Jackson to spend more time around Knicks at Fisher's request

Sep 26, 2015 - 1:13 AM GREENBURGH, N.Y. (AP) Phil Jackson plans to spend more time around his New York Knicks coaching staff this season at the request of coach Derek Fisher.

Jackson said Friday that he wanted to give Fisher his space last season in their new roles, but perhaps gave him too much of it.

''I thought maybe I stepped back too far last year,'' Jackson said.

The NBA's career leader with 11 coaching championships said Fisher told him over the summer he would like to have more conversations this season, so the 70-year-old Jackson, the team's president of basketball operations, said they will do so.

Jackson said he would occasionally stick his head into Fisher's office last season after games and talk about specific plays, but said he never really sat with the staff and watched a game from beginning to end, which he said was his usual protocol as a coach.

''I'm not going to say that I'm going do that all the time, but there are going to be times that we're going to do that because Derek's kind of insinuated to me over the summer it'd be nice to have a little bit of that conversation as we go through this year. So, we'll see how that goes,'' Jackson said. ''But I think that's probably where I stepped back farther than any other place last year, allowed the staff to work on its own.''

The Knicks went 17-65 last season under Fisher, who made the jump straight to coaching after retiring as a player. He won five championships under Jackson with the Los Angeles Lakers and wants to make better use of one of New York's best assets.

''I feel like it would be helpful to be able to do more 1-on-1 discussion of specific things that are going on with our team, as opposed to knowing that he's sitting on the other side of the building and has seen more basketball than I've seen in my entire lifetime and not utilizing that resource to help myself and help our team,'' Fisher said.

''We just want to make sure we're carving out time where we can talk man to man and in a sense coach to coach, and really make sure our team is headed in the right direction.''