DID you know that former Philippine national team player and current San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Arthur (Chip) Engelland and one-time Playboy Magazine cover girl bunny and current Los Angeles Lakers part-owner and president Jeanie Buss were once sweethearts during their high school days?
Times have changed, of course. Buss, as if you still don’t know, is now the fiancée of newly-minted New York Knicks president Phil Jackson. During his heyday, Jackson earned a ring as a valuable reserve on New York’s 1973 NBA championship unit and collected 11 more as a head coach with the Chicago Bulls (six, a pair of three-peats from 1991-93 and 1996-98) and LA Lakers (five, a three-peat from 2001-03 and a repeat in 2009 and 2010). Jackson, who turns 69 in September, retired from X-ing and 0-ing in May 2011 with the most number of championships by a head coach in NBA history.
The Zen Master returned to the league last March when New York, his original NBA employer, came-a-calling with an eye-popping five-year, $60-million offer. Jackson has been married twice in the 1960s and 1970s. Engelland, a native of Los Angeles, once served as a ball boy for legendary coach John Wooden’s NCAA champion University of Los Angeles at California (UCLA) Bruins in 1975.
The 6-foot-4 Engelland started his basketball-playing career at Pacific Palisades High School then later attended Duke University for four seasons under Mike Krzyzewski, a two-time U.S. Olympic men’s basketball coach who piloted the Yanks to gold-medal finishes in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012.
Undrafted by any NBA team in 1983, He never made the NBA grade but suited up for the Philippine national unit that topped the 1985 Jones Cup competitions and was with the San Miguel Beermen in the Philippine Basketball Association for two seasons.
Engelland, nicknamed “The Machine Gun” by Filipino cage fans for his shooting prowess, formally joined the NBA world in 1999-2000 as a shooting consultant for the Detroit Pistons.
Three years later, he hooked up with the Denver Nuggets as their director of player development, holding the post for two seasons.
Since 2005-2006, Engelland has worked as an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs under bench boss Gregg Popovich.
Engelland earned an NBA ring with the Spurs in 2007 and is looking for another one this month as the Spurs, with the homecourt advantage under the comebacking 2-2-1-1-1 (home-road) format, go up against the two-time reigning champion Miami Heat in the best-of-seven NBA Finals for a second consecutive year. The 2014 NBA Finals start on Friday, June 6 (Manila time), at the AT&T Center in Texas.
Engelland is married to Jessica Grunow of Troy, Michigan. The couple has two sons, Press and Path. Buss, who like Jackson was born in the month of September (she turns 53 on September 26), once posed nude in the May 1995 issue of Playboy (at age 34). She married volleyball player Steve Timmons in 1990 but the duo was divorced after three years.
Buss and Jackson became engaged on January 3, 2013. The two began dating in December 1999 – or just when Jackson joined the Lakers organization as its head coach.