Success Quote by Larry Dixon

The joke here is how aggressively noncommittal it is. Asked to weigh Phil Jackson's importance to the Lakers, Larry Dixon responds with a tautology so blunt it borders on parody: "very important". It's the kind of quote that reads like it escaped a press scrum on low batteries, when the question demands texture and the answer supplies pure weather.

The specific intent is utilitarian: close the loop without inviting follow-ups, controversy, or locker-room politics. In the era when Jackson's mystique was both spiritual brand and tabloid magnet, any real analysis risks stepping on landmines: credit allocation (Kobe versus Shaq), front office meddling, and the always-loaded question of whether coaching is genius or circumstance. Dixon sidesteps all of it by offering an answer that cannot be argued with and cannot be meaningfully quoted for insight.

That emptiness is the subtext. It exposes the media ritual around winning franchises: questions posed as if the speaker will reveal an original truth, answers delivered as if the safest truth is the only truth. "He's very important" isn't a thought; it's a gesture of compliance, the verbal equivalent of nodding while keeping your hands in your pockets.

Context turns the line into accidental commentary. The Lakers-Jackson machine was built on narratives of leadership, Zen charisma, and championship inevitability. Dixon's flat certainty mirrors that consensus while quietly mocking it: when a story has become too settled, language stops reporting and starts rubber-stamping.