Book

11 Rings

Phil Jackson

Quoting Shunryu Suzuki: “In beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”
Instructions on Zen meditation (also from Suzuki):

Sit with your spine straight, your shoulders relaxed, and your chin pulled in, “as if you were supporting the sky with your head.”

Follow your breath with your mind as it moves in and out like a swinging door.

Don’t try to stop your thinking. If a thought arises, let it come, then let it go and return to watching your breath. The idea is not to try to control your mind but to let thoughts rise and fall naturally over and over again. After some practice, the thoughts will start to float by like passing clouds and their power to dominate will diminish.

“And yet as a coach, I know that being fixated on winning (or more likely, not losing) is counterproductive, especially when it causes you to lose control of your emotions. What’s more, obsessing about winning is a loser’s game: The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.”
“Once I had the Bulls practice in silence; on another occasion I made them scrimmage with the lights out. I like to shake things up and keep the players guessing. Not because I want to make their lives miserable but because I want to prepare them for the inevitable chaos that occurs the minute they step onto a basketball court.”
“Practicing Zen… slowed down my experience of time because it diminished my tendency to rush into the future or get lost in the past. Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh talks about ‘dwelling happily in the present moment,’ because that’s where everything you need is available. ‘Life can be found only in the present moment… The past is gone, and the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.’”
Quote by Miyamoto Musashi: “Think lightly of yourself and think deeply of the world.”
As the season progressed, I slowly started to introduce the team to some of the tribal customs of the Lakota. Some of these were quite subtle. At the beginning of every practice, we had the core team—players, coaches, and training staff-convene in a circle at center court to discuss our objectives for that day. And we would end practice the same way.
The coaching profession attracts a lot of control freaks… what I’ve learned over the years is that the most effective approach is to delegate authority as much as possible and to nurture everyone else’s leadership skills as well. When I’m able to do that, it not only builds team unity and allows others to grow but also-paradoxically-strengthens my role as leader.
I developed a number of strategies to help them quiet their minds and build awareness so they could go into battle poised and in control. The first thing I did with the Bulls was to teach the players an abbreviated version of mindfulness meditation based on the Zen practice I’d been doing for years… We sat for about ten minutes or so during practice sessions. Some players thought it was weird; others used the time to take a nap. But they humored me because they knew that meditation was an important part of my life. From my point of view, getting the players to sit quietly together for ten minutes was a good start.
I pulled Horace out of the game and started screaming at him for letting the 76ers manhandle him. Horace yelled back, “I’m tired of being your whipping boy.” Then he started cursing me - unusual for him… we lost the game.. [b]ut I learned a key lesson: how important it was to relate to each player as an individual, with respect and compassion, no matter how much pressure I might be feeling. I met with Horace when the air had cleared and told him that we needed to start over. From that point on, I said, I would focus on giving him constructive criticism, and I hoped that he, in turn, would give me feedback on anything that might be troubling him.
After Pippen refuses to co-operate with one of his plays in a game. Phil doesn’t punish or castigate him, he comes up with an alternative play and they win: “Some people applauded my clever management strategy. But I wasn’t trying to be clever. In the heat of the game, I simply tried to stay in the moment and make decisions based on what was actually happening. Rather than asserting my ego and inflaming the situation further, I did what needed to be done: find someone to throw in the ball and go for the win. Afterward, rather than trying to fix things myself, I let the players solve the problem. I acted intuitively, and it worked.”
Recruiting Rodman: “Dennis took a look at the Native American artifacts in the room and showed me the necklace he’d been given by a Ponca from Oklahoma. Then we sat silently together for quite a while. Dennis was a man of few words, but sitting with him, I felt reassured that he would come through for us. We connected on a nonverbal level that afternoon. A bond of the heart.”
Before Dennis arrived at training camp, I had a long discussion with the players. I warned them that he was probably going to ignore some of the rules because it was hard for him to abide by certain guidelines. I would probably have to make some exceptions for him at times, I said. “You’re going to have to be grown up about this,” I added. And they were.
That year I stopped pacing along the sidelines during games because I noticed that whenever I got agitated, Dennis would become hyperactive. And if I argued with a ref, it would only give him license to do the same. So I decided to become as quiet and restrained as possible. I didn’t want to set Dennis off, because once he got agitated, there was no telling what he might do.
On the 95-96 Bulls: “All the pieces fell together beautifully… these Bulls had a remarkable sense of unity… and a powerful collective spirit. Everything we did was designed to reinforce that unity. I had always insisted on structured practices with a clear agenda that the players would receive ahead of time. But we also started organizing other aspects of the team process to create a sense of order. In general, I used discipline not as a weapon but as a way to instill harmony into the players’ lives. This was something I’d learned from years of mindfulness practice.”
Good section on the unifying Chinese Emperor Liu Bang. LinkedIn post on the specific story here
Other coaches had treated Dennis as if he were a child and tried to force him to submit to their will with rigid discipline. But that tactic had failed miserably. My approach was to relate to him as an adult and hold him accountable for his actions the same way I did everyone else on the team. He seemed to appreciate this. Once he told reporters that what he liked about me was that I treated him “like a man.”
Before enlightenment “Chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”
[I]t was easy to mistake Kobe’s worldliness and intense focus for maturity. As far as I could see, he still had a lot of growing up to do.
On Jerry Reinsdorf and conflict: “He once said that the best way to handle most flare-ups is to sleep on them. The point is to avoid acting out of anger and creating an even stickier mess. And if you’re lucky, the problem may resolve itself.’
The mistake that championship teams often make is to try to repeat their winning formula. But that rarely works because by the time the next season starts, your opponents have studied all the videos and figured out how to counter every move you made. The key to sustained success is to keep growing as a team. Winning is about moving into the unknown and creating something new.
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” ~ Buddha.
I realized there wasn’t much I could do to change his behavior. But what I could do was change the way I reacted to his angry outbursts. This was an important lesson for me.
[E]ven though we may understand on some level that loss is a catalyst for growth, most people still believe it to be the opposite of gain and to be avoided at all costs. If I’ve learned anything in my years of practicing Zen.