“He got yellow eyes like a real panther” – Iman Shumpert is sure that Michael Jordan would win titles without Phil Jackson

Phil Jackson is considered one of the best coaches to have ever graced the NBA. Jackson won six championships with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls and added five more with the Los Angeles Lakers. He is widely credited with turning Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant into championship superstars.

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However, 2016 NBA champion Iman Shumpert, who played for the New York Knicks when Phil Jackson was team president there, thinks that the “Zen Master” is overrated and that Michael Jordan would have won championships even if Jackson did not come to Chicago.

“That White man coached us and we didn’t get no fu-g ring,”said Shumpert on Gil’s Arena. “He broke up our fu-g team. I won a championship, that’s cool. It had nothing to do with Phil Jackson.

I’m saying Phil Jackson did not come and Mike got good. I used to think like that: ‘Oh man, the Zen and it got Rodman’. No, Rodman was psycho anyway. That n-ga is going to get 20 rebounds anyway. Mike was going to bust n-ga a- anyway.”

It was only a matter of time before MJ would rule the NBA

Shumpert was the Knicks’ 17th overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft. He played four seasons in the Big Apple and was one of the players Phil traded during his disastrous three-year tenure as Knicks president. But Shumpert was dealt to Cleveland, where he became a part of the Cavs’ 2016 title team.

Although Jackson posted a disastrous 80-166 record as Knicks president, he was excellent as a head coach. He went 610-292 as Lakers head coach for 11 years with five championships and was an even better 545-193 as Bulls head coach, where his teams went unbeaten in six Finals appearances.

But Shumpert insists that the Bulls would still have won without Phil because MJ was already MJ and it was only a matter of time when they did.

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“That man was eating steak every night. He’s a demon, shorty. The man’s eyes is red and yellow. Michael Jordan’s eyes are yellow, bro. His eyes are yellow. They called the man Black. He got yellow eyes like a real panther. He’s gonna come and murk y’all anyway. We come to do that anyway,” Shump added.

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Salley doesn’t think MJ would have won without the triangle

While Shumpert thinks MJ would have still done what he did without Phil, Jordan’s former Bulls teammate, John Salley, recently shared during an appearance on the “Stepping into the Fire” podcast earlier this year that Mike doesn’t win anything without Phil’s triangle offensive system.

“If you’re talking about Chicago, Michael doesn’t win without that system,” Salley

“If you don’t have that system, we are knowing how to play Michael. He catch the ball, double-team him. When he picks the ball up, he got to dribble out when you’re double-teaming. If he puts two hands on the ball, you just run back. He’s not going to make the right pass. He’s mad he’s not scoring.”

Both Shumpert and Salley have good arguments. But when it comes to Jordan winning championships, the person more directly related to that is Scottie Pippen, not Phil. Remember in “The Last Dance,” MJ said he didn’t win without Pippen and that’s why Pip is his greatest teammate of all time.

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This story was originally published September 20, 2026 at 11:07 AM.