If there’s somebody qualified to talk about championships and championship teams, it’s Phil Jackson. The Zen Master collected 11 championships as a coach, two as a player, and a couple more appearances on the biggest stage on the losing end.
After the Chicago Bulls won three straight games over the Seattle SuperSonics in the 1996 NBA Finals, Jackson identified the common denominator that separates seasoned title squads from the rest.
“I think that the most impressive thing to a coach like myself about the team that I’ve been able to coach this year is the fact that they go on the road and they’re better basketball players,” Jackson said in the postgame interview. “That is the true mark of a championship team, and I’ll say it’s happened before, I’ve seen it happen when the Pistons were a championship team, when the Bulls were a championship team in the 90s.”
“They seemed to have a chemical bond that really strengthens their unit,” Phil added.
Jackson mentioned road wins, as the Bulls had just won at the KeyArena, the Sonics’ home floor. Ironically, his comments must have flipped a switch in Seattle’s heads as they won the next two games at home before bowing out to Chicago at the United Center in Game 6.
Was Phil right?
The 1995-96 season was a historic one for the Bulls as they only lost 10 games the rest of the season. The 72 wins broke the previous mark of 69 set by the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers. However, of those 10 losses, eight came on the road while two came at home (one to the Charlotte Hornets and the other to the Indiana Pacers).
So, was Jackson right in saying championship teams play better on the road? Not if he meant they always perform and win away from home. However, if Phil meant that title squads often won road games when they had to, then that’s a fair assessment.
For instance, in 1998, Chicago pulled off two critical road wins in Utah that essentially saved their pursuit of a second three-peat.
Game 2 was the first hurdle. The Jazz had already taken Game 1 at the Delta Center, and with homecourt advantage on their side, going down 0-2 would have been catastrophic for the Bulls’ title hopes. Snatching that game shifted the balance back to Chicago and kept the series under control.
Game 6 came with a different kind of pressure. Injuries to Scottie Pippen and Ron Harper had the team on edge, and neither was at full strength. Pippen, in particular, battled through severe back pain just to stay on the floor. Had the Bulls lost that night, they would have faced a Game 7 in Salt Lake City, amidst the loudest fans in the league, without a healthy version of their most reliable sidekick.
That scenario could have derailed everything, but Chicago closed it out on the road, thanks to MJ’s epic game-winner dubbed “The Shot.”
Test of the road
Road games strip away all the comforts — no crowd support, no momentum cushion, no safety net. That’s why Jackson valued them so much in judging champions.
Phil even came up with the 40-20 rule to gauge title contenders; genuine contenders win 40 games before losing 20. That bar meant they would have to win more games on the road than usual, assuming they played 30 home and 30 away games at that point.
There’s a reason why Jackson earned the moniker “Lord of the Rings.” Jackson understood that championship DNA shows up when the margins are smallest. For him, the most accurate measure of a champion wasn’t the blowouts at home but the nights when the crowd roared against you and the team still found a way.