Doug Gottlieb Pushes Back On Jalen Rose's Implication That Phil Jackson Is Racist

Phil Jackson recently shared that he's not a fan of the NBA anymore and doesn't tune into games because the league has gotten too political. ESPN's Jalen Rose reacted to Jackson's opinion by implying he's a racist. Doug Gottlieb - and others who possess that little thing called common sense - think Rose is full of it.

Gottlieb joined 'Don't @ Me With Dan Dakich' on Monday morning and shared his thoughts about the situation claiming that this racist outlook from Rose dates back to Jackson giving Toni Kukoc the final shot (which he made) in a 1994 NBA playoff game instead of Scottie Pippen. Pippen called Jackson's decision a "racial move" back in 2021.

The Fox Sports Radio host finds it very hard to believe that Jackson is racist, both from that particular example and his recent comments about the NBA being overly political.

Jackson recently joined the 'Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin' podcast and laid out that it was the NBA bubble, and the social justice messages the league adopted, that made him tune out.

“All the teams that could qualify went down there and stayed down there, no audience, and they had things on their back like ‘Justice’ and a funny thing happened,” Jackson said. “Like ‘Justice went to the basket and Equal Opportunity knocked him down’… "Some of my grandkids thought it was pretty funny to play up those names. I couldn’t watch that.

“ was trying to cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience to the game, and they didn’t know it was turning other people off,” Jackson said. “People want to see sports as non-political. Politics stays out of the game. It doesn’t need to be there."

Jackson wanting politics separate from sports makes him a racist, according to Rose.

“The same Phil Jackson that won championships with some of greatest black athletes in the history of the game … made millions on their backs and off their sweat equity,” Rose said.

“Y’all think it’s funny when ‘Justice’ passes the ball to ‘Equal Opportunity’? When somebody shows you who they are, believe them.”

How very ESPN of Rose, to call a man racist because he simply wants to enjoy sport for sport. Jackson simply said that he thinks there is too much politics in the NBA, he didn't scream from the mountaintops that he's some conservative or anything, but since he didn't openly endorse Rose's politics that the NBA promotes, then he must be a racist.

Big brain stuff from Mr. Rose.