Read His Lips: Jackson Won’t Return

NEW YORK — Forget about Phil Jackson returning to coach the Chicago Bulls when the NBA lockout ends.

There’s no way it will happen, says Jackson’s good friend, former teammate and possible presidential candidate, Bill Bradley.

“Phil makes his own decisions, and I respect that,” Bradley said. “I like somebody who listens to the internal voice. He said he isn’t going to coach this year, and I take him at his word.”

Bradley spent more quality time with the former Bulls coach this summer than nearly anyone in Jackson’s inner circle. The former teammates and their wives vacationed together in Turkey after the Bulls won their sixth championship, and Bradley and Jackson have remained in touch since then.

“I think that he wants to have a break from the game, do some independent thinking and writing, have a chance to be with his family. Same things I did when I left the Senate, so I understand that impulse very well,” Bradley said while on a publicity tour to promote his new book, which includes a foreword written by Jackson.

The lifelong friends--one an ex-hippie from North Dakota, the other a Rhodes scholar from Princeton--met as rookies with the New York Knicks in 1967 and went on to win two championships, in 1970 and 1973.

When their playing days ended, Bradley went on to become a three-term U.S. Senator from New Jersey, and Jackson won six titles with the Bulls before leaving the team at the end of last season, riding off on a Harley-Davidson.

Their career paths may cross again if Bradley decides to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000. At this time last year, Jackson predicted he’d be driving the bus for a Bradley-for-president campaign, and he didn’t sound as if he were joking.

“I’ve got to decide if the bus is going to move. But clearly if I did something, he would be involved in some way,” Bradley said.

By the time Bradley decides, it’s possible the lockout that has delayed the start of the NBA season will have ended. Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf has promised to make one final appeal to Jackson to return as coach, but Jackson and his agent, Todd Musburger, have said a return is out of the question.

But what if the lockout extended into January, and a 42-game season began in early February. Might Jackson change his mind if $10 million was dangled in front of him?

Doesn’t every man have his price?

“I don’t think Phil does,” Bradley said.

Bradley had the opportunity to speak to the Bulls in their locker room before their final game of the record-setting 1995-96 season (they lost, going 72-10 instead of 73-9), a world away from the time when they were younger and Jackson brought Bradley to a clinic in Pine Ridge, S.D., to conduct a basketball cap for the Oglala Sioux.

“Bill plunged into one of the most closed societies I know, and within 24 hours had worked out the details of the tribe’s power structure,” Jackson wrote in the book, “Values of the Game.” “So, it wasn’t surprising to me that when Bill took to the floor of the U.S. Senate he would bring along the same curiosity, the same group sensitivity and the same determination to get things done that he first took to the floor of Madison Square Garden.”

Despite Jackson’s methods and experiences bordering on the bizarre, from once experimenting with LSD to teaching Michael Jordan and the Bulls yoga and Zen meditation, the straight-laced Bradley says Jackson has much in common with the common man.

“I think Phil is mainstream America,” Bradley said. “His work ethic, his basic respect for other people. I think that’s what he exudes.”

Bradley even has high praise for Dennis Rodman, the poster child for wild off-court behavior, because of he way Rodman plays the game on the court.

His 160-page, $30 book, filled with colorful photos of great players and coaches, includes short essays by Bradley on passion, discipline, selflessness and respect -- the ideals of basketball that are at the heart of successful players and teams.

One of the best photographs shows Rodman flying horizontal through the air, diving after a loose ball.

“I think that Rodman, on the court, is a tremendous competitor,” Bradley said. “His second, third and fourth efforts for rebounds, his diving for balls. I think Phil has handled him well.”

Bradley even has a few words of grudging praise for Allen Iverson’s crossover dribble--”once upon a time it was a carry”--by equating it with the gray area in the rules that Willis Reed and Dave Cowens once exploited by battling under the basket.

Could this Iverson fan actually be the next president?

“The people will ask three questions about any presidential candidate,” Bradley said. “Do I trust this person with my life? Because he is after all the commander in chief. Do I trust this person with my job? Because he has to look out for the economy and keep it going. And does he believe somewhat the same things I believe about life?”

“I’ll make up my mind one way or another by the end of this year or early next year.”