Table of Contents
What are the most effective team building strategies for successful leadership?
Learn the coaching secrets behind Phil Jackson’s eleven NBA championships in Eleven Rings. Discover his unique approach to leadership, mindfulness, and teamwork.
Read the full article to learn how Phil Jackson blended sports strategy with Zen philosophy to build two of the greatest dynasties in basketball history.
Genres
Motivation, Inspiration, Management, Leadership, Career Success
Secrets of sporting success.
Eleven Rings (2013) recounts how Phil Jackson became the most successful coach in NBA history, leading his teams to eleven championships. Blending deep spirituality with unconventional coaching tactics, Jackson developed an innovative leadership style that not only transformed his players but also reshaped the game of basketball itself.
When an NBA player wins a championship, they’re awarded a ring. But of course, it’s far more than just a piece of jewelry. A championship ring stands as a symbol – of dedication, of teamwork, of history-making achievement.
No one understands that symbolism better than Phil Jackson. As a player with the New York Knicks, he earned two championship rings – an accomplishment few professionals ever achieve. But his most extraordinary success came from the sidelines. As head coach of the Chicago Bulls and later the Los Angeles Lakers, Jackson collected an unprecedented eleven more rings, more than any coach in professional sports history. His Bulls claimed six titles during the Michael Jordan era of the 1990s, while his Lakers added five more with superstars like Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.
Yet for all his glittering success, Jackson’s coaching style was famously grounded. He drew inspiration from a unique blend of philosophy and spirituality, pairing unconventional methods with deep respect for the human side of the game. In this summary, we’ll explore the key lessons from Jackson’s distinctive, yet powerfully effective, approach to leadership – along with a few behind-the-scenes stories from the world of elite basketball.
Phil Jackson’s leadership formula
Phil Jackson’s career as an NBA coach was nothing short of legendary. But before looking at his triumphs on the court, it’s worth pausing to understand the principles that shaped his leadership approach. True to his style, Jackson always explained the why upfront – so rather than saving the takeaways for the end, let’s begin with them, Jackson-style.
His first principle was to lead from the inside out. Don’t study what other coaches are doing; listen to your authentic voice. For Jackson, that meant incorporating personal spirituality into professional strategy, experimenting with everything from Christian mysticism to Zen meditation. Did the players think he was a bit kooky? Sure. Did he get results? Absolutely.
The second principle was to bench your ego. The more directly you try to exert power, the less powerful you become. When you distribute power as widely as possible throughout your organization, you can focus on your true role as keeper of the team’s vision.
From there, he emphasized the importance of letting players discover their own destiny. Don’t think for them. Standard NBA practice when the opposing team goes on a 6-0 run? Call timeout immediately. Jackson preferred letting the clock run, forcing players to solve problems themselves. Michael Jordan called this building the team’s “think power,” creating resilient, problem-solving athletes.
Jackson also believed in turning the mundane into the sacred. Even elite-level sports can start to feel monotonous and uninteresting. Jackson incorporated rituals and ceremonies that elevated practice sessions, keeping players focused on their larger destiny rather than just going through the motions.
At times, though, he knew you needed to sometimes pull out the big stick. In the strictest form of Zen, monitors use a stick called a keisaku to strike dozy meditators and snap them to attention. Jackson’s keisaku wasn’t a literal stick, but a commitment to shaking things up. Occasionally he’d surprise players with silent practice sessions or scrimmages with the lights out, to keep everyone on their toes
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Jackson taught his players to forget the ring. Jackson believed in approaching competition with joy and creativity rather than grinding desperation. This belief was inspired by the ancient philosopher Lao-Tzu, who wrote, “The best athlete wants his opponent at their best.” When you focus on the beauty of the game itself rather than obsessing over outcomes, you actually perform better. Focus on the journey, is Jackson’s motto, and championships will take care of themselves.
Jazz and basketball
For Phil Jackson, basketball was a lot like jazz. A devoted music fan, he often drew inspiration from Thelonious Monk’s famous list of advice to his bandmates. Among the notes were reminders like, “Just because you’re not a drummer doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time” and “Don’t play everything every time – the things you don’t play are as important as the things you do.” In Monk’s musical wisdom, Jackson recognized timeless lessons about collaboration, rhythm, and the art of improvisation, principles he carried straight onto the basketball court.
But to improvise effectively, you need structure. Enter the triangle offense. It’s a system where three players form a triangle on one side of the court, with specific spacing that creates multiple options for ball movement and scoring. The beauty lies in its unpredictability. As Kobe Bryant later explained, “The opposition didn’t know what we were going to do, because we didn’t know what we were going to do.” Players read the defense and reacted instinctively, like jazz musicians responding to each other’s cues.
Assistant Bulls coach Tex Winter championed the triangle long before Jackson was on the coaching team. But when Doug Collins took over as Bulls head coach in 1986, he abandoned the triangle for a more rigid approach, teaching players about fifty different set plays. This made the team overly dependent on minute-to-minute direction. It also turned Michael Jordan into a star and the rest of the team into supporting actors.
After three years of Collins’ style, Jackson got the top job and knew what needed fixing. The Bulls – mockingly called “Jordan and the Jordanaires” in the media – needed to become like a jazz combo, improvising and supporting each other.
With this shift, Jackson faced a delicate challenge. Michael Jordan was on track for another scoring title and another championship, but playing within a truly multidimensional team meant he had to step back from chasing individual stats. At first, Jordan resisted, dismissing Jackson’s approach as an “equal opportunity offense.” Meanwhile, assistant coach Tex Winter pushed for a pure version of the triangle and grew frustrated whenever Jordan bent the system to spotlight his own brilliance.
In the end, Jackson charted a middle path between these two approaches: structure and collaboration alongside room for ego and individual craftsmanship. The new approach didn’t go smoothly initially – the Bulls lost to Detroit in the playoffs that year. But while they lost the match, they won the bigger battle. The Bulls were pulling together as a team.
From team to pack
In 1991, the Chicago Bulls conquered Magic Johnson’s Lakers and clinched their first championship. Jordan scored 31 points in the deciding game in front of a raucous Chicago crowd.
How did the Bulls pull off the win? Strategy, as any sports nerd could tell you, played a crucial role. The Bulls had perfected the triangle offense, but they’d also started experimenting with what Jackson called “automatics” – choreographed reactions to specific defensive situations. One famous automatic was the “Blind Pig,” where a player would cut to the high post, receive a pass with his back to the basket, then quickly find an open teammate as defenders collapsed on him. Simple, but incredibly effective.
But sports strategy wasn’t the whole story. Jackson had transformed the Bulls from a collection of talented individuals to a team that thought and acted as a unit. The Bulls adopted a motto from The Jungle Book: “For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.” Keeping this pack unified throughout the season was Jackson’s greatest challenge: no easy feat in a team studded with star players like Jordan, Pippen, and Paxson who could easily outshine the others.
In fact this was the source of Jordan’s biggest frustration: others weren’t playing at his level. But who could? Jackson challenged him to reframe the problem: How could he catalyze better play among his teammates? By treating Jordan as a partner rather than just a star, Jackson transformed him from player to coach. Meanwhile, Jackson kept supporting players engaged through an unusually deep ten-man rotation, meaning all players were regularly folded into the flow of the game.
Jackson also introduced the Bulls to Zen meditation. He wasn’t trying to turn them into Buddhist monks, just asking them to relate more mindfully to each other. Meditation cultivates presence, and basketball success demands maintaining presence with evenly distributed attention across the court. According to the Zen masters, when you practice something with a simple, clear mind, your actions are equally simple and straightforward. Watching the Bulls score that final championship point – simple and straightforward – who could doubt Jackson’s methods?
Feeling into the moment
In Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, the Bulls trailed the Utah Jazz by one point with less than ten seconds left. Then Michael Jordan stripped the ball from Karl Malone, dribbled up court, and made an elegant jumpshot – the shot that basketball fans know as The Last Shot – over Bryon Russell with 5.2 seconds remaining on the clock.
When Jordan later described what was going through his mind during that sequence, it sounded remarkably like mindfulness meditation. When he got the steal, he said, “the moment became the moment”. He was pure Zen.
The mindful grace of that last shot made it all look easy. But the Bulls journey to the ring had been turbulent and challenging. Privately, Jackson had been calling this season “The Last Dance”. Why the last? Well, the players were aging and the team was beginning to fracture. Scottie Pippen was playing through injury and resentful that he earned less than some of his team-mates. Dennis Rodman had been characteristically erratic, missing practices and creating distractions. Early in the season, the Bulls struggled badly, losing winnable games and looking disconnected on court.
And that wasn’t all. Bulls General Manager Jerry Krause had a famously contentious relationship with Jackson. Now, when Jackson’s contract was up for renewal, negotiations fell apart completely. In a memorable press conference announcing Jackson’s departure, Krause declared: “Players and coaches don’t win championships, organizations do.”
The team was enraged at Krauses’ remarks. But rather than falling apart completely, they began to come together. Their farewell season started to feel like a sacred mission, with more than simple victory at stake.
Jackson called a special team meeting and asked players to read short paragraphs about what they meant to each other. They all spoke frankly, without bravado or ego. Michael Jordan even read a short poem. Later, Jackson turned off the lights. The papers where they’d written their feelings were ceremoniously burned in a small fire. Perhaps that same fire was burning under the team when they made their way to that incredible sixth championship. The moment had indeed become the moment. Not just for Jordan’s final shot, but for an entire group of men who’d learned to play as one.
The LA Lakers walk the Eightfold Path
When Phil Jackson arrived in Los Angeles in 1999, he found a team bursting with talent but lacking maturity. Shaquille O’Neal had a massive presence and young Kobe Bryant displayed breathtaking athleticism. Individual talent was everywhere. But perhaps that – the individual part, not the talent part – was the problem. Unlike the Bulls with the Pistons, the Lakers weren’t unified against one big rival. Unlike Chicago, Los Angeles was a city brimming with distractions. The Lakers were Hollywood royalty – not exactly ideal conditions for setting aside individual ego in service of the team.
In response to this challenge, Jackson introduced his most comprehensive teaching tool: Buddha’s Eightfold Path. In Buddhist tradition, these eight interconnected practices are a path that guides practitioners away from selfishness and toward wisdom. The practices include Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Concentration. Jackson devoted entire coaching sessions to translating these ancient principles into the Lakers reality.
Right Speech revolutionized team communication. In Buddhism, this means choosing truthful words that unite rather than divide. For the Lakers, Jackson banned public criticism of teammates. When tensions flared between Shaq and Kobe – their egos clashing over who was the “real” leader – Jackson required them to address conflicts directly with each other rather than through media barbs.
Right Action became Jackson’s weapon against Kobe’s ball-hogging tendencies. Buddhists practice Right Action by choosing behaviors that help rather than harm others. Jackson translated this into basketball terms: making the extra pass became a form of compassion, setting screens for teammates became service to the greater good. When Kobe held the ball too long, hunting for spectacular plays, Jackson would substitute him immediately, explaining that selfish action – however skillful – violated the team’s spiritual contract.
Right Concentration transformed the Laker’s mental approach to high pressure moments. In Buddhist meditation, this means maintaining focus without distraction. Jackson taught the Lakers to treat crucial possessions like meditation practice, staying completely present rather than getting lost in crowd noise, or fear of failure. During their 2000 playoff run, this showed most clearly in situations where other teams cracked under pressure, but the Lakers maintained poise.
Walking the eightfold path wasn’t easy. Egos clashed and old habits died hard. But the Lakers who won their first championship under Jackson in 2000 were more than a collection of talented individuals. They were a whole: much greater than the sum of their parts.
Spirit not scoreboard
The 2008 NBA Finals were humiliating for the Lakers. Boston’s Big Three – Pierce, Garnett, and Allen – dismantled them in six games, reviving the legendary Lakers-Celtics rivalry that had defined the 1980s.
But in 2010, that was all behind them and Jackson was facing fresh challenges. The Lakers were integrating mercurial newcomer Ron Artest into the team. Kobe Bryant – no longer a hot-headed young star but a seasoned leader – was aging. A nagging right knee injury meant spectacular moments didn’t come as effortlessly. Sometimes, chasing those highlights, he reverted to his old shot-seeking ways.
But there’s an old Japanese proverb: fall down seven times, stand up eight. And after a rocky start to the season, the Lakers stood up again. Bryant’s knee recovered. Artest was playing in tune with the rest of the team. They looked formidable heading into the playoffs.
Then came the Finals rematch everyone wanted: Lakers versus Celtics. Boston deployed their familiar bruising defense, plugging driving lanes and forcing jump shots. It was the same strategy that had worked so effectively in 2008. This time, though, the Lakers had stronger, more varied scoring options. They wouldn’t be shut down so easily.
The mental battle proved trickier. After their previous humiliation, old wounds felt suddenly fresh. The Lakers desperately wanted redemption – but did they want it too badly? Early on in the decisive seventh game, Bryant wanted victory so intensely he was reverting to hero ball. Jackson’s advice was textbook Zen wisdom: “Let the game come to you.” Bryant switched his focus to the spirit of play and not the scoreboard. His team followed suit. The Lakers claimed their victory.
For Jackson, that championship was his sweetest victory, the pinnacle of a coaching philosophy he’d spent a lifetime perfecting: the greatest victories come not from forcing your own will, but from surrendering to the spirit of the game.
Conclusion
The main takeaway from Eleven Rings by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty is that Jackson became the most successful coach in NBA history not by relying on traditional, ego-driven methods, but by embracing a mindful, spiritual, and deeply collective approach to the game. His core philosophy centered on leading with authenticity, honoring the spirit of play over fixating on outcomes, and encouraging individuals to set aside personal ambitions in service of the team as a whole.