Phil Jackson’s old news is Updike’s too

James Warren, in a June 30, 2017 column for the Poynter website, noted that Phil Jackson (pictured), the “fabled pro basketball coach got canned as chief executive of the New York Knicks. It’s open season on him right now, with nary a positive word being written about him.

“It reminds me, however, of a 1992 Chicago Tribune piece that I helped broker: a meeting between Jackson, then coach of the Chicago Bulls, and John Updike. The late Tribune writer Paul Galloway did a knockout job, including catching the fact that Jackson knew one Updike book better than Updike, along with Jackson having some distinct views about what were then big changes at The New Yorker.

If that Updike-Jackson interview sounds familiar, it was reprinted in Conversations with John Updike (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1994), ed. by James Plath.

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