A battle for coaching supremacy

By Derek Kravitz Sports Central Columnist

With his 700th career victory last Friday, Los Angeles Lakers head coach Phil Jackson entered the "700 Club" and raised further questions as to his place in NBA coaching history.

Do Phil Jackson's many accomplishments and accolades live up to the aura surrounding former Boston Celtics head coach Red Auerbach? Has Jackson earned the title of "Greatest NBA Coach of All-Time" outright, or does he still have to prove himself to dethrone Red?

In order to compare the two it's necessary to fully understand how each rose to their respective positions in NBA lore. Both coaches represent polar opposites, both professionally and personally, yet their storied careers seem to rival each other closely, with no clear consensus towards one victor.

Arnold "Red" Auerbach, the son of poor Russian immigrants, was born slightly before the Great Depression in the tough Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. With Auerbach's father only pulling down the measly salary of a dry cleaner, Red was forced to make due with very little. As a result, Red turned to basketball and by his senior year at Eastern District High, Red had made the famed "All-Brooklyn" basketball squad.

Immediately after college, Red attended Seth Low Junior College in Brooklyn, but after the college closed after only one year, Red was forced to relocate to Washington D.C., where he attended George Washington University. Auerbach became close friends with George Washington head coach Bill Reinhart during his tenure and it is this relationship that allowed Auerbach to land a job at local St. Alban's High School following his college career.

With everything coming together both professionally and financially, Auerbach married longtime sweetheart Dorothy Lewis in 1941 and took a job with highly respected Roosevelt High a year later. During his tenure, Auerbach not only got his master's degree, but also taught a variety of subjects but with World War II raging on, the highly patriotic Auerbach soon enlisted in the U.S. Navy, helping coach their Norfolk Naval squad in the process.

Discharged in 1946, Auerbach's highly regarded reputation helped earn him a job with the Washington Capitals in the newly formed Basketball Association of America at the tender age of 29. Through strict work habits, a strong focus on running the ball, and low wages, Auerbach helped develop the franchise into a team with an 81 percent winning percentage in its first three seasons.

After building the Washington franchise, Auerbach took a similar position with the Tri-Cities franchise, but the job failed to amount to much and Red was subsequently scooped up by Walter Brown and the Boston Celtics.

This is where Red's storied career truly began. Auerbach took a lowly squad in the early 1950s and eventually transformed them into not only one of the great sports powerhouses of the 1960s, but also created a dynasty unmatched in league history. Did Auerbach have help? Yes, in his first season, Red was blessed with the presence of Hall of Famer Bob Cousy, whom he picked up after calling Cousy a "local yokel," and talented scorer Ed Macauley, but the Celtics of the early 1950s lacked an inside body that would lead them to the promised land.

Enter Bill Russell. By taking some legal and illegal action behind the scenes, the Celtics landed Russell in 1956, creating one of the most hallowed franchises of all time in the process. Championships in 1957 and in 1958 through 1966 set in motion Auerbach's path to basketball coaching greatness.

Along the way, Auerbach developed a reputation for being a hard-nosed teacher, philosopher, and all-in-all belligerent, egotistical, and sometimes maniacal leader. Known for lighting up cigars when games were in hand, Auerbach represented the antithesis of relaxed, spiritual, and disciplined Phil Jackson.

On the other hand, Phil Jackson, the "Zen Master" himself, the all-inclusive, reserved leader of the Chicago Bulls franchise in the 1990s and now the Los Angeles Lakers franchise, was born the son of Pentecostal ministers in North Dakota. Jackson didn't grow up on the rough streets of a metropolis, but rather the wide open spaces of our nation's heartland.

Gifted with unusual size and talent, Jackson was promoted by both of his parents to pursue basketball and as a result, Jackson attended North Dakota State under the mentorship of head coach Bill Fitch, graduating in 1967 with prospects in the professional arena. While Jackson lacked the demeanor and ability needed to be decent as a basketball player, he more than made up for mentally and it is because of this sole reason that Jackson spent 13 seasons with New York Knicks, including two championships in 1970 and 1973.

In general, Jackson was an awkward player with movements that bordered on ridiculous. Nicknamed "Head 'n Shoulders" and "The Mop," Jackson was known for his odd playing style and strange low post moves. Following his NBA career, Jackson worked for TNT sports for a season before accepting a coaching job with the Continental Basketball Association's Albany Patroons. Jackson worked in Albany for five seasons, leading the Patroons to a CBA Championship and garnering a CBA Coach of the Year award for himself in the process.

Catching sight of Jackson's coaching prowess, the Chicago Bulls hired Jackson in 1986 as an assistant under head coach Doug Collins and following two seasons of futility and playoff losses with Collins, the Bulls promoted Jackson to head coach in 1989, setting in motion Jackson's patented triangle offense and string of six world championships with the Bulls. Years later, after the deconstruction of the Bulls franchise, Jackson was hired to bring a championship to the Los Angeles Lakers, which he did, leading the Lakers to consecutive world championships in 2000 and 2001.

Personally, Jackson is an odd ball. Known for meditation, a strong belief in both Chinese Zen and Native American cultures and religious practices, and a known user of both Marijuana and LSD during his playing days, Jackson has been described as a hippie, an intellectual, and a cultural born-again.

Jackson has been known to fly off the handle at players, yet is known for his cool, calm, and collective style during games and many basketball insiders consider these qualities to be Jackson's greatest asset and reasoning behind Jackson's ability to unite players and stratagems toward the ultimate checkered flag.

So what separates Red and Phil besides their conflicting personalities? Both coaches have been accused of riding the coat tails of their championship caliber players - Red with Russell and Cousy, Phil with Jordan, Pippen, and later O'Neal and Bryant. Both coaches have been lackluster following the retirements of their key players. Jackson couldn't buy a championship after Michael Jordan left in 1994 and the Celtics franchise never fully regained their mystique following Russell's retirement in the late 1960s.

Some analysts say that Jackson has the edge because he has been able to lead two entirely different squads to a championship, yet Auerbach was able to string together championships over three decades as a coach and general manager, which is no easy task.

Maybe Jackson's career can't be fully summed up until after his departure from coaching. There is no easy answer - both coaches are so strikingly different, yet their accomplishments are slowly becoming eerily similar.

In the end, true comparison and contrast can't truly be measured without profound insight into the level of their coaching expertise. Times have changed. The game is sadly much different than the hungry, incensed level the game achieved in Auerbach's era. Conditioning and improvements in medicine and technology had forever changed the sport. Dedication levels and pride have slowly decreased across the ages while physical superiority has increased, as well it should be.

Should handicaps be given to Auerbach's kids because they represented an adolescent era in basketball history? As much as both Jackson and Auerbach is different, so is the game in which they taught. No definitive answer can ever be truly reasoned.

A true answer could never be clearly hypothesized with the limited information we as fans are given. It would be unfair to simply "guess." Thus, I say respect both coaches for their achievements, leave comparisons to sports analysts and writers who feel they can sum up decades of changes with their own weak sports trivia. Case closed.