Eleven Rings is about basketball but is equally about leadership and spirituality. I don't read many sports stories but I am glad I read this one. ( )

Picked this up after seeing "The Last Dance" documentary to get more perspective on the story. It did not disappoint in that regard. I had great nostalgic feelings for the 90s Bulls while reading. Beyond this though, it gave me some insight into the 00s Lakers, which I did not pay close attention to at the time, and detailed Phil's origin story including his time on the Knicks, which I was curious about. Interspersed throughout these recollections, are tidbits on mindfulness, managing egos, and confronting mistakes. They are ingrained in a way to be relevant and not overbearing. ( )

As coach of the Chicago Bulls and then the Los Angeles Lakers, Phil Jackson won a total of eleven NBA championships. Eleven Rings is both a memoir and a self-help/management book. However, Phil doesn’t go into much detail on his personal life. He mostly mentions it when it directly relates to what was going on with his basketball life at the time. The main focus of the book is his coaching philosophy and what has influenced it. Phil is a student of many teachers. He reads a lot and seems especially drawn to Native American and Buddhist philosophy.

I actually got this book when it first came out because I was a huge Chicago Bulls fan back in the Michael Jordan days. Like most of the books I acquire, it promptly went into my TBR pile. I dug it out after watching the docuseries about Michael Jordan’s last season with the Bulls, The Last Dance, on Netflix. I wanted to know more about Phil Jackson and his coaching because it was clear from the documentary that his players loved him.

I enjoyed learning more about Phil’s unorthodox style, from the infamous triangle defense, to teaching his players to meditate. Every season, he gave each player a book that he had chosen especially for them that he thought would speak to them in some way or have something to teach them. It could be anything – non-fiction, a novel or poetry. How cool is that? They didn’t always read them but at least he tried.

He doesn’t go into detail about his players’ personal lives but he is quite candid about challenges he had coaching various players. Of course he struggled with Dennis Rodman, but he also had trouble with others, including quite a bit with Kobe Bryant, who was still a teenager when he started with the Lakers. I was impressed by how he handled each player differently according to the guidance they needed. He didn’t subscribe to a one-size-fits-all approach in anything he did. That’s not to say that he was a perfect coach. He messed up sometimes and he admits his mistakes in this book.

You don’t need to be a hard-core basketball fan to enjoy Eleven Rings. There are technical details about basketball of course, but I feel like a lot of the coaching skills he uses can be applied in everyday life as well. Recommended. ( )

This was an enjoyable read across basketball history with one of the prime movers. It was interesting to get some off-court, during-practice looks at the personalities and personal journeys of some of the great(est) players, as well as hearing how Jackson incorporated the eightfold path in achieving his eleven rings. Selfishness, selflessness, mind(fullness) over matter, personal growth, teamwork...I would have appreciated hearing a little more about the struggles, doubt, conflict that led to this devotion to Buddhist principles, but that maybe says more about my story than Phil's. ( )

Phil Jackson could have been anything---teacher, diplomat, even philosopher-king, perhaps---but he decided to become a basketball coach. And what a basketball coach. How can you resist wanting to learn more about him?

I couldn’t. I wasn’t really interested in all the basketball talk (who can remember all these basketball words and players?) but I loved seeing how Jackson coached. It was fascinating to see how he managed not only showboat-er Koby Bryant but the odd-bird Dennis Rodman and even Mr. Basketball Michael Jordan. He coached out-of-the-box and from-the-heart and that worked. Fascinating. ( )