If you searched “coach” on Google yesterday, you’ll get back a lot of hits that include the name Phil Jackson. Jackson’s the 63-year-old coach of the NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers, who handed Jackson his tenth championship with their defeat of the Orlando Magic Sunday.

The question for many on Monday was this: Is Phil Jackson the best coach ever? Or, as the website Deadspin pithily puts it, is Jackson merely “the luckiest schlub of all time?” The issue, of course, is the star-studded list of men Jackson’s coached: guys with names like Michael Jordan.

So, is the magic (sorry, Orlando) in the coach? Or in the people being coached? It’s not merely a sports question. In fact, read the words of Mark Woods, writing about Jackson in The Guardian, and see if the words don’t ring true for coaching in a much wider sense of the word: “quietly, in his own understated manner, he has done what he always did: prodding and cajoling when required, but otherwise letting his players utilise the talents within.”

Jackson, who’s been called a Zen coach for his fondness of the present moment and teaching through koans, describes his method of working with talented players this way: “the real idea is that we call it conspiring together, breathing together, with breath, to conspire. And we sit in this attitude of, you know, being able to focus and hold our attention. So it’s very important that they have that kind of sense of reading each other, and their level of alertness and awareness and being able to read what’s going on on the court causes each of them to react in a certain way. And that’s the beauty of basketball, that’s the beauty of coaching.” Jackson went on to tell PBS’ NewsHour that for him, the games weren’t, in the end, the best part of the job. The beauty of “the journey,” Jackson said, was the “things in between.”

Sound familiar, coaches?

Does Phil Jackson offer anything to think about?

Or is it just about basketball?