Pau Gasol didn’t need a long statement to show what he thought about Phil Jackson getting a statue at Star Plaza. A pair of purple and gold hearts on social media was enough.
That small gesture fit the relationship that defined the Lakers’ late-2000s title run: Jackson, the coach with the résumé, and Gasol, the frontcourt piece who helped turn that résumé into two more championships. The Lakers announced that Jackson’s statue will be unveiled on April 9, 2027, before their game against the Minnesota Timberwolves, and Gasol’s reaction immediately tied the honor back to the team’s championship core.
Jackson will become the ninth Lakers figure with a statue outside Crypto.com Arena, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Elgin Baylor, Chick Hearn, Magic Johnson, Pat Riley, Jerry West, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, who has two. For a franchise that has turned its biggest names into permanent fixtures at Star Plaza, Jackson’s place there reflects how central his Lakers years were.
He coached the Lakers for 11 seasons across two stints and won five NBA titles with the team. Those five championships came in two distinct eras: the three-peat with O’Neal and Bryant from 2000 to 2002, then back-to-back titles in 2009 and 2010 with Bryant and Gasol.
That second stretch is where Gasol’s connection to Jackson becomes impossible to separate from the Lakers’ history. Gasol arrived in Los Angeles and became part of the pairing that carried the Lakers to those final two championships under Jackson. The statue, in that sense, does not just honor a coach; it also points back to the players who helped make those seasons possible.
Jeanie Buss put Jackson’s place in the franchise in direct terms: “Phil Jackson defines championship basketball for a reason.”
The numbers behind that statement are hard to miss. Jackson guided the Lakers to titles in five of seven trips to the NBA Finals, and his Lakers tenure produced the kind of sustained success that made him one of the most decorated coaches in league history. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007, and he also holds the Lakers franchise records for both regular-season and playoff wins.
For Gasol, the statue announcement is another reminder of how closely his Lakers legacy is tied to Jackson’s. The coach’s most famous teams included both the Shaq-Kobe era and the Kobe-Gasol era, and Gasol’s purple-and-gold hearts were a quiet acknowledgment of where he fits in that lineage.
Jackson’s statue will be unveiled next season, but the symbolism is already clear: the Lakers are adding another permanent marker to a franchise built on banners, and Gasol’s reaction shows that his own place in that story is part of what makes the honor resonate.