
    Next we faced the Pistons, and, as usual, it was an ugly affair. Chicago won the first game at the Silverdome, but after that the Pistons overpowered the Bulls with their intimidating defense and won the series, 4–2. Krause told me later that midway through that series he told owner Jerry Reinsdorf that the team needed to replace Collins with someone who could win a championship.
    After the playoffs I attended the NBA’s talent showcase in Chicago, an event organized by the league for draft-eligible players to show off their skills to coaches and scouts. While I was there, Dick McGuire, my first coach with the Knicks, asked me if I would be interested in replacing New York’s head coach, Rick Pitino, who was leaving to coach the University of Kentucky. I said I would, and suddenly the wheels were in motion.
    Shortly after that, Reinsdorf invited me to meet him at O’Hare Airport. I’d always liked Jerry because he had grown up in Brooklyn and was a big fan of the Knicks’ selfless style of basketball. He’d gotten wind of my interest in the New York job and asked me if I could choose, which team I’d rather coach, the Bulls or the Knicks. I said I had a lot of affection for New York, having played there, but I also thought the Bulls were poised to win multiple championships, while the Knicks would be lucky to win one. In short, I said I’d rather stay with the Bulls.
    A few weeks later Krause called me in Montana and asked me to go to a secure phone. So I drove my motorcycle into town and called him back from a pay phone. He told me that he and Reinsdorf had decided to make a coaching change, and he offered me the job.
    I was thrilled, but the fans in Chicago were not so pleased. Collins was a popular figure in town and he’d taken the team to new heights during the past three years. When reporters asked Reinsdorf why he had made such a risky move, he said, “Doug brought us a long way from where we had been. You cannot say he wasn’t productive. But now we have a man we feel can take us the rest of the way.”
    The pressure was on.

6
    WARRIOR SPIRIT
    Think lightly of yourself and think deeply of the world.
    MIYAMOTO MUSASHI
    A s I sat by Flathead Lake in Montana that summer, contemplating the season ahead, I realized that this was a moment of truth for the Bulls. For the past six years we had been struggling to create a team around Michael Jordan. Now we had the talent in place to win a championship, but there was an important piece missing. In a word, the Bulls needed to become a tribe.
    To succeed we had to get by the Detroit Pistons, but I didn’t think we could outmuscle them unless we acquired a completely different lineup. They were just too good at fighting in the “alligator wrestling pond,” as Johnny Bach called it. And when we tried to play the game their way, our players ended up getting frustrated and angry, which was just what the Pistons hoped would happen.
    What our team could do, though, was outrun the Pistons—and outdefend them as well. Nobody on the Pistons, except perhaps Dennis Rodman, was quick enough to keep up with Michael, Scottie, and Horace on the fast break. And with Bill Cartwright’s formidable presence under the basket, we had the makings of one of the best defensive teams in the league. M.J. had taken great pride in winning the Defensive Player of the Year award the previous season, and Scottie and Horace were quickly developing into first-rate defenders. But in order to exploit those advantages, we needed to be more connected as a team and to embrace a more expansive vision of working together than simply getting the ball to Michael and hoping for the best.
    When I was an assistant coach, I created a video for the players with clips from
The