Jackson Called To Enter Elite Shack

SPRINGFIELD - It was longtime Spanish coach and 2007 enshrinee Pedro Ferrandiz who offered an eloquent description of where he had started and where he was yesterday, in the Basketball Hall of Fame. "When a coach starts his career, he dreams of something impossible," Ferrandiz said.

What else can one expect from someone from the land of Cervantes?

That one word - impossible - pretty much sums up Phil Jackson's situation as well, despite the lengthy list of achievements that made him a no-brainer for the Class of 2007. Getting inducted into the Hall of Fame was Jackson's own impossible dream when he entered coaching, taking over a minor league team in Albany, N.Y., commuting from a farm in Woodstock (of course!). The team was the Patroons, the venue was an old armory, and the job was all-encompassing in more ways than one.

"When I first saw the armory, I said, 'Is this where we play basketball? Could this possibly be the place?' " Jackson said yesterday, hours before he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, escorted by former Knicks teammate Bill Bradley. "But it was where basketball was in those days. Those are places people went to watch the game, 3,000, 4,000, maybe in an oval or with a running track above. It represented something.

"Where we played, it was not heated," he went on. "We had to keep the basketballs warm in the ticket office. We had to sweep the floors ourselves as a coaching staff, Charley Rosen and myself, and drive the van and do these trips of over 450 miles. We had to do the work to get the roster together, get the players to try and play together on teams that were nine men at home and eight men on the road. It was strange."

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source : boston.com