Im Still Ballin
03-12-2022, 01:20 PM
“The 6’8″ Jackson’s wingspan was so prodigious that Bill Fitch (Jackson’s coach at the University of North Dakota) would often have him show off to NBA scouts with something called “The Car Trick,” in which Jackson would sit in middle of the back seat of a 1950s Buick and open both doors simultaneously.”
-Phil Jackson’s official Bio
http://www.espn.com/media/nba/2005/1222/photo/action2.jpg
Among the pro scouts who had found their way to North Dakota was a chubby young Baltimore Bullets representative, Jerry Krause, who was the latest in a long line of people entertained by Jackson’s car tricks.
“I had quite a wingspan,” Jackson recalled with a chuckle. “Phil could do something no one else in the country could do,” Krause would recall years later. “I was scouting Phil for the Baltimore Bullets, and I saw him get in an old four-door Plymouth, sit in the middle of the back seat, and then open both front doors at the same time.”
For UND sports information director Lee Bohnet, it was Jackson’s ability to tune the radio from the back seat that did the trick. “We were going somewhere in town,” Bohnet recalled. “He reached over the front seat and dialed the radio without bending.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQfEiX-7L-lNMWp7v14jO8DM2W0BwXPs55Fa6zRWiU8Zc3HBuu9d5l1RH7yC uy9MkQaw70&usqp=CAU
Jim Simle, Jackson’s baseball coach, recalled hauling him somewhere in a car, when they pulled into a lane beside someone Jackson knew.
He used his long arms to reach out and unscrew the gas cap from the other car. Then as Simle drove away, Jackson grinned and deposited the cap on the front hood of the other car.
“He didn’t even have to stretch to unscrew it,” Simle recalled with a laugh.
https://commons.und.edu/und-athletics/1400/preview.jpg
And Phil possessed those arms that would sprout to a 43-inch sleeve, which were connected to a most unusual frame.
“He had this set of shoulders that never ended,” said Chuck Johnson, a Williston native who went on to become a sportswriter and author. “They looked like a folding table with extra leaves in it.”
From the seventh grade on, Jackson discovered that his size and strange physique worked in football, basketball, and baseball.
https://a.espncdn.com/media/nba/2005/0916/photo/g_jackson_195.jpg
“He used to destroy us in practice with his elbows,” former teammate David “Butch” Lince told an interviewer.
“John Burckhard [another teammate] and I had more knobs on our heads from him. He was a gangly sophomore and uncoordinated. He had a 43-inch sleeve. How many guys do you know with a 43-inch sleeve?”
As he had in Williston, Jackson continued to amaze friends and teammates with his long-armed tricks in cars. Peter Porinsh remembered Jackson sitting in the middle of the front seat of a sedan and reaching through the rear windows to play with the door handle.
“He could reach around when my alarm went off and tap me on the shoulder, and I had to get out of bed to do the same thing to him,” Jackson’s former roommate, Paul Pederson, recalled. “I think his arms were as long as our 7-footers were.”
https://img.bleacherreport.net/img/images/photos/002/975/036/hi-res-32c58816a7fc24e757eab2abdce93e8a_crop_exact.jpg?w= 1200&h=1200&q=75
Jackson seemed all shoulders and arms and wore thick-rimmed black glasses that contributed to an unusual countenance, which, combined with his tripping and thrashing about and his strange-looking left-handed hook shot, presented something of a spectacle to Williston’s intense fans.
Jackson was shy and especially sensitive; he quickly picked up on vibes from the crowd and felt he was being ridiculed and made fun of.
“We had a group of older guys that had that western North Dakota cowboy mentality,” Porinsh recalled of the students in the crowd who made fun of Jackson. “He was so gangly and sort of all over the place.
He was a misfit with a different religion. I think he was seen as a little bit of an oddball in a lot of ways.
Jackson also figured he would face something of a toughness challenge, which he did upon the opening of training camp. Mostly, though, it was a matter of ribbing.
His Knicks teammates took one look at the new rookie’s strange physique and dubbed him “Head and Shoulders,” yet another in what was proving to be perhaps the longest string of nicknames in all of sport.
Jackson managed to survive, and even scored in, the Knicks’ first game that season.
Beyond that separation from the group, the injury had increased his already substantial discomfort with his unusual body, one that as an adolescent had left him tagged with the unwanted nickname “Bones.”
The coathanger shoulders sat atop a 68 frame, and his 40-inch sleeves included an absolutely deadly set of elbows.
Even Jackson himself didn’t know when and where those elbows would strike next. This seemingly uncontrollable factor kept his Knicks teammates full of fear at practices.
“He seemed to be off-balance constantly. He seemed to be caroming off unseen opponents,” teammate Bill Bradley wrote in his book Life on the Run, adding that it was as if Jackson’s arms “served as separate sides of a scale which never achieved equilibrium. . . .”
"He was six-eight with a wingspan of a seven-two guy. His ability to cover and to disrupt in a semipressing situation was great," says Riordan now.
-Phil Jackson’s official Bio
http://www.espn.com/media/nba/2005/1222/photo/action2.jpg
Among the pro scouts who had found their way to North Dakota was a chubby young Baltimore Bullets representative, Jerry Krause, who was the latest in a long line of people entertained by Jackson’s car tricks.
“I had quite a wingspan,” Jackson recalled with a chuckle. “Phil could do something no one else in the country could do,” Krause would recall years later. “I was scouting Phil for the Baltimore Bullets, and I saw him get in an old four-door Plymouth, sit in the middle of the back seat, and then open both front doors at the same time.”
For UND sports information director Lee Bohnet, it was Jackson’s ability to tune the radio from the back seat that did the trick. “We were going somewhere in town,” Bohnet recalled. “He reached over the front seat and dialed the radio without bending.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQfEiX-7L-lNMWp7v14jO8DM2W0BwXPs55Fa6zRWiU8Zc3HBuu9d5l1RH7yC uy9MkQaw70&usqp=CAU
Jim Simle, Jackson’s baseball coach, recalled hauling him somewhere in a car, when they pulled into a lane beside someone Jackson knew.
He used his long arms to reach out and unscrew the gas cap from the other car. Then as Simle drove away, Jackson grinned and deposited the cap on the front hood of the other car.
“He didn’t even have to stretch to unscrew it,” Simle recalled with a laugh.
https://commons.und.edu/und-athletics/1400/preview.jpg
And Phil possessed those arms that would sprout to a 43-inch sleeve, which were connected to a most unusual frame.
“He had this set of shoulders that never ended,” said Chuck Johnson, a Williston native who went on to become a sportswriter and author. “They looked like a folding table with extra leaves in it.”
From the seventh grade on, Jackson discovered that his size and strange physique worked in football, basketball, and baseball.
https://a.espncdn.com/media/nba/2005/0916/photo/g_jackson_195.jpg
“He used to destroy us in practice with his elbows,” former teammate David “Butch” Lince told an interviewer.
“John Burckhard [another teammate] and I had more knobs on our heads from him. He was a gangly sophomore and uncoordinated. He had a 43-inch sleeve. How many guys do you know with a 43-inch sleeve?”
As he had in Williston, Jackson continued to amaze friends and teammates with his long-armed tricks in cars. Peter Porinsh remembered Jackson sitting in the middle of the front seat of a sedan and reaching through the rear windows to play with the door handle.
“He could reach around when my alarm went off and tap me on the shoulder, and I had to get out of bed to do the same thing to him,” Jackson’s former roommate, Paul Pederson, recalled. “I think his arms were as long as our 7-footers were.”
https://img.bleacherreport.net/img/images/photos/002/975/036/hi-res-32c58816a7fc24e757eab2abdce93e8a_crop_exact.jpg?w= 1200&h=1200&q=75
Jackson seemed all shoulders and arms and wore thick-rimmed black glasses that contributed to an unusual countenance, which, combined with his tripping and thrashing about and his strange-looking left-handed hook shot, presented something of a spectacle to Williston’s intense fans.
Jackson was shy and especially sensitive; he quickly picked up on vibes from the crowd and felt he was being ridiculed and made fun of.
“We had a group of older guys that had that western North Dakota cowboy mentality,” Porinsh recalled of the students in the crowd who made fun of Jackson. “He was so gangly and sort of all over the place.
He was a misfit with a different religion. I think he was seen as a little bit of an oddball in a lot of ways.
Jackson also figured he would face something of a toughness challenge, which he did upon the opening of training camp. Mostly, though, it was a matter of ribbing.
His Knicks teammates took one look at the new rookie’s strange physique and dubbed him “Head and Shoulders,” yet another in what was proving to be perhaps the longest string of nicknames in all of sport.
Jackson managed to survive, and even scored in, the Knicks’ first game that season.
Beyond that separation from the group, the injury had increased his already substantial discomfort with his unusual body, one that as an adolescent had left him tagged with the unwanted nickname “Bones.”
The coathanger shoulders sat atop a 68 frame, and his 40-inch sleeves included an absolutely deadly set of elbows.
Even Jackson himself didn’t know when and where those elbows would strike next. This seemingly uncontrollable factor kept his Knicks teammates full of fear at practices.
“He seemed to be off-balance constantly. He seemed to be caroming off unseen opponents,” teammate Bill Bradley wrote in his book Life on the Run, adding that it was as if Jackson’s arms “served as separate sides of a scale which never achieved equilibrium. . . .”
"He was six-eight with a wingspan of a seven-two guy. His ability to cover and to disrupt in a semipressing situation was great," says Riordan now.