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

Mystic Warrior
, a television miniseries about Sioux culture based on the best-selling novel
Hanta Yo
by Ruth Beebe Hill. Ever since childhood I’ve been fascinated by the Sioux, some of whom lived in my grandfather’s boardinghouse, which was near a reservation in Montana. When I was with the Knicks, a Lakota Sioux friend from college, Mike Her Many Horses, asked me to teach a series of basketball clinics at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The purpose was to help heal the rift in his community caused by the 1973 standoff between police and American Indian movement activists at the site of the Wounded Knee massacre. I discovered during those clinics, which I taught with my teammates Bill Bradley and Willis Reed, that the Lakota loved the game and played it with an intense spirit of connectedness that was an integral part of their tribal tradition.
    One of the things that intrigued me about Lakota culture was its view of the self. Lakota warriors had far more autonomy than their white counterparts, but their freedom came with a high degree of responsibility. As Native American scholar George W. Linden points out, the Lakota warrior was “the member of a tribe, and being a member, he never acted against, apart from, or
as
the whole without good reason.” For the Sioux, freedom was not about being absent but about being present, adds Linden. It meant “freedom
for
, freedom for the realization of greater relationships.”
    The point I wanted to make by showing the players
The Mystic Warrior
video was that connecting to something beyond their individual goals could be a source of great power. The hero of the series, who was based loosely on Crazy Horse, goes into battle to save his tribe after experiencing a powerful vision. In our discussion after watching the video, the players seemed to resonate with the idea of bonding together as a tribe, and I thought I could build on that as we moved into the new season.
    As I mentioned in the first chapter, management experts Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright describe five stages of tribal development in their book,
Tribal Leadership
. My goal in my first year as head coach was to transform the Bulls from a stage 3 team of lone warriors committed to their own individual success (“
I’m
great and you’re not”) to a stage 4 team in which the dedication to the We overtakes the emphasis on the Me (“
We’re
great and you’re not”).
    But making that transition would take more than simply turning up the heat. I wanted to create a culture of selflessness and mindful awareness at the Bulls. To do that, I couldn’t just rely on one or two innovative motivational techniques. I had to devise a multifaceted program that included the triangle offense but also incorporated the lessons I had learned over the years about bonding people together and awakening the spirit.
    My first step was to talk with Michael.
    —
    I knew Michael wasn’t a fan of the triangle. He referred to it sarcastically as “that equal-opportunity offense” that was designed for a generation of players who didn’t have his creative one-on-one skills. But at the same time I knew that Michael longed to be part of a team that was more integrated and multidimensional than the current incarnation of the Bulls.
    This was not going to be an easy conversation. Basically I was planning to ask Michael, who had won his third scoring title in a row the previous season with an average of 32.5 points per game, to reduce the number of shots he took so that other members of the team could get more involved in the offense. I knew this would be a challenge for him: Michael was only the second player to win both a scoring title and the league MVP award in the same year, the first being Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1971.
    I told him that I was planning to implement the triangle and, as a result, he probably wouldn’t be able to win another scoring title. “You’ve got to share the spotlight with your