Coaching Pay Scale Goes Wild Jackson Figures To Raise Bar To An Even More Amazing Level

If Rick Pitino is worth $7 million a year, Larry Brown can get $5 million and Larry Bird is contemplating a $4.5 million annual salary, how much is Phil Jackson worth?

The coach who has already won four NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls is discreetly finding out.

“Orlando and Golden State are going at him like crazy,” said an NBA source with intimate knowledge of Jackson’s flirtations with other teams. “They know what Brown and Pitino got, and it won’t deter them to go higher.”

Jackson has the right to listen to offers from other teams because of a unique clause in his current one-year contract - a clause that Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf reportedly insisted upon in negotiations last summer.

Jackson and his agent, Todd Musburger, have been publicly mum, but the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Magic and Warriors have emerged as the two main bidders.

The Philadelphia 76ers acknowledged talking with Jackson before they hired Brown on Monday. The Sixers didn’t want to wait until the Bulls won the championship again or were eliminated from the playoffs, so they took Brown’s now-or-never ultimatum and made him the highest-salaried coach in league history.

The record lasted only one day for Brown, who was surpassed on the salary scale Tuesday when the Boston Celtics gave Rick Pitino a 10-year contract worth a reported $68 million to $70 million. That would make him the highest-paid coach in all of sports.

“It’s crazy,” Dallas Mavericks general manager Don Nelson said. “I’m happy for the coaches, and I think it was long overdue that their salaries caught up with player salaries. But I think they’re overdoing it.”

Just a week ago, the word around the NBA was that Jackson was seeking $4 million a year and full control of personnel matters. But that was before Pitino and Brown raised the salary bar to previously unimaginable heights.

Jackson has said he will sit down at the end of the season to talk to Reinsdorf about a contract, and the stakes will be high. Michael Jordan has threatened to retire if the Bulls don’t re-sign Jackson, and the coach will go into the negotiations with plenty of leverage if the Orlando and Golden State offers remain on the table.

Besides the playoffs, salaries gone berserk are the talk of the league. Everyone knew there would be plenty of coaching jobs open, but no one predicted the kind of all-out escalation that has taken place.

“We’re not worth that much money,” Seattle coach George Karl told the Dallas Morning News.

“I don’t think I’m worth anywhere near $8 million. But if some owner is willing to pay it, I’m willing to take it,” said Karl, who will make $3.5 million next season and then become a free agent.

When Brown stepped to the podium after being named the 76ers’ new coach, he noted that he had a $7,000 salary in 1965 when he took his first NBA assistant’s coaching job. He also thanked Pitino for escalating the bidding war.

The next day, Pitino signed a deal that dwarfed the supposedly revolutionary contracts that John Calipari got from the New Jersey Nets in 1996 and Pat Riley received from the Miami Heat in 1995.

Riley and Calipari each signed for $15 million over five years, and Riley also received part ownership of the team.

Coaching posts remain vacant in Indiana, Denver, Golden State and Vancouver, and changes are rumored to be in the works in Orlando, Portland and possibly even Detroit.