This is fresh air. I'm Tanya Mosley. You ever sit down with someone, start talking, and suddenly

hours have passed because the stories are just that good? That's what happened during the pandemic

when longtime sports writer Sam Smith drove up to see Phil Jackson at his place in Montana. They

talk players, they'd known, games they've lived through, the legends, the troublemakers, and the geniuses.

Phil Jackson, of course, is the coach with 11 NBA championships, more than anyone in history.

He coached Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippen, Kobe, and Shaq, and before all that, he played 13 seasons in the league, making him one of the few

living bridges between what the NBA used to be and what it's become. And as a long-time

sports writer Sam Smith has been watching almost as long, from the smoky balcony of the Madison

Square Garden on a 75-cent student pass to four decades on press row. He wrote the Jordan

Rules, an inside account of the Chicago Bulls' first championship season that examined the team's

dynamics on and off the court. Their new book together is called Masters of the Game,

which is less of a rankings book than it is a preservation project,

an attempt to capture what made certain players unforgettable, the kind of greatness Phil saw up

close, and Sam chronicled for years. And Phil Jackson and Sam Smith, welcome to fresh air.

Thank you. Looking forward to it. Thanks, Daniel.

It's a list of the masters of the game,

but it's also a real history lesson on the NBA in general, taking us all the way back to the

40s, to the beginnings. I mean, some really funny stories that, like smoking inside of the locker

room. There used to be smoke boys who would have

cigarettes waiting for the players. Also, the game was a small man's game, which today just seems

unbelievable because, I mean, it is definitely a big man's game, you know? These guys were

proficient at the game and what they did.

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