There are roughly 2,200 miles between Los Angeles and Orlando. That doesn’t begin to describe the gap separating Phil Jackson and Stan Van Gundy.

They’re both head coaches in the NBA Finals. But that’s where the similarity ends.

Jackson is the Zen Master, who often sits on the sidelines during games wearing a bemused look that says his mind is off contemplating his navel in a meditation garden somewhere. Van Gundy is the Master of Panic, who spins and whirls and jumps up and down like a guy who just had a rabid skunk dropped down his pants.

These are not merely radically different sides of the same coaching coin. They are two entirely different currencies.

Jackson is the 65-year-old legend who won nine NBA championships in 12 seasons with the Bulls and Lakers, tying the immortal Red Auerbach for most titles by a head coach. He has 1,041 NBA wins on a coaching resume that could fill up volumes.

Van Gundy “earned” a courtesy ring from the Miami Heat in 2006, the year that he stepped aside for Pat Riley, and probably couldn’t find that gaudy piece of jewelry now on a bet. He is a 49-year-old with 223 career wins who would likely be shouting out instructions at a rec league if he weren’t occupied for the next week or so in front of the national TV cameras.

It’s easy to get an insight into the two personalities simply by watching Van Gundy and Jackson during those live in-game interviews. While Van Gundy pours his heart and emotion into his answers, Jackson often treats them with the purposely detached air of someone waiting for a colonoscopy.

This matchup is Everyman vs. The Man With Everything, nobility vs. nobody, blue-collar vs. blue blood.

One guy dates the team owner’s daughter and the other guy gave a shout out for his own 17-year-old daughter’s classmates to vote for her in the Student Council elections.

Jackson is distinguished. Van Gundy is disheveled.

One of the highlights of every new NBA season is checking out the latest styling of Jackson. Will his hair be cut shorter? Will he wear a mustache or goatee or soul patch or be clean-shaven?

Van Gundy’s idea of high fashion is tucking in his shirt.

Jackson always has fancied himself as part coach, part teacher, part philosopher. He’s handed out books to his players to try to get inside their heads. Van Gundy does his motivating the old-fashioned way: by screaming as if his lungs were on fire.

While Jackson’s All-NBA first teamer, Kobe Bryant, speaks of having a symbiotic relationship with his coach, Van Gundy’s All-NBA first teamer, Dwight Howard, mockingly imitates his coach’s histrionic rants.

“Phil and I can talk, we can exchange ideas, we can come to the solutions of problems from two different viewpoints,” Bryant said.

Of course, Jackson’s signature coaching move is making no move at all. When things are going badly for the Lakers, he’ll resist the temptation to call a timeout and rely on the players to figure it out for themselves. He could teach penguins how to be cool.

Van Gundy, on the other hand, has never met a candle on a birthday cake that he couldn’t worry into a raging inferno.

Point guard Rafer Alston, who had played a season under Van Gundy in Miami, was traded to the Magic in mid-February and didn’t take long to get re-adjusted. When Orlando was putting the finishing touches on a blowout win over Cleveland late in the regular season, Van Gundy jumped Alston during a timeout over a turnover in the final minutes.

“I said, ‘What could you possibly be yelling about? We’re up by 40,’” Alston recalled with a shake of his head.

Jackson, after two hip surgeries, sits on his special elevated chair on the Lakers’ bench, literally looking down on the court as if surveying his kingdom. Van Gundy storms along the sidelines like a peasant trying to beat down the drawbridge with his fists.

Jackson talks in the kind of calm, soothing voice that would be perfect for narrating audio books. Van Gundy is more the siren screaming from the top of the ambulance. Jackson never wants you to see him sweat. Van Gundy probably rolls out of bed in the morning looking like he’d slept in a sauna.

Making his 12th appearance in The Finals, Jackson ruminates about how the league has changed, that there are more media demands, more intrusions on his team’s privacy.

In his first appearance in The Finals, Van Gundy is just happy to be here.

“I don’t know if two coaches could be more different,” said Orlando’s backup point guard Tyronn Lue, who has played for both.

Barely a week ago during the Eastern Conference finals, the regular joe Van Gundy was spotted by reporters grabbing a slice of pizza in a Cleveland mall. “At 3 in the morning, I can’t sleep because I’m worrying about how to stop Kobe Bryant,” Van Gundy says now.

Several years ago, on the eve of The Finals opener, Jackson and Jeanie Buss, were sipping martinis on an outdoor balcony of a restaurant at Venice Beach. “Cheers,” said the Lakers coach at the time.

Miles and miles between those styles.

(nba.com)

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