Here are Bo's thoughts on Phil Jackson:

I want the Lakers in the Finals. I don't have it in my blood to root for a Boston or New York team. I'm a big Phil Jackson fan, and I recently wrote about the Jordan-era Bulls in a rebuttal to some friends of mine trying to undermine Horace Grant, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, and Jackson, basically saying they were and are overrated. Enjoy my rant.

I think Phil Jackson has had the Lakers overachieving for a majority of the time he's been with them post Shaq.

They were a lot like the LeBron-lead Cavs, until they obtained Gasol and some of the younger guys starting playing better, which has a lot to do with Jackson's development in my opinion. I think he's great at getting the most out of mediocre players.

I think people in general really, really lose sight of the fact that it takes a whole team and a good coach to win in the NBA, and sometimes that's not even enough. I feel like a lot of people put way too much emphasis on individual performance and the offensive side of the ball.

In my opinion, people remember all of Jordan's offense, but not much else beyond that. And anyone who was following that era closely, and the years leading up to Jordan's championships, knows that there were a whole lot of other factors that went into winning those championships aside from what Jordan contributed.

And furthermore, Jordan improved his game tremendously under Phil Jackson, and he's given him credit for this publicly many times, even going as far as to refuse to play if Phil wasn't the coach. What the specifics of that relationship were, we'll never know, but clearly Phil Jackson had a good part in Jordan's individual development. He's also gotten Kobe to play the best basketball of his career. Maybe Kobe would have done it on his own, maybe he wouldn't have...that's all speculation, but we all know how easy it is to screw up a talented player and roster, and at the very least we can say that he gets his teams to play good solid team basketball on both ends of the floor, and keeps star players relatively together and happy...relatively. That's huge in my opinion and can't be overstated. And it's a lot more than you can say about almost every coach in the league, aside from a couple. Being a father figure, a psychologist and a teacher - all at the same time - year in and year out, is not an easy task. He's the only coach in the league that's been able to teach the triangle effectively year after year, which takes a lot of work. Most coaches won't even touch it, even though most people who understand the in and outs of X and O basketball know it to be a very good system for the NBA style of basketball.

To brush Phil Jackson and his accomplishments off due to having good players all in one sentence is utterly lazy and silly in my opinion. No offense.

Lakers in 6.

Kobe will reign and Doc Rivers will be out-coached in a big way.

Bo