It's Christmas Day 2011. The Los Angeles Lakers are coming off a three-peat, and the Miami Heat, in the second year of the Big Three experiment, are back at the Staples Center trying to take down the defending champions.

Late in the game, with the score tied, Phil Jackson calls a timeout and gathers his team together. While Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum walk to one end of the court, Jackson stands on the other end surrounded by LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.

All signs point to Phil Jackson's retiring at the end of this season, but if he decides not to walk away from basketball, Miami is an intriguing possibility. Catherine Steenkeste/US Presswire

Jackson has taken his talents and the triangle to South Beach.

Unthinkable? A dagger in the hearts of Lakers fans? Perhaps.

Of course this is all speculation, but Jackson labeled this season "the last stand" when he agreed to come back and coach the Lakers. And I wonder, does that mean this is Jackson's "last stand" as a head coach in the NBA or simply his "last stand" as the head coach of the Lakers?

He smiled Monday when I asked him, hypothetically, whether he would be intrigued by the possibility of teaching a talented, new group of players on the brink of a championship how to play as a team.

"Playing as a team is really the intriguing thing," Jackson said, ignoring the part about a new group of players. "We obviously use a system called the triangle, but it's just [about] playing together as a team and conveying that to a group of guys."

Jackson coached 11 seasons in Chicago (if you include his two seasons as an assistant) and won six titles during two three-peat runs. This is Jackson's 11th season coaching in Los Angeles, and if the Lakers win the championship, he will have won six titles during two three-peat runs.

But even as his time in Los Angeles winds down, it doesn't take much to imagine the prospect of a third chapter looming on the horizon.

There is no team better suited for the end of Jackson's coaching career than the Miami Heat. (After all, isn't Miami where most folks go to retire?) They have three of the best players in the league, and those players are in the early stages of learning how to "play together" and discovering what they can become.