I’m not sure what it was, but something got me thinking about endings this weekend. Maybe it was Jeremy Green’s decision to end his Stanford career and turn pro, or perhaps it was Phil Jackson coaching his last NBA game. Or maybe it was my own last game as coach of Stanford’s club baseball team—I don’t know for certain, but what I do know is that I realized there are both good and bad ways to hang ‘em up.
Jeremy Green’s departure from Stanford was definitely not the best way to go out. I don’t want to dwell on Green for too long—my friend and colleague Wyndam Makowsky did a fine job of just that yesterday—but I have to say that Green’s decision to leave Stanford early for the NBA is a rare one, to put it one way. That may come across as pompous, but Stanford players—especially Stanford players who won’t be first-round picks and likely won’t be drafted at all—don’t tend to leave school early.
Green leaves Stanford with more questions than answers. There is a cloud swirling above him and his academic record. No one is quite sure what his relationship with Johnny Dawkins and the rest of the coaching staff was like—and frankly, he just isn’t a very big NBA prospect.
Unfortunately for Green, he will not be remembered as a Stanford legend, even though he is one of Stanford’s best players in the last few years. Instead, he ends his Stanford career without a trip to an NCAA Tournament and leaves with fans scratching their heads asking, “Why?”
Phil Jackson’s last hurrah as an NBA coach may be even more puzzling than Green’s decision. In all probability, Jackson—arguably the greatest coach in professional sports history (I see you, Scotty Bowman and Red Auerbach)—coached his last game Sunday in Dallas, as his Lakers got pulverized by the Mavericks, 122-86.
Jackson, who spent his entire career winning with the Bulls and Lakers, put a team out on the court Sunday that played like it didn’t want to be there and acted like a bunch of middle schoolers after losing a game of kickball. The Lakers got down early, and the only fight they showed in trying to get back in the game was to throw cheap shots at the Mavericks once the game was out of reach. Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum got themselves ejected for essentially using Mavericks players as punching bags—meaning three Lakers players, Ron Artest being the other, were ejected or suspended in the series for violent fouls.
Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated, perhaps the best sportswriter around, summed up Jackson’s departure pretty well in his column yesterday.
“We will want to say again (because it’s apparently the thing to say) that this shameful and abominable exit should not diminish from Phil Jackson’s long and breathtaking career . . . but it sure doesn’t leave a happy echo. No champion in memory has gone out with such a lack of class. No great team in memory had so little respect for their coach that they sent him off in such a disgraceful fashion,” Posnanski wrote. And he is spot on.
What will we remember about Phil Jackson a few years from now? Of course we will remember the 11 NBA championships, the triangle offense, Jordan, O’Neal and Bryant—and not, I think, Sunday’s classless display. Still, that is no way for a legend to end his career.
Not everyone—in fact almost no one—can go out like John Elway or David Robinson. If there is a good way to retire, they found it. Both Elway and Robinson went out as champions, Elway of Super Bowl XXXIII in 1999 and Robinson of the 2003 NBA Finals. Neither pulled a Brett Favre and made his retirement process a three-ring circus, nor did either let his skills diminish enough to make him a forgettable member of a memorable team. In fact, both were productive members of their title squads.
In sports, as in life, finding the right time to say enough is enough can be a difficult task. You can’t always find the fairytale that Robinson and Elway did—and sometimes legends like Jackson leave us with a sour taste in our mouths.
Daniel Bohm stayed on as a coterm because he wasn’t ready to leave The Daily. Draw more Brett Favre parallels at bohmd “at” stanford.edu.