Sacred Hoops by Phil Jackson

[Dr T]

Sacred hoops is another short book I finished today. I often have multiple books open at the same time depending on what room I’m in. Phil Jackson the head coach of my Lakers wrote this book. At the time of this book he was the coach of the Bulls. An acquaintance of mine let me borrow this book because I’m a die hard Lakers fan. I found this book somewhat interesting but overall found it to be greatly wanting. I was interested in this book because my he told me that Phil Jackson is a Christian Buddhist. Philosophy of religions if fun so I read through it. It is a short book around 225 ish pages. I wondered how he could be a Zen Christian and was hoping to get some insight into it. Unfortunately the answer was not really in this book.

Basically, this book was about Phil's Christian family background how he did not feel the spirit like others did and how his brother turned him on Zen Buddhism. It was interesting that he spent a lot of time with the Lakota Siouxs. Basically it traces how he was coached by various people, the use and honing of the triangle offense to keep his opponents guessing and opening up the floor to make better shots possible. I'm sorry but I'd only give this weak book 1.5 and being generous maybe a 2 stars out of 5. The only reason I'm rating it that high is because Jackson is a winner and had some interesting things to say about not being selfish but playing basketball as a team effort. I also appreciated is talking about Michael Jordan and how he focused on getting Jordan’s buy in and how he and Jordan observed each other at first, how Jackson became a player coach on his way to becoming the head coach and how he lost and won championships and some of his family background and the death of his father and his first and second wife history. I know I'm talking a lot but I'm going to bed soon and want to say something about this book. Some people might enjoy it but I didn't much like it if you haven’t got that yet. It might be worth one read but that's about it. I can’t wait to get rid of this book. Thoughts?