Eleven rings

by Phil Jackson is an incredibly exciting work not only for all the die-hard basketball fans. It is full of discoveries and revelations about the fascinating personalities of the world of basketball, whom this legendary coach not only had the privilege to meet, but whom he shaped and with whom he won a total of eleven NBA championships.

Especially for fans of the Chicago Bulls, but also of the Los Angeles Lakers, Phil Jackson should be a legend, but everyone else will probably not get past him and his successes. Six times he led the Bulls and five times the Lakers to the best team in the world. Most people will know the NBA stars he had the privilege to work with and especially those who became legends under him. The challenge for coach Phil Jackson, however, was to build a team out of this ensemble of stars that together developed the will to win that was needed to succeed at the highest level.

How many coaches - in any sport - fail year after year despite being presented with supposedly ideal conditions for team success? Phil Jackson's career, on the other hand, paints an almost continuous trail of success. No other coach in the history of professional basketball won more championships than he did. He now tries to break down the essence of that success in this book, giving us a bit of insight into his story.

Not only sports coaches, but also all other people can take a lot from this.

In general, I have the impression that we in the corporate world too often look down on trainers in sports from above. Yet they are sometimes under much greater and, above all, almost permanent pressure to succeed. We can learn a lot from them: for example, how they manage to constantly integrate new players into their teams, deal with different characters and pursue common goals.

Top-level sport in particular is in many places a place of individualists and egoists. Getting difficult characters who primarily want to pursue their own goals then in line is certainly a task that not many are capable of accomplishing. Personally, I take my hat off to people who manage to do that year after year and, like Phil Jackson, build a legacy behind them. And I write that without even being a basketball fan. I didn't know him at all until the documentary about Michael Jordan, so I was all the more interested to read about his mind in this book.

It is a work about the sources of motivation. One about competition at the highest level. Where it takes more to become successful than just being particularly good. Phil Jackson was able to get Michael Jordan, probably the best basketball player of his time, to selflessly put himself at the service of the team. Even if this meant for Michael Jordan to renounce personal records at one point or another and to put the success of the team in the foreground. It doesn't just relate to sports, but also teaches us non-professional athletes what we might try to bring out the best in ourselves and others.

Perhaps he will also be able to inspire one or the other reader, as he did when he got Dennis Rodman, who was considered untrainable, to dedicate himself to something bigger than himself, or when he helped Kobe Bryant mature from a rebellious teenager into the leader of a championship team. These are just a few of the accomplishments of one Phil Jackson, already teased on the book's back cover. The probably much more important small decisions beside and on the field are hidden in the book. In conversations with his players, fellow coaches, the press or club officials. In thoughts and reflections on transfers, developments and tactics.

"Some coaches are obsessed with winning trophies, while others love to see themselves on TV. But what moves me is when young men band together and immerse themselves in the magic that manifests itself the moment they focus - heart and soul - on something bigger than themselves. Once you've experienced that, you'll never forget it."

Phil Jackson

One senses that an NBA championship wants to be well thought out and built up successively, and even when you think you've done everything right, success is far from booked.

"Like most champion teams in the NBA, the 2008-09 Lakers struggled to pull themselves together from a team that lacked cohesion and was instead dominated by each player's own self-belief to a unified team where the individual's self didn't matter. They weren't the greatest team I've ever coached; that honor belongs to the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, led by Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. Nor were the players as talented as those on the 1999/00 Lakers team, which included players like Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Glen Rice, Robert Horry, Rick Fox and Derek Fisher, who could score in game-changing moments. But in the unified DNA of the 2008-09 Lakers was an immature predisposition to achieve greatness."

Phil Jackson

"In the NBA, rings symbolize status and power. No matter how ostentatious or shapeless a championship ring may be, the dream of winning one is what motivates players to toil through a long NBA season. Jerry Krause, the former general manager of the Chicago Bulls, understood that. When I joined the team as an assistant coach in 1987, he asked me to wear one of the two championship rings I had won as a player with the New York Knicks as a motivational incentive for the Bulls' young players."

Phil Jackson

In terms of content, the book is a clear extension to the familiar Jackson Eleven:

1. People management - from the inside out
2. Throttling the ego
3. To each player his destiny
4. the path to freedom is a beautiful system
5. make something sacred out of the everyday
6. one breath - one spirit
7. the key to success is empathy
8. pay attention to your mind, not the scoreboard
9. sometimes you have to get the stick out
10. when in doubt, do nothing
11. forget the ring

In addition, it conveys above all many stories, from which the author always tries to derive lessons that can be applied to one's own life, at least to some extent. It is about fighting spirit, the joy of doing nothing, bittersweet victories and situations in which the tide turns. No unpleasant situations are left out to make the author appear in a better light, but rather the focus is on the readers being able to take away the most.

"I hate losing. I've always hated it. As a kid, I was so bent on winning that I would often burst into tears and make kindling out of the board game when one of my older brothers, Charles or Joe, beat me in a game. They loved to tease me when I threw a tantrum, but that only made me more dogged to win the next time. I practiced and practiced until I found a way to beat them and wipe that smug grin off their faces."

Phil Jackson

As a coach, Phil Jackson was certain that being fixated only on winning or on not losing was counterproductive. Especially if, as a result, control of your own emotions slips out of your hands. For Jackson, it was much more important to encourage players at the start of each season to focus on the journey rather than the destination. The most important thing, he said, is to play the game the right way and have the grit to keep developing. Both as a person and as a basketball player. If one would do, success would be only a matter of time in the end.

The Essence of Success is a book that is not just for basketball fans, but for anyone interested in living a more successful and fulfilling life. However, I would advise people who know absolutely nothing about basketball not to read this book, as it covers a lot of details from playing days. In the end, it doesn't quite reach the depth of Dale Carnegie's books, but it is also a kind of biography and less a pure non-fiction book. Many connections have also only opened up for me because I had already seen the documentary by Michael Jordan.

Those who love the sport will definitely get their money's worth and there is also something for everyone else without a doubt!