The Lakers coach is a strange bird. He is. Son of a minister, grew up in the Dakotas, something of a Zen devotee … I mean, the man is a space cadet. Like no other successful American professional sports coach. Maybe ever.

Really. Who is the previously most detached/deranged major sports coach in the country? George Allen, there at the end? That summer with the Rams, when he got fired after two exhibition games? He was crazy as a loon, but he still cared. Al Davis is nuts, but he’s not a coach and he still lives and dies with the Raiders.  Who else just throws the ball out — with a good team — and does little or nothing to make them better? Grady Little? Wade Phillips?

Nobody?

I’ve been to the three Lakers home games in this round … and I have been listening to Phil Jackson every season since he got here, back in 1999 … and this is his low ebb.

He is doing … nothing. He is not leading. He is not threatening. He is not inspiring. He is not cajoling.

He isn’t calling anyone out. He isn’t making dramatic moves. He doesn’t even seem to be particularly interested in working the officials, the way he did just a few years ago. He is just the old arthritic guy watching the Lakers deconstruct. Even for him, he is exploring virgin territory when it comes to not seeming to care what his team just did.

It’s as if he quit on this team. As if he’s decided Kobe Bryant is uncoachable (oh yeah, Phil wrote that in a book, five years ago) and the rest of his guys are unreachable — or not worth the bother — and all he is doing is taking up a prime courtside seat in the meantime.

Have you seen him in interview sessions? The ones during the game, when he rambles on about nothing — when he’s not insulting Craig Sager’s wardrobe — or those before or after the games?

Phil barely can be bothered to answer in full sentences. And to play back his responses on a tape recorder is to find yourself with about five incomplete thoughts with no grammatical sense that you might hope to understand, and you don’t have the slightest idea how to punctuate any of it when you’re trying to transcribe it.

Maybe he is ill. That would explain a lot. Maybe he’s just old and tired, like a lot of us, and the force of will required to bring these Lakers around is just not there anymore.

Maybe, yes, he really has been the luckiest coach in NBA history, gifted with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, and then with Shaquille O’Neal in his prime and the young Kobe Bryant … and, well, there are his nine NBA championships. Maybe he has never been all that good. Maybe all those instances of “just letting ’em play” when the Lakers are being torn up is just Phil not having a better idea. And we thought it was some strange sort of genius.

This isn’t Phil’s team. This is Kobe’s team, and not just in an emotional sense. So let’s take it all the way. Phil may as well let Kobe call plays for himself and make substitutions, as well. Kobe cares, at least. His teammates already are afraid of him. May as well let him be a Latter Day Bill Russell, a player-coach.

I mean, if Phil isn’t going to coach this team, if he’s going to be as surprised as Joe Sixpack when his team doesn’t show up for a series-clincher — may as well give the title to somebody else and let Phil go take a nap, or whatever it is he would rather be doing than not running this team.