MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The final two episodes of the highly anticipated documentary 'The Last Dance" are scheduled to air later this evening.
 
In episodes seven and eight last Sunday, basketball fans got an inside glimpse at how coach Phil Jackson was able to navigate all of the egos and player idiosyncrasies to produce six NBA titles during his nine-year run with the Chicago Bulls.
 
He added five more titles during two separate stints with the Los Angeles Lakers ending in 2011.
 
Former West Virginia guard Lowes Moore has a unique understanding of Jackson after having spent a year with him when he was an assistant coach with the New Jersey Nets in 1981 and also playing on Jackson's 1984 Albany Patroons team that won a CBA title.
 
The things Moore has watched in the documentary are familiar to what he experienced playing for Jackson in the early 1980s.
 
"I had a lot of coaches coming up and Phil was a guy who had a different set of experiences than those other coaches," Moore said from his home in Mount Vernon, New York, earlier this week. "Playing for the (New York) Knicks, Phil had a philosophy of playing together. 
 
"Most of the offenses I experienced with him were old-school, move the basketball, flex offenses, play-together type stuff," he added.
 
Therefore, it came as no surprise to Moore when he saw Jackson adopt Tex Winters' Triangle Offense when he took over the Bulls, and then successfully sold Michael Jordan on the benefits of using it.
 
When Jordan played for Doug Collins, he averaged a career-best 37.1 points per game during his third season in 1987 and averaged better than 32.5 points the next two seasons before Jackson's arrival.
 
But a one-man team rarely wins NBA championships, something Jackson was able to convey to Jordan, who is universally considered the game's greatest player.
 
"In today's time, or when you had a guy like Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, it was more one-on-one style so he had to learn how to take a guy like Michael Jordan and make him a team player in some instances," Moore explained. "Not to take away his ability to be Michael, but if you want to win championships, you need everybody on the team. (Jackson) had to put people around him who knew their roles and responsibilities and allow them to be themselves."
 
Moore said that's exactly what Jackson did when he led Albany to a CBA title in 1984.
 
Lowes was the team's third-leading scorer, averaging 14.3 points per game while handing out a team-best 240 assists.
 
Albany's leading scorer was guard Frankie Saunders from Southern. Texas-Arlington forward Ralph McPherson was another standout performer for the Patroons that season.
 
According to Moore, Jackson had a great knack for managing players.
 
"A guy like Chuck Daly, when I tried out for the Detroit Pistons, he was a guy in my estimation who was the best manager of players," Moore said. "He was the beginning of the era of managing players because the players at the time, with the collective bargaining agreement, were getting more resources and more power.
 
"So with that explosion you needed people who could manage egos and that was the thing that happened with Phil when I was in the CBA. We had a whole cast of characters and when we won our first championship it was a matter of putting people in the right roles and getting them to accept those roles so the team could flourish," Moore noted.
 
What made Jackson's message more convincing to the guys were the two NBA championships he won as a player for the Knicks in the early 1970s. Jackson was the sixth man on those great Knicks teams coached by Red Holzman that boasted Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Dave DeBusschere and Phil Bradley.
 
When Jackson went over strategy with his players, he made sure that they understood what he was thinking and the reasons why he was doing it. 
 
It wasn't a one-way conversation either.
 
"When a coach would sit down with you and talk about things, usually they would just say 'this is what we are going to do,'" Moore said. "With Phil, he used to have these conversations about players and about certain game situations with me as his point guard.
 
"He was a guy who wasn't yelling and screaming at you," Moore added. "He was communicating with you and players respected that because he was treating them like a human being rather than just some guy."
 
Moore had a similar relationship with assistant coach Jim Amick when he was a star player at West Virginia in the late 1970s.
 
Joedy Gardner was the head coach, but Amick had an equally strong presence on those Mountaineer teams and was heavily involved in strategy and recruiting.
 
Amick actually signed Moore on an airplane at the Pittsburgh Airport just as it was about to pull out of the gate on its way to New York. Moore was in Pittsburgh playing in the Dapper Dan All-Star Game.
 
"He actually stopped the plane and jumped on it, and I signed my letter-of-intent with West Virginia right there," Moore laughed. "Other coaches who recruited me were cool, but with coach Amick, there was an immediate bond. He was a person I could trust."
 
The 6-foot-1 guard's best season came during his sophomore year in 1978 when he averaged a team-best 21.3 points per game, including scoring a career-high 40 in a road loss at Notre Dame.
 
Moore played great during the Eastern 8 Tournament, leading WVU to upset victories over Rutgers and Duquesne to reach the finals against Villanova.
 
Two years later, Moore helped West Virginia to another Eastern 8 Tournament run to the finals under new coach Gale Catlett. Villanova ended that run as well.
 
He scored 26 in a shootout at the Pittsburgh Civic Center against Duquesne guard B.B. Flenory, the hometown kid, and he poured in 27 to knock off a solid Rutgers squad led by Kelvin Troy and Roy Hinson.
 
In the finals, Moore scored 22, but that wasn't enough to lead the Mountaineers past the Wildcats. Despite losing to Villanova in the finals for a second time, Lowes was named the Eastern 8 Tournament MVP for his tremendous all-around play.
 
The two-time first team All-Eastern 8 performer scored 1,696 points and averaged 15 points per game during his 113-game Mountaineer career that ended in 1980.
 
Today, he is still considered among the 10 best guards to ever play at WVU.
 
Moore played parts of three seasons in the NBA with the Nets, Cleveland Cavaliers and San Diego Clippers and several years in the CBA until retiring in 1992.
 
Today, he is the executive director of development of the Mount Vernon Boys & Girls Club and is also an ordained minister, according to his website LowesMoore.com.
 
Moore, now 63, and his wife of 30 years, Patrice Wallace-Moore, have four grown children – Michelle, Shireyll, Lowes III and Isaiah, and their Godson Jamayal.
 
And tonight, he will be tuned in to ESPN just like the rest of us for the conclusion of the month-long documentary series.