11-Time NBA Champion Coach Phil Jackson Says He Doesn’t Watch Basketball Anymore Because It’s Too Political: They Were ‘Trying to Bring a Certain Audience’

AP Photo/Steve Simoneau

Legendary NBA coach Phil Jackson says he has grown disenchanted with the league’s foray into politics and no longer watches games as a result.

In a recent interview on the Tetragrammaton podcast, host Rick Rubin asked Jackson if he still watches NBA basketball.

“No. I don’t,” Jackson replied.

The famed coach — who won six NBA championships with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, and five more with Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, and the Los Angeles Lakers in the early 2000s — cited the NBA’s bubble during the Covid lockdown in 2020 as the point when he became disenchanted with the league. Instead of having their names on the back of their jerseys, players wore social justice messages such as “justice” and “equal opportunity.” Jackson mocked such gestures for “catering” to a “certain audience.

“They had things on their back like ‘Justice’ and a funny thing happened,” Jackson said. “Like ‘Justice went to the basket and Equal Opportunity knocked him down’… Some of my grandkids thought it was pretty funny to play up those names. I couldn’t watch that.”

The coach added, “They even had slogans on the floor, on the baseline. It was catering. It was trying to cater to an audience, or trying to bring a certain audience into play. And they didn’t know it was turning other people off. People want to see sports as non-political.”

Jackson cited a former teammate from his playing days, former Senator Bill Bradley — who won two championships with Jackson on the Knicks in the 1970s — as an example of how one could be separate politics from basketball.

“Bill Bradley was a senator, a number of baseball players have been representatives and senators … But their politics stay out of the game,” Jackson said. “It doesn’t need to be there.”