Phil Jackson was out as the Los Angeles Lakers head coach shortly after the Detroit Pistons beat them 4-1 in the 2004 NBA Finals, and the reason for it, according to Phil himself, was Kobe Bryant.
Jackson and Bryant always had a shaky relationship, but their alliance reached a breaking point during the 2003-04 season. In his book “Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success,” via ESPN , Jackson admitted that Kobe ‘s rape case further aggravated their differences because it “cracked open an old wound.”
“The Kobe incident triggered all my unprocessed anger and tainted my perception of him. … It distorted my view of Kobe throughout the 2003-04 season,” he wrote. “No matter what I did to extinguish it, the anger kept smoldering in the background.”
Phil’s daughter was a rape victim
The anger stemmed from “The Zen Master’s” own experience—his daughter Brookie was sexually assaulted by a student-athlete in college while on a date…