A Courtside Look At NBA Legends, From Jordan To Kobe

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I'm Tanya Mosley. You ever sit down with someone, start talking, and suddenly hours have passed because the stories are just that good? That's what happened during the pandemic when longtime sports writer Sam Smith drove up to see Phil Jackson at his place in Montana. They talk players they'd known, games they've lived through, the legends, the troublemakers. and the geniuses.

Phil Jackson, of course, is the coach with 11 NBA championships, more than anyone in history. He coached Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, Kobe and Shaq, and before all that he played 13 seasons in the league, making him one of the few living bridges between what the NBA used to be and what it's become. And as a longtime sports writer, Sam Smith has been watching almost as long. From the smoky balcony of the Madison Square Garden on a 75 cent student pass to four decades on press row, he wrote The Jordan Rules, an inside account of the Chicago Bulls' first championship season that examined the team's dynamics on and off the court. Their new book together is called Masters of the Game, which is less of a rankings book than it is a preservation project.

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