Jackson doing something right while collecting rings

But here's the thing: Jackson must be doing something right. The Yankees have the best talent in Major League Baseball every year and can't win a championship. Jackson had the best talent in basketball and wins.

Jackson's strength — and this is the strongest claim in the best-coach-ever argument — has more to do with his ability to manage teams, massage egos and convince egomaniacal millionaires to play together.

He's had to work with some of the biggest egos and strangest personalities this side of Hollywood and Congress. Kobe Bryant. O'Neal. Dennis Rodman. Jordan. Pippen.

He had to mediate the Bryant and O'Neal tiff and put up with an immature, selfish Bryant.

In the end, the best argument to make for Phil Jackson is this: For all their great talent, the Lakers couldn't win a championship without Jackson. Everyone is calling this Kobe's championship because he won the title without Shaq, but he didn't and couldn't win without Jackson.

From 1990 to 1998, the Lakers checked out of the playoffs in the first round four times and in the second round three times. Kobe and Shaq arrived in 1996 and they lost in the first or second round every year except one, when they were swept by the Jazz in the conference finals.

The Lakers had gone 12 years without a championship when Jackson took over in 1999; he won the next three world titles. During his first five years with the Lakers, they went to the NBA Finals four times, and then the Kobe-Shaq soap opera imploded and Shaq and Jackson left the team.

The Lakers didn't even qualify for the playoffs the following season, then brought Jackson back for an encore the following season. Jackson took the Lakers back to the Finals three years later and won the title the year after that.

"I don't know if he's the greatest coach of all time," Charles Barkley said, "but Phil Jackson is in the conversation. I mean, you win 10 championships — that's pretty impressive."

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