From dress codes to equality, Phil Jackson is exactly who we thought he was

I remember the NBA labor negotiations of 2005, during which I was on the players’ union executive committee. The talks took place in the aftermath of the Malice at the Palace, and commissioner David Stern and the league were in full crisis mode. They wanted to introduce a dress code, a much-maligned policy whose tacit aim was to make Black players less threatening to the white season-ticket holders and TV viewers who drove much of the league’s revenue.

I had worn my clothes baggy since high school. That was just my style. Phil Jackson, who had won six titles with Michael Jordan as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and three more with the Los Angeles Lakers, had a different opinion though.

“The players have been dressing in prison garb the last five or six years. All the stuff that goes on, it’s like gangster, thuggery stuff. It’s time. It’s been time to do that,” he told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune as the dress code was introduced.

Jackson, who by then was the head coach of the Lakers, had no problem echoing sentiments usually heard on Fox News, stereotyping an entire generation of young Black men. It was at that point that I knew exactly what Jackson thought of us.

So it came as no surprise when Jackson said last week that he has lost interest in the NBA because it’s too “political”. He seemed particularly irritated by the league’s support of the Black Lives Matter movement after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.

“[The NBA] even had slogans on the floor and on the baseline. It was trying to cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience to the game,” Jackson said on a recent episode of music producer Rick Rubin’s podcast. “They didn’t know it was turning other people off. People want to see