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Phil Jackson remains cryptic in Twitter response to LeBron James 'posse' criticism

ben rohrbach
Senior NBA writer
Knicks president Phil Jackson is being cryptic again. (AP)
Knicks president Phil Jackson is being cryptic again. (AP)

The past 48 hours have been quite a whirlwind for New York Knicks team president Phil Jackson, whose ill-conceived “posse” comments about LeBron James and his business partner friends during a wide-ranging interview on Tuesday with one of the NBA’s great columnists, ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan, led to one of the league’s greatest players losing respect for one of the game’s greatest coaches.

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As the issue unraveled on Tuesday, the often outspoken Jackson remained mum following the interview and subsequent criticism from the Cleveland Cavaliers superstar, his primary business partner, Maverick Carter, and another friend, Carmelo Anthony, who just so happens to play for the Knicks. However, Jackson did offer a subtle response on Wednesday morning, however cryptic, by retweeting an earlier Twitter post by Knicks vice president of player personnel Clarence Gaines Jr.

Knicks president Phil Jackson retweeted this post from Knicks VP Clarence Gaines Jr. (Twitter)
Knicks president Phil Jackson retweeted this post from Knicks VP Clarence Gaines Jr. (Twitter)

So we’re clear, this is the exchange between Jackson and MacMullan that stirred this controversy:

JM: You, [Gregg] Popovich and Pat Riley are the most decorated coaches of your generation. What separates Riley?

PJ: Pat has a terrific sense of what he wants to do. Now that I’m president, I have to read all this stuff about the league. Usually it’s ‘delete, delete, delete.’ But I noticed there was something about D-Wade and Pat’s communication breaking down the other day. I wondered about that. I found it surprising.

JM: It all started when LeBron left, right? Could you have ever imagined Earvin Johnson leaving Riley, or Michael Jordan leaving you?

PJ: It had to hurt when they lost LeBron. That was definitely a slap in the face. But there were a lot of little things that came out of that. When LeBron was playing with the Heat, they went to Cleveland and he wanted to spend the night. They don’t do overnights. Teams just don’t. So now (coach Erik) Spoelstra has to text Riley and say, ‘What do I do in this situation?’ And Pat, who has iron-fist rules, answers, ‘You are on the plane, you are with this team.’ You can’t hold up the whole team because you and your mom and your posse want to spend an extra night in Cleveland.

I always thought Pat had this really nice vibe with his guys. But something happened there where it broke down. I do know LeBron likes special treatment. He needs things his way.

Since then, Gaines and Jackson directed their Twitter followers to The Posse Foundation, a charitable organization that “identifies public high school students with extraordinary academic leadership potential who may be overlooked by traditional college selection processes,” pairs them with other such students on “multicultural teams — Posses — of 10 students” and works with colleges to award them four-year scholarships. This is not unlike the charitable work done by the LeBron James Family Foundation or the business partnerships James built with high school friends at LRMR Management.

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The tweet from Gaines came before James publicly criticized Jackson for using a term he deemed disparaging to the successful partnership he formed with his African-American childhood friends, but after one such friend, Carter, took to Twitter and described Jackson’s phraseology as “disrespectful.”

And Jackson’s retweet of Gaines followed extensive comments from both James and Anthony on the racial undertones of a word that is often used to describe less successful family and friends living off the considerable paychecks of black athletes. As Anthony said on Tuesday afternoon, “I don’t think you have to be a rocket scientist or an educated person to understand what that means to us.”

It is important to note Carter specifically said, “I’m not saying Phil Jackson is racist,” and Anthony expressed similar sentiment. However, the comment is racially motivated, at least in James’ eyes.

“We see the success that we have but then there is always someone that lets you know still how far we still have to go as African-Americans,” James told reporters in Cleveland on Tuesday morning, “and I don’t believe that Phil Jackson would have used that term if he was doing business with someone else and working with another team or if he was working with anybody in sports that was owning a team that wasn’t African-American and had a group of guys around them that didn’t agree with what they did, I don’t think he would have called them a posse.”

He soon added, “It’s not surprising. “If [Jackson] says it out to the media, you can only imagine what he says when the camera is not on him or the headset or whatever you guys record on. Just got a lot more work to do.”

What Gaines, who is black, and Jackson, who is white, meant by their respective tweet and retweet leaves too much to the imagination. Perhaps they were pointing to an alternative definition of posse: “a group of people who have a common characteristic, occupation, or purpose.” Or maybe this was some form of an apology for Jackson’s remarks, suggesting a donation to this charity might alleviate some of the expressed concerns. We do not know what they meant, because they have not said. Jackson has neither clarified his comments nor apologized to James publicly since. Only a retweet.

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I think we can all agree Jackson wasn’t, as some on social media have suggested, referring to this third definition of posse: “the body of men in a county whom the sheriff could summon to enforce the law.” Jackson made pretty clear his definition of posse as it relates to James in an excerpt from his book “The Last Season” on the 2003-04 Los Angeles Lakers, uncovered by ESPN’s Rachel Nichols:

Given the empire James has built on and off the court alongside childhood friends Carter, Rich Paul and Randy Mims, it’s become abundantly clear the quartet once known as the Four Horsemen has indeed developed over the past 12 years into “mature, self-sufficient human beings.” Little did Jackson know his use of posse then and now would be what’s causing more psychological damage.

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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie and Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!