Two weeks have passed since our last Wednesday Wizengamot statement of judgment, and we come back today with a probable violation to most people’s perceptions of Phil Jackson, the erstwhile NBA coach made famous by numerous championship rings with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers. However, we have a different take on the Zen Master: he was afraid to ever take a job that came with real challenges.

We respect Jackson as a player: small-college baller who made it to the NBA as a long-time role player, getting as far as he did on smarts just as much as physical prowess. Along the way, he also was a part of two NBA title teams with the New York Knicks, that in itself a rarity in the recent decades. We also respect his basketball acumen, for sure, and we never doubt his coaching abilities, in general. He was a brilliant coach.

Yet …

We have an issue with his record, simply because he ran away from challenges as an NBA coach, only taking on jobs where tremendous talent was already there—and leaving those gigs when the talent went bye bye. We have a lot more respect for Gregg Popovich, for example, who stuck with a franchise even after his all-time great players left, retired, etc. Pop did what Phil would never do: risk a lot of losing to be a real coach.

To wit: when Michael Jordan retired for the second time after the 1998 season, Jackson left the Chicago Bulls. Why? Well, Scottie Pippen left the team, too, but we’ve covered that. The roster still had Toni Kukoč and Ron Harper on it, in addition to the opportunity to really coach up a lot of undeveloped talent. If Jackson really wanted to prove himself to be a great coach, he should have stayed and worked with that clay.

Instead, he ran and hid for a year, under whatever pretenses he stated at the time (he literally said he didn’t want to coach a bad team). Sure, he had some issues with the owner and the general manager, but Jackson publicly admitted he didn’t want to coach a bad team. What kind of cowardice is that, to turn away from the ultimate coaching challenge? He was only 53 at the time, but his ego evidently demanded a lot nonetheless.

He resurfaced to coach the Los Angeles Lakers with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant on the roster, in addition to Harper and many other impressive role-playing talents. Coincidence? We think not. Jackson would only take a job where winning was all but guaranteed. Take Vince Lombardi, for comparison’s sake, considered the greatest NFL coach ever: he rebuilt two teams from scratch in his career. Jackson? Nope.

Jackson, of course, won three more titles with the Lakers, two of them extremely suspect due to questionable playoff officiating (2000, 2002), but then after L.A. lost in the 2004 NBA Finals, he ran away again from a tough situation with O’Neal leaving the team and being left with just Bryant, who he evidently didn’t care for that much (we are with him on that one). Yet, he came back again with the addition of talent.

He won a few more titles, but then Jackson left the team again after it got swept out of the postseason in 2011. To be fair, he was 65 by that point, had some health issues, and had announced that the season probably would be his last. We have no issue with an old man deciding the wear and tear on the body is too much for him, but again, knowing the team would have to rebuild soon probably played into the decision.

Jackson just was never the type to accept a rebuilding project. He was no Pop; he was no Lombardi. He won a single NBA Coach of the Year Award, too—in 1996, when he led the Bulls, with Jordan’s return from his first retirement, to the 72-win regular season, a record at the time. If Jackson was so great, it’s interesting he never won more COTY nods … as most experts realized he was working with excellent tools only, evidently.

Again, we have nothing against Jackson personally and have respect for his abilities. However, we always disliked his cowardice in taking only jobs that guaranteed success, as if rebuilding a team was beneath him. A person has a right to choose their employers in our world (or at least has had the choice recently … who knows about the future?), and that was Jackson’s prerogative. His cowardice just never sat well with us.