Thank goodness for the consolation of gold and diamonds.
I recall that Allen Iverson had plenty of both in the late fall of 1996 as he made his way through his rookie year in the NBA.
When I interviewed him after just his second NBA game, played in Chicago against the Bulls, Iverson’s jewelry quickly grabbed my immediate attention. The necklace was a chainwork of gold with nice little diamonds set between each link. It was a long chain, reaching to his breastbone, where it was anchored by a gold and diamond crucifix.
“Wow,” I remember thinking. “Quite stunning.”
The bracelet was matching gold chain link and more sparkling stones. First he fiddled with it nervously on his right wrist while trying to answer reporters’ questions in the visitors’ locker room at Chicago’s United Center. Then he moved it to his left wrist, where he fixed the clasp and left it.
There might have been matching earrings, but I don’t remember. After all, it was an evening for jewelry, and my mind could only hold so many scintillating images.
Just a couple of hours earlier, the Bulls had gotten some gaudy accoutrements of their own, the rewards for their remarkably disciplined team play. The occasion was their first home game of the 1996-97 NBA season, which meant it was time for the members of the 1995-96 team to receive their championship rings. The Bulls’ jewelry came packaged in distinctive black boxes. A paperweight of gold, with an onyx setting, encrusted with 76 sweet little diamonds, one for each of the team’s record 72 wins that season, plus another four representing the franchise’s four NBA titles.
Each ring cost about $35,000.
The Bulls received them in a coronation ceremony that included taped flourishes of horns and a stroll by each player down a long red carpet out to the spotlight at center court. After that, Michael Jordan’s Bulls raised their fourth championship banner to the rafters, then proceeded to destroy Iverson’s Philadelphia ‘76ers. Destroyed them competitively. Mentally. Physically. Probably even spiritually.
Those Sixers featured Iverson and his talented young backcourt mate, Jerry Stackhouse, but they were through by the end of the third quarter, their team down by 30 points. They sat together on the floor, leaning against a press table, looking thoroughly befuddled and embarrassed. The Bulls, of course, had a way of doing that to people, particularly spirited rookies.
As early as his junior season in high school, Iverson was telling his coaches that he was good enough to take Michael Jordan. And that confidence wasn’t completely unwarranted. He had displayed his unbridled brilliance in two seasons at Georgetown and came to the NBA as the top pick in that spring’s draft. And Iverson had scored 30 points against the Milwaukee Bucks as the 76ers narrowly lost their league opener.
That had only given Philly’s young guards confidence that they could maybe outrun the elderly Bulls.
“They’re the world champions, but they’re gonna have to keep up,” Stackhouse had told me before the game. “We’re getting out.”
Things started out smoothly enough for Philadelphia. Iverson’s first shot was a silky three-pointer. But within minutes, Bulls forward Dennis Rodman had opened Iverson’s head and climbed right in. Rodman used sly comments and physical play to challenge Iverson.
Instead of the Sixers getting out and running, it was the Bulls who turned the game into a track meet as one Iverson penetration after another ended badly. Soon, Iverson was so distracted and distraught that Jordan felt the need to talk to him to calm him down.
“Allen got a little frustrated tonight,” Jordan said afterward. “I can’t say that I blame him. It’s a situation where he comes from a heck of a program at Georgetown that wins consistently. At this level, you have to learn to accept losing – not accept, but accept it in a way that’s a learning experience. You utilize it to make you better as a player.
“There are gonna be a lot of other players trying to get into your head, and if you let them into your head, you’re fighting a losing battle. You forget about the overall concept of what you mean to your team and what your team is trying to do.
“Once Dennis and some of the other players got into his head it became a game of individuality for him,” Jordan explained. “And that’s the thing he’s always gonna have to fight against. He’s an extremely talented player, and a very emotive player. So there’s a lot of envy out there, a lot of jealousy, because of what he’s gotten thus far. He’s got to learn to control those emotions.”
Matched against Chicago’s Ron Harper, Iverson had little trouble penetrating.
“He’s quick as hell,” Harper said. “I’ve never seen anyone that quick in my life. He went by me about three or four times. I was like, ‘Damn!’ I thought I could play defense.”
Yet Iverson’s penetration often left him making hasty interior passes to his teammates, most of which they fumbled, leading to turnovers and seemingly endless Bulls fastbreaks.
His coaches, Sixers head man Johnny Davis and assistant Maurice Cheeks, approached the aftermath with a grim resignation.
They had seen it coming.
Maurice Cheeks said: “He has great ability, and he just needs to learn how to play the game.”
Iverson himself agreed: “It’s timing, it ’s communication, everything,” he said, fumbling with the diamond bracelet.
Another keen observer was Bulls back-up guard Randy Brown: “Once they get established as a team and he becomes more of a team player, he’ll be a much better point guard. He’s young, he’s got a lot to learn. If he’s willing to learn it, he’s gonna be a great player.
“He’s playing a position where he’s got to get his teammates involved. If he’s not willing to do that, it’s gonna be a long process for him. But if he gets better at doing that, he’s gonna be a great point guard.”
As usual, though, the best advice and observations came from MJ.
“He’s got a lot of good basketball skills,” Jordan offered. “He’s gonna improve. Johnny Davis is giving him an opportunity to gain his confidence playing on this level. And I think that’s only gonna enhance his individual talent. But just like myself, at some point in time, he’s gonna have to learn how to blend in with the team. Certainly he’s got to make his team as good as possible and keep his teammates involved. I think he’s got unbelievable talent and quickness. He’s a little runt running around. A couple of times he could have gotten hurt, but he’s fearless. And that’s how we all are when we’re young.
“It was a frustrating night for them. Very frustrating. Believe me. I went through some of these nights, going against Boston and some of the better teams when I was coming up. You learn. You try to pick little motivational factors from games like this. It’s a lot of envy being on the other side, being the ones who are getting killed by 30. So it’s a motivational situation for them.
“They can look at it in a lot of different ways,” Jordan added, “but no matter how you look at it, it was a lesson. I mean basketball teaches you a lot of different things. If you’re willing to learn it, then you’re gonna get better. If you’re not, if you continue to fight it, then you’re gonna stay at the same level.”
Watching Iverson through his years in Philly, his stops in Denver, Detroit and now Memphis, you get the strong sense that 13 years later, through hundreds and hundreds of games and every kind of experience, the warrior who is AI has managed to make himself a very rich man, just as he has been able to score lots of points. Otherwise, he seems to have failed to grasp the lesson of the jewelry.
Those fundamentals of team play, the basic mind-set of the group, remain as elusive to him today as they were those very first nights in the league.
One of the game’s greatest talents just doesn’t get the idea of team. He never really has. Now in Memphis, Iverson has taken a leave of absence to deal with personal issues, following a stormy few weeks debating his role with the team.
When Iverson returns to the Grizzlies, his pro career will be down to the final act, if it isn’t already. Redemption is still possible for him, but for it to come, he’ll have to be blinded by the light.
I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen. But if you love basketball, there’s nothing you’d love better than seeing a supreme and fearless competitor like Iverson finally get the notion of team play. Some might say that an older player, especially a scorer like Iverson, can’t make such a transition. But JerryWest made huge changes in 1972, when new coach Bill Sharman asked West to back off of all the scoring he had done for a dozen years in the league as an off guard.
West became the Lakers true point guard for the first time in his career. Instead of scoring at a high pace, West took over the job of feeding the ball to his teammates (he would still average 25 points per game).
Iverson could gain much by agreeing to play something other than the dominant role he has insisted on throughout his career.
It would be good for him, good for the game, if he finally gave himself over to the idea of team. After years of ignoring the issue, it’s time for the Answer to realize that he must face up to the Question.
I can see Michael Jordan now, giving that little wink signaling that he was outta here and easing through the crowd of reporters squeezed in around him. Chicago Bulls PR man Tim Hallam used to call that tight circle of media a “pig fight.” That was when dozens of sportswriters and camera crews would crowd in around Jordan with their notebooks and microphones and body odor, snorting and squealing their questions, squeezing in closer to catch every word. We all knew Mike as a man who enjoyed the spotlight, but even he could stand only so much of a pig fight. In that regard, it’s no surprise that he got into the fragrance business.
It was the 1996 pre-season, and my first inclination is to recall that Jordan then was at the height of his fame, except that his fame in those days seemed to know no heights or any other boundaries.
With his signal that the interview session was over, the path out of the locker room cleared just enough for His Airness to make an escape. The piggies parted, but in a flash, the gap closed. A boy, probably 12, with a brand new basketball and a black marker, stepped out of the shadows, too dumfounded to speak, mesmerized to be in Mike’s presence.
Mike gave him that “Yo, baby, whatcha need?” look.
The young fella just stood there, his mind gone so transparent you could read it.
“Here I am, standing next to god!!!” he was thinking, his eyes glazing over with a filmy sort of ecstasy. “It really is Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan!!! And I’m standing next to him. Out of the millions of people wanting to do this, it’s actually me. Me!!! Standing next to Michael!!!”
Mike furrowed his face and looked at the boy. “Do I get paid for this?” he said as he reached for the ball and marker. “Normally I get seven digits.”
Somehow the young fella managed to speak.
“I… I got five dollars,” he offered hopefully.
Mike smiled. “No problem,” he replied, trying to make it clear that he was just joking.
The marker, though, was nearly out of ink, and when Jordan stroked his signature across the face of the ball, it barely took, as if he were writing on air. Jordan frowned.
“Man,” he said, “you gave me this cheap pen.”
A mix of horror, panic and disbelief spread across the boy’s face. He quickly jammed his hand in his pocket to bring out a raft of pens for another try.
“I thought you were reaching for some money,” Jordan said, laughing.
Jordan, of course, could be excused for thinking that the young fan was digging for his cash. For years he had been on the receiving end of an immense transfer of wealth, as just about everyone on the planet made a donation to his surging bank account, as if the universe itself was his personal ATM. Back in the 1995-96 season alone, it was estimated that Jordan raked in better than $40 million in off-court endorsement income. But that’s small change compared to 1996-97, when the numbers were buggin’, what with Mike introducing his new cologne line (it sold a jaw-dropping 1.5 million bottles the first two months on the market) and his acting gig in Space Jam, which set theater ticket sales records on its opening weekend. But that’s why they called him Money, wasn’t it? Twelve-year-olds were conditioned to reach in their pockets and offer him their allowance.
Anyway, his off-court sum that year became a tidy match to the $30 million he received under a one-year contract extension for playing with the Bulls. He would sign another monster one-year deal the following season which convinced NBA ownership that it needed to put the brakes on things and adopt a salary structure to keep mega deals from soaring off into even Rarer Air.
For all the money he made for himself, Jordan’s take was a fraction of the treasure he created for the National Basketball Association itself (not to mention what he did for the University of North Carolina Tar Heel brand). His entry into the league in 1984 ignited the NBA’s annual revenues to balloon tenfold, from under $150 million that year to an astounding $2 billion or more per season by the mid 1990s.
There were other reasons for the NBA’s growth, but by and large it was Mike.
Mike the money magnet.
Mike in the air, tongue out. Slammin’. Makin’ rims rattle and registers ring.
People would have paid to be like Mike, if they only could.
Instead, they paid to see him, to be near him, to wear his shoes, his jersey, to drink his Gatorade, gobble his french fries at Mickey D’s, to buy the briefs, to whack the golf balls, to read his books and enshrine his trading cards.
He even figured a way to bottle his popularity and sell it. That would be the cologne, the ultimate jock-sniffer acquisition.
This is what they call a cultural icon? It was more like madness. Mike Madness. And it was global. The NBA had long been a decidedly obscure enterprise, but Jordan’s great passion and competence made people everywhere care about it. In the 1990s, a Jordan tour business flourished, as Japanese tourists came by the thousands to be bused by MJ’s home in the Chicago suburbs, then taken to the United Center to stand in awe in front of his statue there.
In China, they called him something that sounded like Chow Dan.
“He is like a gift from God to the basketball game,” Huang Gang, a hoopster from Beijing, told reporters at the time. “We try to imitate his ground moves. But you can’t copy him in the air. He is unique.”
Indeed, dude. For more than almost two full decades, Jordan was pro basketball’s master poet while the rest of the players were mere stenographers. He was the champ and everybody else just chumps.
His other contemporaries didn’t seem to mind this too much at first because Jordan’s popularity made millionaires out of them all, hundreds of very average NBA jocks, including a couple of dozen college kids every year who signed big contracts guaranteeing them plenty of cash before they proved they could even play in the league, much less drive a team to championships.
Mike, in the meantime, tried to say on occasion that he didn’t really play for the money. But that wasn’t true. Money was just one of his ways of keeping score, and Jordan kept score on everything because that was what the most competitive guy in the history of games was supposed to do. That’s why he lorded over not just basketball but the entire sports world year after year, winning scoring title after scoring title and carrying his Bulls to six NBA championships.
When I think of Jordan, I like to remember that pre-season in 1996. He had just carried his Bulls to a 72-win season. He was about to turn 34 and could have easily packed it in and ended all the maniacally hard work. But he wasn’t done with his greatness, even though others around the league were smelling opportunity.
“I’m going to send Mike home this year,” Shaquille O’Neal had promised me that pre-season, a threat that would ring as empty as all the others.
Told of O’Neal’s boast, Jordan smiled and quipped that if Shaq planned on doing that he better practice his free throws.
O’Neal, of course, was like a lot of other NBA stars that year. They had had enough of Jordan’s domination and the humiliation. They wanted it to end.
Jordan knew it.
He felt it in his 34-year-old knees.
But he had a wellspring of competitiveness, deep as a Saudi sheik’s oil reserves, vast as the space between Dennis Rodman’s ears.
Yes, Jordan had already done it all by the end of the 1996 season, but his effort and success over the next two campaigns would simply astound.
He served notice in January 1997 with a 51-point game against the New York Knicks and his league-leading 30.9 points per game scoring average. There have been a couple of dozen people fortunate enough to score more than 50 points in an NBA game. Wilt Chamberlain, in fact, accomplished that feat 122 times. But no one had accomplished the feat as late in life as Jordan. Most players hit 50 points as young superstars. Wilt’s magnificent run of big games ended when he was 32.
While he had begun to show his age, Jordan had shown no signs whatsoever of backing down. He still wanted to rule.
“I want to be consistent every night,” he explained as the 1996-97 season opened. “I want to step on the court and accept every challenge.”
Being consistent sounded nice, but it was a gigantic challenge when you’re the king of the NBA hill, because it meant fighting through the physical defenses night after night in an age when the NBA allowed very physical defense; it meant overcoming the daily pain and the nagging injuries that accompany age. Yet even there, Jordan forged an edge.
“Between games, Jordan can bounce back from injuries that would sideline other players for weeks,” Bulls trainer Chip Schaefer pointed out. “He has a remarkable body.”
And a remarkable will. Nobody worked harder at the fundamentals of the game; nobody worked harder at conditioning. Not only the greatest player, he was the greatest practice player. The stories of his intensity in Bulls scrimmages were legendary.
“At my age, I have to work harder,” Jordan explained. “I can’t afford to cut corners.”
He never did.
And so, now, as he prepares to enter the Hall of Fame in the grandest introduction ever, I feel mostly sadness. This is it, the final reality is settling in.
I interviewed him last year during the pre-draft camp in Orlando as he watched a crop of college players try to impress NBA executives, and I remember feeling sad after that talk too and thinking he was born to compete, not to sit around bored, studying lesser beings.
In the end, I’m just like that 12-year-old kid with the bad marker. I don’t want to see him writing on air. It’s very hard for me to think of Michael Jordan as a relic.
Kobe Bryant has done an amazing job behind the scenes reviving his sorely battered Los Angeles Lakers teammates to get them ready to compete for this year’s championship.
Most people don’t understand the huge challenge of that job following the team’s devastating loss to the Boston Celtics in last year’s championship series.
That’s the opinion of Lakers assistant coach Brian Shaw, who has spent years working with Bryant and observing his unrivaled work ethic.
Bryant has long been inhuman in his efforts to make himself a great player. Shaw has spoken admiringly of the studying, the conditioning, the practicing, all part of the intense amount of effort Bryant has put into his own game.
“He still has all that discipline, all that attention to detail,” Shaw said.
But over the past year Bryant has turned a similar effort into building his team and teammates, Shaw explained recently.
“The area he has grown in the most has been his leadership and his trust of the other players on the team now. He has complete trust. He’s more open with them than he’s been with any group that we’ve had here in Los Angeles to this point. That is why we’re here in the Finals.”
Shaw said people don’t understand the tremendous effort and leadership it has taken by Bryant to help the Lakers recover from their embarrassment at the hands of the Celtics last year.
“He manned up,” Shaw said of Bryant. “He said at the end of the Boston series last year that they were the better team. They were tougher. They were more physical.”
Bryant told his teammates that they all — including himself — needed to become physically and mentally stronger, according to Shaw.
“Kobe said, ‘We can’t make guys tough that aren’t tough. But they can physically prepare themselves, and we can cover for each other’s weaknesses.’ And that’s what we focused on. That’s something he made a point of saying.”
Once the season started, Bryant showed a newfound ability to measure the team.
“He’s done a good job all year of gauging things when our team comes out in a game and we’re a little sluggish. He’s more aggressive then to get us into a game. If guys are up to the task right at the beginning, then he defers. He’ll set guys up and play more of a facilitator role. Then we always know that we can go to him in the fourth quarter and get what we need.”
Bryant’s tremendous determination helps explain his difficulty in Game 3 of this year’s Finals against Orlando. The Magic opened the game with torrid shooting, and because Bryant is so determined to close out this championship, he answered with his own scoring outburst in the first half that kept the Lakers in the game.
However, he may have worn himself down, which helps explain his struggles and the key late turnover that cost the Lakers in the fourth quarter. Bryant also showed signs of extreme fatigue in the Lakers conference finals battle with Denver.
Jerry West saw this scenario developing months ago, after Bryant played for Team USA in the Olympic Games last summer, after having carried the Lakers through the long march to the 2008 Finals.
As a former Laker vice president and the man who acquired Bryant as a 17-year-old rookie, then mentored him to stardom, West began expressing concern to associates about the heavy burden the team’s star was carrying.
Speaking privately to a member of Phil Jackson’s staff, West fussed about the wear and tear on Bryant and the need for the team to be vigilant about leaning so heavily on him. West has observed that the time that Bryant gets on the bench each game to rejuvenate is critical at this stage of his career.
The coaching staff has been vigilant about the issue this season, Shaw said, but added that it’s difficult because of Bryant’s great competitive nature. In Game 3, Lakers coach Phil Jackson left Bryant on the bench for a stretch of the fourth quarter in hopes he could recuperate.
“He always wants to stay in the game,” Shaw said. “As a coach, you have to give him rests. You have to protect him from himself. There are times when he’s really pleading on the sideline, ‘Leave me in. Leave me in.’ We do that, but for the most part you have to fight that and give him rests.”
Managing Bryant’s minutes and trying to pace his tremendous competitiveness will be a key to the remainder of the championship series, which resumes Thursday night with Game 4 in Orlando.
DÉJÀ VU
West raised hackles and eyebrows recently when he announced that LeBron James had supplanted Bryant as the best player in the NBA.
On one level, West was simply doing something he’s been paid to do for the last thirty years — he was stating the obvious about the talent he observed on the court.
James is simply bigger and stronger and more powerful than Bryant, and as a result, can do more things on the court than Bryant.
West is quite familiar with the circumstances. He himself spent his entire career being compared with the bigger, stronger presence of Oscar Robertson. In fact, West was more than a little obsessed with these comparisons and used them to drive and motivate himself.
Robertson could do more on the court, and as a result, he won many of the comparison battles, especially those made by West himself. West often said Robertson was better, although those who worked with West said he spent his career determined to outdo his rival.
Even in retirement, Robertson still chaffs at these comparisons, by the way. He has been known to grow angry at writers even making the comparisons. However, Robertson can be excused for not getting the fun. He came along in an age of unfathomable racism.
But West has long known that these comparisons are never truly resolved, that they are the lifeblood of an NBA career, that they drive fan interest and player performance. If you don’t believe him, ask Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, who spent their careers locked in a competition that drove both to the heights of the game.
Is James better than Bryant?
West also made this observation: You can see what a player can do on the floor, his physical abilities, but it’s almost impossible to read a player’s heart.
This much is clear about Bryant: At age 30, in the NBA championship series, he’s determined to make the full effort, leaving nothing undone.
So heart is not an issue.
Asked about Bryant’s turnover at the key moment of Game 3, Jackson observed afterward that the star is only human.
Jackson’s longtime mentor, Tex Winter, liked to point out that Bryant and Michael Jordan possessed a similar competitive nature that made each game an adventure.
Would they try to do too much by themselves, or would they find the right balance to help their teams win?
That was first the central drama of Jordan’s career, just as it’s now the central drama of Bryant’s career — and the central issue of these NBA Finals.
Tex Winter is back in Oregon now, after having spent weeks in Kansas following a late April stroke.
Craig Hodges, who played for Winter at Long Beach State and with the Chicago Bulls and who now coaches with him as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers staff, keeps in close touch with Winter’s family.
The 87-year-old Winter, who developed the Lakers’ famed triangle offense, still struggles with leg movement and trying to speak, Hodges said, but he’s pretty sure Winter is watching the Lakers in the playoffs on television.
If so, you have to be worried about Winter, who has a tendency toward frustration with the Lakers’ play and vociferous criticism of their performances.
Even though the team played extremely well in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals against the Denver Nuggets and followed that up with superb play against the Orlando Magic in Game 1 of the NBA championship series, Winter wouldn’t have allowed himself to be very pleased.
“He would have found something to yell at us about,” said the Lakers Luke Walton with a smile.
Winter has always been that sort of perfectionist.
He has teamed with Lakers head coach Phil Jackson over the past two decades to dominate as pro basketball’s odd couple. When they met as assistant coaches on the Chicago Bulls coaching staff in the late 1980s, Winter was the quirky genius of basketball, a superb college coach who was never quite able to sell his ideas to pro players, and Jackson was the strange duck outsider, lacking a deep technical understanding of the sport.
Sure Jackson had won an NBA championship as a sub for the 1973 New York Knicks and a Continental Basketball Association title as a coach of the Albany Patroons. But his coaching contemporaries in the CBA liked to joke behind his back that Jackson had trouble understanding a simple flex offense.
Together, though, Winter and Jackson would make for a masterful team. Even then, in his late sixties, Winter was a revolutionary, so fiery that Bulls head coach Doug Collins had to ban him from practice. The Bulls, however, soon fired Collins, promoted Jackson, and the triangle conspiracy was off and running.
Jackson was the student, with Winter teaching him over the years during film sessions, organizing his practices, explaining all the details. Jackson soaked it all up, and then provided that special touch of genius that Winter lacked — a masterful ability at team dynamics and group building.
Winter often said the triangle would never have gone far in the NBA without Jackson’s ability to elevate it to relevance and sell it to the players, especially superstars such as Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
Within two years, they helped guide Jordan, Scottie Pippen and the Bulls to their first title. They would win five more over the course of the 1990s and would eventually come close to Winter’s ideal of the perfect offensive state.
That would be what Winter called “the automatics,” a state where the coaches didn’t have to call plays because the players were so well versed in the triangle offense they could simply read the defense and make the cuts and passes to counteract it.
With Jordan, Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Ron Harper and a host of smart role players, the Bulls came to inhabit that rare state for their last three championships, from 1996-98. They spread the floor, ran their “automatics,” and left the rest of the league dazed and confused.
These elevated states of play and Jackson’s Eastern and mystical leanings helped cast them as purveyors of a “Zen” basketball. But then the Bulls broke up in a contentious storm, and Jackson/Winter soon found their way to L.A.
Surprise, surprise, they won three more championships from 2000-2002 with Shaquille O’Neal and Bryant, but those Lakers teams did so mostly with a mix of Shaq’s blunt force trauma and just enough triangle offense to keep opponents off balance. Then for the second time, one of Jackson’s championship teams came apart in a fury of spite and ego.
O’Neal was traded, and Jackson was fired, then rehired in 2005. He, Winter, and the fine Lakers staff have spent the ensuing seasons rebuilding that triangle mind among their players.
Why has it taken so long for Jackson’s latest Lakers teams to reach that higher level? “It’s a different generation of players,” explained Hodges, who played on Winter’s college team at Long Beach State, where his college players had the practice time to learn full execution of the offense. In the pro game with its heavy schedule and many distractions, it simply takes longer to teach and learn it.
After falling apart in the 2008 championship series against the Boston Celtics, the Lakers are back at it, but now for the first time in more than a decade, one of Jackson’s teams has reached that special level. You almost have to use a word that has become trivial, but the Lakers are playing Zen basketball, in a special state with Winter’s “automatics.”
He scored them largely in the broad, discombobulating context of the triangle offense. The Lakers went to their “automatics,” and simply took what the defense gave them. From the 25-point final margin, it’s easy to deduce that Orlando was quite charitable. Afterward, the Magic players and coaches had the look that Bulls opponents had in the late 1990s.
As veteran Magic assistant Brendan Malone suggested before Game 1, Orlando would counter the triangle by slowing the flow of Lakers cutting to the basket.
“We have to keep a body on the cutters,” he explained.
It made great sense, especially against a young team that couldn’t use all of the “automatics” of the triangle offense. But as Walton explained, this Lakers team has been growing in its relationship with the complicated offense, and now they’re able to make the many reads the offense required. They’re now able to employ all of the automatics.
“It’s been a constant change,” Walton explained, “but toward the end of that Denver series, that’s when we really took a step to the next level.”
The players, he said, have come “to know that pretty much every time, if we make the right reads, we’re gonna get a good shot.”
Being on the floor in those Zen moments makes for a rare and wonderful level of basketball, Walton observed. “If you have the ball, you’re looking around and seeing people move and cut. It’s a great way to play basketball.”
It’s a matter the Lakers going to their first option and waiting for the defense to counter it, then turning to their automatics, Walton explained. “The thing about our automatics, we’re running them because the defense is taking something away from us. There’s no way you can take away our first option and our automatics at the same time. The automatics are pressure-release situations. So if you’re gonna take away something, we read it and go to something else. We normally have the court spread out and people cutting all the time.
“This offense is meant to not even call any plays, just move the ball, and depending on how the defense is guarding you, you make the appropriate pass. Off of every pass, there’s another five options to go from,” Walton added. “We got a group of guys out there right now where it’s starting to click for us. We’re constantly moving and getting open shots.”
It makes basketball very Zen and very fun, agreed teammate Sasha Vujacic. “When we were still learning about the offense, we didn’t know what to do with pressure.”
Winter devised the triangle to take a defense’s pressure and use it against them, which is what the Lakers are now doing to their opponents. In Jackson, the perfectionist Winter found a tremendously patient and wonderful teacher to explain the offense over long periods of time to those pro players willing and eager to learn it.
“The triangle is a two-guard front, so it’s a little bit different and difficult to learn,” Vujacic explained. “But the coaching staff has explained it step by step, and it has become easier. To learn triangle takes a while. Once you finally learn it, it goes smoothly. There are just so many options.”
It takes special players to fit the system, Walton suggested. “They’ve done a great job of putting this team together.”
No player in the world understands the offense better than Bryant, a Winter disciple who joins the coaching staff in teaching it to the team. “It helps everybody else,” Vujacic explained. “When we play as a team we are very hard to beat. That’s when Kobe takes over. He knows when to take shots and when to pass. He’s just the best there is in the game.”
Bryant’s uncommon work ethic has been a big factor in driving this learning experience with the automatics, as assistant coach Brian Shaw, himself a veteran of the offense, explained. “He’s done a good job of balancing when to be aggressive and when to be a facilitator.”
What the defense gave was a lot of opportunity for Bryant to run the side screen and roll, which he used to burn Orlando time and again. Having coached against Winter for years, Malone likes to argue that the screen and roll really isn’t the triangle, but Winter has long been adamant that screen and roll action is just one of the options his players have in making their reads. “Kobe killed us with it,” Malone said.
Does this mean that the Magic players and staff have no hope, that whatever Orlando does, the Lakers will simply read the situation and take what’s left?
Not necessarily. There’s always the human element. Sometimes the Lakers lose the patience that Zen requires.
“It’s just in some games we don’t do it,” Walton said, pausing a moment to contemplate that mystery. “Some games we try to force it in (against the defensive pressure). That’s when we struggle.”
Those have always been the moments that left Winter fussing about the overbearing elements of Bryant’s or Jordan’s competitive nature.
“When we’re willing to accept to what’s open, it works well,” Walton explained. “If they jam cutters, we kick it to the other side and counter back in, and now they’re playing at a deficit.”
That’s the brilliance of Winter’s triangle offense, that it creates an imbalance, then swings the ball to the weak side, where a Bryant or Jordan can play behind the defense and then take advantage.
As they work to win Jackson’s tenth title, the Lakers are quite mindful of Winter’s condition, and that may factor into their determination to reach that special level with the automatics. As you might expect, they don’t articulate such notions. They’re better left unsaid.
Jackson, though, has been hurt deeply by Winter’s condition, according to close associates. It’s not something the coach is going to talk about publicly, and he addresses it only subtly with his team. “He’s constantly teaching us and telling us things his teacher has told him,” Walton said of Jackson. “We’re all thinking about Tex, and we miss him.”
For Phil Jackson, endings have always been much more powerful than beginnings.
But what would you expect from a guy who was raised by two itinerant fundamentalist preachers? Jackson grew up a son of the Northern Plains, in one Montana community after another, always facing “the rapture,” the belief that the world was soon coming to its glorious end.
“Every Sunday since I was born, the apocalypse has been coming next year,” Jackson once told Knicks teammate Bill Bradley in trying to explain his parents’ view of life. Jackson’s young world would be shaped by a growing awareness of his mother’s intense devotion and her focus on the moment of Christ’s return, what she called “the rapture of the saints,” and he would spend his childhood years anticipating that rapture.
Those childhood experiences brought him moments of terror, he once revealed.
And so he learned the power of endings. Anyone who doubts that only has to recall how he used the “end game” to motivate and focus a crazily fractured and distracted Chicago Bulls team to win the 1998 NBA championship. Jackson employed every mind game possible to squeeze a sixth title out of that club and even gave it a tagline as he was doing it, “The Last Dance.”
Hey, he’s a guy who’s made millions off a book titled “The Last Season.”
So Jackson’s recent noise about retiring after the 2010 campaign has to be taken with a grain of context. And that context is this: With Phillip Douglas Jackson you never know where the mind games end and the stark reality begins. That’s part of his motivational success in a business where you’re trying to shape, guide and control headstrong young millionaires in short pants.
We do know this fact. Tex Winter has worked with Jackson closely for years. He’s the guy’s mentor. Winter says that he’s never seen Phil tighten down the control like he has this season.
That, of course, has everything to do with the fact that he’s trying to push a talented young team to a championship, a talented young team that had its mental fragility exposed last year against the Boston Celtics.
It wasn’t easy for Jackson growing up with the isolation of being a son of the Holy Rollers, those folks who worshipped in tents and talked in tongues and based their lives on the notion that the world was going to end any day. But that experience is just one of many things in Jackson’s powerful bag of tricks, things that he has drawn upon over the course of his masterful career.
When Jackson coached the Bulls, some people in that organization chafed at things that he did, as have other coaches around the league. There’s the perception that he’s supremely arrogant.
But as one Bulls official once told me, “If you’re going to coach Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen you better have some shit with you.”
Jackson has always had some shit with him.
Maybe he is planning to retire. Maybe he isn’t. Only Phil knows. And maybe even he doesn’t know.
But we all know this: nothing in life is guaranteed. The opportunity for the Lakers to win is now. The sense of urgency must be huge.
That would seem simple and clear enough to most folks. But the young people in the NBA cash very big checks. They are veal, fed on the milk of potential. It’s always about what they’re going to do down the road. That’s how they’re evaluated. That’s why it’s so easy for them to miss the point, to make huge assumptions that just aren’t true. And in the process, they let the opportunity of a lifetime slip away.
That’s already a bitter cud that Jackson and Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal will have to taste every single day for the rest of their lives. Their silliness in 2004 (when they broke up a team that had won three titles) has cost the three of them dearly in terms of championships won.
They all acted like big brats and left huge winnings, the winnings of a competitive lifetime, on the table. They could have challenged Bill Russell and his Celtics. Instead, all they challenged was our patience. The three of them have been stalked by that truth since the day they parted in 2004 in a fury of bad adolescent gas.
So, it’s rapture time for Phil and his boys. It’s one of his many ways of saying it’s time to put aside childish things, time to focus furiously on the task at hand. There is no tomorrow.
Repeat that. There is no tomorrow.
If you think any other way, you’re just not a competitor. If you entertain any other thought, then the only rings you’re going to have are the smoke rings you’re blowing up each other’s asses.
The balance has shifted for the Los Angeles Lakers. In some ways, that shift has been subtle, and in other ways not so subtle.
Everything that seemed to go so well for them at the start of the season has turned brown and dull. Delight has devolved into question marks. Opportunity has become risk. The Lakers’ home game against the Boston Celtics Christmas day could be a measure of just how far that balance has tilted.
Veteran observers, such as West and Winter, are wondering if this shift doesn’t portend the beginning of the downside for Kobe Bryant’s career. If the Lakers aren’t careful with how they use Bryant, the normal aging process of an NBA superstar could be speeded up.
Lakers coach Phil Jackson was oh so aware of this situation as the season began. That’s why he announced that Bryant’s legendary heavy minutes (and thus his scoring burden) would be trimmed back.
It made sense. The process of hauling the Lakers around during their four-year rebuilding process has weighed heavily on the 30-year-old Bryant, who first came into the NBA at 17 fresh out of a Pennsylvania high school.
That rebuilding process culminated in the Lakers advancing to the league championship series last June, where they were first exposed, then smashed by the Celtics. Bryant’s grinding Lakers effort was followed by his prominent and taxing role in the U.S. Olympic victory in China.
As Bryant himself has often said, it’s not the age but the mileage that matters in a playing career. At age 30, his odometer shows a lot of wear and tear. And this season began with questions about Bryant’s legs.
The delight of November was that the Lakers showed a good starting lineup and a deep, energetic bench that allowed Jackson to keep Bryant on the bench for long stretches. He didn’t need to score with the reserves taking apart opponents.
How and why that bench play has declined will be the subject of debate for the rest of the season. This much is clear, however. Bryant’s teammates reached December and found themselves struggling with the mental part of the game.
“They’ve got a pretty good record,” Winter said. “But that could change quickly.”
Now they head into their Christmas day game with Boston, and the Lakers are facing the same ugly issues that stained them after the championship series last June. Are the supporting players mentally tough enough to compete for a championship?
Of late, those players have been revisited by the ghosts of Christmases past, the inconsistency and indecisive play that have eroded the coaches’ and fans’ – and most importantly Bryant’s – confidence in them.
Now, it seems, the team faces huge issues that could go far in determining how successful Bryant will be in the later stages of his career. Just as important, Bryant’s response to his struggling teammates could well shape his options as he plays into his 30s.
West, in particular, has expressed concern about the wear and tear on Bryant and the need for the team to be vigilant about leaning so heavily on him. West has observed that the time that Bryant gets on the bench each game to rejuvenate is critical at this stage of his career.
Unfortunately, the Lakers’ recent road trip would seem to indicate that issue is growing rather than receding. Bryant’s teammates have not played well of late. And the recent knee injury and impending surgery for backup point guard Jordan Farmar only serve to elevate the concern.
Tex Winter, the Lakers consultant and longtime Jackson aide, says it’s not an issue of effort.
“They are a group of guys who really give it their all,” Winter says of the roster.
However, it is a mental issue with the group, Winter said in an interview Monday.
“I think some of the players’ make-ups is that they’re not real confident in their abilities. And I think it does show through.”
Right now, Winter said, Bryant and Pau Gasol appear to be carrying the team.
“It gets to the point where Kobe feels like he has to take over. It gets pretty discouraging when your teammates don’t come through like we’d all want them to.”
When his teammates struggle and Bryant moves to shoulder more of the load, that only serves to send the team into its destructive spiral of the past.
“There’s no support then,” Winter says. “The other players just aren’t involved when he does that.”
In the past Jackson has employed psychologists to strengthen the competitive minds of his players. Winter, though, doesn’t see that as the answer this time around.
“They have to work it out on their own,” said the 86-year-old consultant. “As professionals they should have a strong enough competitive nature to do that.”
Forward Lamar Odom remains at the center of this revolving issue for the Lakers.
“He does a lot of things,” Winter said. “He’s a good floor player, but he’s just not very effective scoring the ball. He’s been very up and down and very erratic.”
After starting Odom for three years, the Lakers coaching staff decided to move him to a reserve spot to anchor the second unit this season. Winter said he and Jackson have discussed moving Odom back into the starting lineup.
That could mean using the versatile Odom at small forward, Winter said, noting that “Phil has been searching at that other forward spot.”
It could also mean moving Andrew Bynum to a reserve role.
“Bynum’s not playing nearly as well as he did early last year,” Winter said. “That’s to be expected. When you’ve been out a year with injury, it’s not easy to come back and have the kind of timing it takes to be successful.”
Expectations play a large role in the mentality of the issue. Bynum has signed a large contract extension. Both the young center himself and Lakers fans are eager to see him excel.
Bynum’s got a big future ahead of him, but it’s going to take time and patience, Winter said, adding that despite his struggles regaining his timing Bynum has shown he’s part of the “crux” of the team, with Bryant and Gasol.
The struggles can have a subtle impact on other confident players, such as forward Trevor Ariza.
“When you run into a little difficulty sometimes that confidence disappears,” Winter said.
Not surprisingly, the answer involves a familiar theme.
“A lot depends on Kobe, on whether he can keep the right attitude and play the right way,” Winter said. “If he becomes discouraged with his teammates as he has been at times and starts to take over all by himself, that wouldn’t be good. But that’s always the difficulty with a player of his abilities.”
It is perhaps where Bryant is most similar to Michael Jordan, Winter said, then added that it’s actually where he’s similar to other greats such as West and Oscar Robertson.
“That’s what separates those great players from all the rest,” Winter said. “They’ve got so much confidence, and they want to be the best and are willing to do whatever it takes to be the best. That’s why they are the best.”
Those players often feel that if they back down too much, if they let the dominance of their team slide, then they themselves cease to be great. Great players can lose status quickly if they don’t maintain that greatness edge, Winter said.
That mindset is what drives them to push themselves, and it’s what sets them apart, Winter said.
It’s often why fans and even coaches don’t understand truly great players.
“One thing about those rare players like Kobe and Michael and West and Oscar,” Winter said, “they want to be the best and they are never satisfied with anything less. That’s what makes them what they are. They’re all very complex.”
The combination of that drive and the circumstances threatens Bryant and the Lakers at this critical moment. Bryant’s competitive nature has always been the motor driving him.
Despite his concerns, Winter holds to optimism, mainly because Jackson remains in charge.
“Phil’s holds up really well,” Winter said. “He’s never too high and never too down. That’s a great characteristic as a coach.”
It’s a characteristic that has allowed Jackson to weather many a storm and find his way to success over the years.
If there’s an answer to be found, Jackson’s usually the one to find it, Winter said.
Phoenix Suns fans these days are just starting to understand how Michael Jordan felt.
Jordan, you may recall, punched Steve Kerr in the face in a 1995 Chicago Bulls practice.
Kerr, as I remember, had the audacity to stand up to Jordan during one of those scrimmages where His Airness was heaping abuse on teammates.
Kerr is the GM of the Suns these days, and it seems he’s up to his old tricks.
And this is where things get dicey. If you loved the old Suns regime led by the mad scientist of basketball, Mike D’Antoni, then you probably want a shot at Kerr yourself.
On the other hand, if you’re less of a dreamer and you subscribe to what, 75 years of basketball precedent and history? If you do that, then you’re probably inclined to agree with Kerr that if the goal in the NBA is to win a championship, then the Suns probably needed to change to a philosophy that actually has a chance of producing that outcome.
The circumstances make for a fascinating debate and one very ugly transition.
That transition, of course, began in the middle of last season when Kerr traded the Matrix, Shawn Marion, an open-court machine of a forward, to the Miami Heat for Shaquille O’Neal.
At the time, I equated the move to owning a garage filled with sleek Ferraris and suddenly adding to it a lumbering Mack Diesel belching black smoke.
That’s exactly what the situation has proved to be.
After last season, D’Antoni departed Phoenix for a job with the New York Knicks, where he has resumed his mad, fun experiment. And I must admit that I love watching his Knicks play these days (I always love the rebirth of a dead franchise), just as I loved watching those Suns of the past few seasons running up and down the floor, jacking up shots, sharing the ball, scoring lots of points and even giving an occasional nod to defense.
By the way, I also loved Pete Maravich’s performances with the old Atlanta Hawks. I remember my shock at interviewing Richie Guerin, the tough old pro who coached those Hawks, and hearing him say that he was nauseated by the Pistol’s approach to the game.
So this is hardly a new argument. The concept of basketball as entertainment began to take root back in the 1930s and ’40s with the Harlem Globetrotters and other barnstormers. They started out playing the game straight but soon found they could make much more money and gain much more attention if they focused on entertainment and the gags.
Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics took an early stand on this issue. Yes, he finally agreed to take the fancy dan passer Bob Cousy as his point guard, but Red didn’t stop till he got the no-nonsense Bill Russell as his post player.
Those old Celtics teams won lots of championships, and even though the game changed, Red didn’t allow dancers or silly marketing games in his Garden.
For Red and the long line of great competitors of the sport, it’s all about the winning of championships. Nothing else matters. Let me repeat that. Nothing else matters.
I love being entertained by the Knicks and those Suns of D’Antoni’s. Do I care if they win championships? Not a lick. I’m not a serious fan of either team.
D’Antoni’s point, of course, is that he can win a championship playing with an up-tempo, quick-shooting style. He’s swimming upstream against years of evidence to the contrary, but I’m entertained at watching him try.
Kerr, on the other hand, has a different experience with the game. He’s played for two great coaches — Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich— who built multiple championships around great post players. Jordan is the game’s greatest weapon, and Tim Duncan and O’Neal aren’t far behind.
Kerr saw a chance to get O’Neal and figured that with the right approach there was still a championship or two with the Diesel. Last year he struggled, but this year O’Neal is showing signs of rounding into form (at least that’s what longtime Shaq critic Tex Winter thinks. Even so, it’s not so much about building around Shaq per se as it is building an organization that relies on a sound system of basketball).
Kerr, meanwhile, has been busy disassembling the old team and building something that has a chance to win. I know this. I’ve spent some time over the years discussing basketball philosophy with Kerr and he knows what he’s doing.
I also understand that Steve Nash is decidedly unhappy with the circumstances. He’s had a lot of fun and earned a lot of recognition playing a key role in the D’Antoni experiment. But understand this: Until somebody actually wins a championship playing that madcap way, that’s all it is: a fun experiment.
The guy I feel sorry for is new Suns coach Terry Porter. He’s a solid basketball guy who’s stuck in the driver’s seat during a head-spinning transition. And most real transitions are like this. Very, very ugly until all at once they turn pretty. The longer they take, the uglier they are.
With the NBA’s complicated personnel rules and salary-cap system, transitions are oh so slow and tedious, not to mention dangerous. Taking a stand in the NBA can cost you your job in a blink. That’s why most GMs don’t want to take a real big stance. They want to go with the flow and cash those big checks until the vibe runs out.
Kerr’s far from perfect, but he’s got way too much integrity to sell out like that. He’s gonna try to do the right thing, no matter what.
The thing that may seem curious to most fans is that they remember the old Steve Kerr, the son of the career diplomat, the darling of University of Arizona basketball, the fan favorite in both Chicago and San Antonio, the guy who hit that winning shot for Bulls title no. 5, the guy who made those big shots for the Spurs.
What I recall most about Kerr is what a great voice of reason he was for the Bulls back in 1998 when the team was being ripped apart by a battle between Jackson and Jordan on one side and team management on the other. In those days, Kerr was the guy with the thoughtful, clear approach, the smooth communication.
Why doesn’t he play that card more today and talk more to the fans in Phoenix?
The answer there is pretty clear too. Kerr has never been one to engage in shouting matches or heated conflict, although he’s not afraid of taking a stand either (Jordan can attest to that).
No, when it comes to difficult transitions in basketball, it’s most about biting your lip and getting ‘er done. It’s about walking the walk, not talking the talk right now.
I have no doubt that if ownership stays behind him (and of course that depends a sophisticated fan base that loves and cares about winning NBA basketball) then Kerr will see this transition through. And Phoenix will have a shot at winning a title.
Kerr knows that championship moments mean so much more than a little nightly fun. And he’s always been willing to take a punch in the face to prove it.
Tex Winter never pays much attention to what Shaquille O’Neal has to say. “He’s colorful, isn’t he?” the 86-year-old hoops guru says with a chuckle.
On the other hand, Winter watches very closely what Mr. O’Neal, the Phoenix Suns center, does on the floor.
It takes a lot to impress Winter, Phil Jackson’s longtime mentor and now a consultant to the Los Angeles Lakers. However, Winter admits to being impressed with what he’s seen of Shaq this year. “I think he’s in pretty good shape,” Winter said. “He’s a little thinner, a little better conditioned, a little more mobile, moving a little better than he has the last few seasons.”
Winter has viewed with curiosity the Suns’ acquisition last season of the behemoth O’Neal. At the time, Winter said it didn’t make clear sense, adding the big, lumbering fella to a team that was built to run. But having watched them adjust, Winter has come to believe that the Suns probably need to embrace O’Neal a little more than they have, to go ahead and find their new identity. In Shaq’s parlance, that would translate to “give me the ball and let the big dog eat.” “There’s a certain way you have to play with Shaq,” Winter observed. “Get him the ball on the low post, and go from there.”
A guardian of the game who never hesitates to criticize a superstar, Winter had his conflicts with O’Neal when the big guy was with the Lakers. Winter, though, conceded that “Shaq’s probably not getting it enough at this point.”
Of course, it probably would work better for the Lakers if the Suns remain conflicted and caught at crossed purposes. The competition in the Western Conference is already tough enough. O’Neal had recently implied that Jackson was somehow to blame for O’Neal’s feuding with Kobe Bryant.
Winter has long been on the record that Jackson, as Lakers coach, bent over backward to coddle O’Neal to the detriment of Bryant. As for O’Neal’s allegation that Jackson was behind the conflicts with Bryant, longtime Laker observers know that O’Neal had an aggressive agenda against Bryant months before Jackson or Winter came to the team in 1999.
Winter also paid little mind to the recent dust-up between the Lakers Trevor Ariza and teammate SashaVujacic. Ariza got upset with Vujacic for taking a badly missed three-pointer instead of moving the ball. The two had to be separated by teammates. Winter himself was never shy about making his opinions known. Lakers assistant Brian Shaw chuckles about Tex getting upset with him when he was a Lakers guard.
So it’s not surprising that Winter didn’t see anything too wrong with Ariza getting ticked off.
“I don’t blame him,” Winter said. “Good for him. I’ve always tried to let people know they’ve gotta play the game right. I don’t like people to discredit the game of basketball.”
Winter also noted that Jackson moved quickly to talk to Ariza about losing his temper. “Phil won’t let things hang,” Winter said. Of course, assistants sometimes had to step in back in the day when Winter, then Jackson’s assistant with the Chicago Bulls, would get upset with Luc Longley or some other transgressor.
Then again, there’s much about Ariza that brings the days of yore to mind for Winter. “Ariza’s got tremendous reach. He’s active,” Winter said. “When he’s playing defense he’s a little bit like (Scottie) Pippen with those long arms and the way he anticipates the passing lanes and gets his hands on the ball. “I’m not saying he’s another Pippen,” Winter added quickly but acknowledged that Jackson and his Lakers coaching staff have mentioned Ariza and Pippen in the same breath.
Longtime observers will recall that the great Pippen at 6-7 offered tremendous defensive versatility. He was able to sink into the lane to help defend the post, then showed the quickness to recover to the perimeter. “Ariza plays a little differently than Pippen on the help defense,” Winter said.
But the 6-8 fourth year forward reminds Winter of Pippen, Michael Jordan and Ron Harper, the Bulls triumvirate that ruled the league as stealers from 1996 to 1998. “Pippen and Jordan and Harper were good at laying back there and then jumping in and playing the passing lanes,” Winter said. “That’s why we (the Bulls) were a very good defensive club with those three guys. Ariza does that too. We need more like him.”
Winter was quick to add that this 2008-09 version of the Lakers is showing much defensive promise. Kobe Bryant has offered encouraging flashes of inspired defensive play. “Kobe will overplay and gamble a lot,” Winter said, acknowledging that such a ploy was also a Jordan trait. “But Kobe doesn’t lay back and come up with the basketball.”
It seems Winter is suggesting that Bryant add such a wrinkle to his portfolio, so keep a lookout for that at some point this season. “They’re working hard on defense,” Winter said of the Lakers. “They’re not the old Bulls. They’ll have their own character.”
The Lakers, of course, will have to improve dramatically as a defensive unit if they want to erase the memories of the hurting that the Boston Celtics put on them in the championship series in June. The pain of that loss seems to have added purpose to Jackson’s approach as well. “It’s motivated him to the point that he wants to get with it,” Winter said of the Lakers coach. “And he is getting with it. He’s controlling things a lot more than he did in the past.”
Then again, Jackson has more to control this time around. The Lakers are a very deep team. “He likes it,” Winter said of Jackson’s attitude toward the depth.
Asked if he thought this Los Angeles club has even more depth than the great Bulls teams that won six championships, the coach replied, “We had some pretty good subs in Chicago. But I don’t know if we had a team where the subs can play as many minutes as these Lakers guys can.”
Winter also is pleased that Bryant “has settled in to a team role” despite transgressions here or there that have left Jackson complaining a bit to reporters. “Kobe’s gotta hit shots,” Winter said. “He’s gotta take those outside shots. They’re important to the team. He cant’ go to the basket all the time.”
It’s a question of balance for Bryant, Winter said. The All-Star guard has to keep a steady mix between shooting and driving. That sounds simple, but it’s never easy to measure balance over the course of a game. “Kobe just can’t rely on one thing or the other too much,” Winter said. “Kobe wants to involve everybody else, and that’s good. But sometimes it’s maybe too much so. With players like Kobe and Jordan, it’s always a question of balance.”
Winter is preparing to rejoin the team in Los Angeles after taking a couple of weeks away to deal with the painful shingles that have bothered him for three years. Seemingly concerned about his mentor, Jackson suggested Winter contact his “holistic” doctor in New York who helped Jackson deal with hip pain. Winter has made the contact and is hoping for results.
Meanwhile, he’s eager to get back to the team to take his mind off the pain. Winter was also mindful of the passing this week of Pete Newell. Winter recalled that his Kansas State team went to Berkeley in December of 1958 and beat Newell’s Cal team that went on to win the NCAA championship that spring of 1959. Winter’s K State team spent part of that reason ranked number one in the country. But his club lost to Cincinnati and Oscar Robertson in the Midwest Regional Final, 85-75.
Newell’s club went on to beat Robertson and Cincy in the national semifinals before nipping West Virginia and Jerry West for the NCAA title. “Pete Newell was a great coach and especially a great teacher,” Winter said.
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome?
A cynic might note that’s an apt description for the coaching career of Don Nelson.
He’s just begun his 30th season of NBA coaching (he’s doing a second stint with the Golden State Warriors), to which he brings a career record of 1,280 wins against 954 losses, about 57 percent.
And he’s closing in on Lenny Wilkens’ all-time record of 1,322 NBA regular season coaching wins.
You could say that on many nights Nelson has got what they call that 2,000-game stare, except that his hoops habit runs much deeper than that. Nelson also played 14 years in the league, another (1,200) games including playoffs.
So that’s 44 years and better than 3,500 games (including exhibition games and playoffs). That, my friends, is a a lot of basketball.
In all that time, Nelson has never coached a championship team.
In fact, he’s never even coached a team that advanced to the NBA Finals.
At one point in the 1980s, Nelson’s Milwaukee Bucks teams won six straight division titles, but they flamed out each year. If it wasn’t Dr. J and the Philadelphia 76ers standing in Nelson’s way, it was Larry Bird and the Celtics.
For all of his years of coaching, Nelson has a big “nada” when it comes to the playoffs.
He did play on five Boston Celtic championship teams (1966, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1976, a nice little ring collection), and this season marks the 40th anniversary of Nelson’s huge moment late in Game 7 of the 1969 championship, when Boston was leading the Los Angeles 103-102. The Lakers’ Jerry West knocked a ball loose, and Nelson picked it up and threw up a dubious shot that hit the back of the rim, rose high in the air and fell back through the hoop.
It has long been considered the shot that sealed the Lakers’ fate in their sixth championship loss to the Celtics. Forty years later and Jerry West still has a hard time when he sees Nelson or hears his name.
Anyway, Nelson has never been so lucky as a coach. Not even close. He’s wasted a couple of 60-win seasons, and a 59-win season, plus innumerable other good campaigns. All of them ended in playoff flame-outs.
The numbers suggest a reality that may have New York Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni waking up with night sweats.
Nelson has long been the ultimate “small ball” innovator in pro basketball. And D’Antoni has been a top disciple of that faith. In fact, Nelson’s Warriors team got up even more shots than the Phoenix Suns last season.
“He’s always been able to make other teams play the way he wants to play instead of the way they want to play,” triangle offense guru Tex Winter says of Nelson. “He sees the game and he has ideas about how it should be played.”
For those reasons, Nelson has long been considered an innovator. Winter lauds Nelson’s tremendous success over the long haul.
During the regular season “small ball” always presents opponents trouble as a “one-game philosophy,” Winter says. “But it becomes a question mark when you get locked into a seven-game playoff series. That changes things considerably for those teams that want to play small ball or run a lot.”
As a result, Nelson’s impact on basketball philosophy has been bigger than his ability to win the big one.
That’s almost a moot issue for the Warriors, a franchise that has struggled for years to get it together. Golden State’s ownership is quite happy with what Nelson has done in his latest stop there.
In 2007, he chalked up 42 wins, just barely got the eighth seed in the playoffs and pulled a stunning first round upset of the no. 1 seed, the Dallas Mavericks.
The playoff victory goosed a long-suffering Warriors fan base that knows basketball and frankly deserves better.
For 2008, Nelson boosted the team’s win total to 48 but the Warriors just missed the playoffs in the challenging Western Conference.
Still, it was the first time the club had had back-to-back winning seasons since 1991-92, when Nelson was in the midst of his first coaching tenure with the Warriors.
For rediscovering the winning ways, team president Robert Rowell recently gave the 68-year-old Nelson a two-year contract extension worth an estimated $12 million.
“We’re elated that Don has elected to sign an extension,” Rowell said in making the move. “He has proven to be one of the most successful and innovative coaches in the history of our game and his continued presence on the sidelines is certainly a prominent asset for our team and organization.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” Nelson told reporters. “It was fine with me to weigh it year to year. But they came to me and wanted me to commit to three years and, uh, I’m pretty excited about it. It’s quite an honor really to be wanted. At my age, you’re lucky if anybody wants you. Hopefully your wife.”
In less politic moment, Nelson confided his true feelings to reporters recently, saying that “an ass-kicking veteran team that would have a chance to win a title is what I deserve at 68.”
(The comment brings to mind that Clint Eastwood quote from “Unforgiven”: “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”)
Yet Nelson’s comment reveals just how badly he wants to win one, just how badly he feels cheated by the circumstances.
Ah, the circumstances. They’re a bit complicated with the Warriors. First, June 30 brought the shocking news that point guard Baron Davis was opting out of the final year of his contract and walking away from $17.8 million. He stunned Nelson by signing a five-year, $65 million contract with the Los Angeles Clippers a week later.
“When you lose someone of his talent and stature, it’s hard to replace,” said Chris Mullin, the Warriors’ executive vice president of basketball operations.
The organization figured it would have talented young shooting guard Monta Ellis to move to the point. But Ellis was injured in a summer moped accident that infuriated ownership and left him suspended during his months-long recuperation for violating his contract provisions.
On the plus side, Corey Maggette (22.1 ppg, 5.6 rpg) signed a free agent contract with the Warriors after spending the past eight seasons with the Los Angeles Clippers. But the net for Golden State means that the bulk of Nelson’s roster is under 25.
Instead of a veteran team, he’s got a young one, a roster with no proven point guard, no real power forward, just the circumstances for Nelson to do what he does best: Innovate.
“Our philosophy has to change a little bit,” Nelson had said even before Ellis was injured. “I played mostly my veterans last year, trying to get to the playoffs, and we didn’t do it.”
Long known for letting his players play, Nelson admitted he was going to have to become more of a teacher. And he had plans to require his players to become better students of the game, more video study, more fundamentals, etc.
It wouldn’t hurt if they rebounded and defended better too.
Nelson’s immediate answer has been to put the ball in the hands of Stephen Jackson, to make him more of a point forward, and to align him with one of the several unproven young point guards on the team. In the early going, the results have been mixed.
The turmoil has begat more turmoil. Forward Al Harrington, never seemingly comfortable in Nelson’s system, opened the season by demanding a trade.
The developments all make it easy to predict that the Warriors are heading into what appears to be another winter of their discontent, and apparently the job of team executive Chris Mullin hangs in the balance. Team president Robert Rowell, upset over the handling of the Ellis issue, appears reluctant to extend Mullin’s contract, which is scheduled to end after this season. And there are stories circulating that Mullin had negotiated a new contract with Baron Davis only to have Rowell reject it.
Yes, things are pretty much a mess with the Warriors, with some observers speculating that Nelson is making moves to gain control over the front office by replacing Mullin, the loyal friend who hired him.
“No. No. Don’t want to be. No,” Nelson told the San Jose Mercury News. “I’m not interested in general manager, or coach and general manager, or anything else. I’ll support Mully the whole way. I hope he gets his deal done as well. I love working with Mully. I’m a coach. Period.”
A coach indeed, one with a determination to keep on rolling and looking for better things in the world to come.
It’s been 10 years since Jerry Krause, Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan parted company in a hail of spite and anger after winning six championships together with the Chicago Bulls.
It’s unlikely that the three ever posed together for a photograph, even in their sunnier days, but if they had Krause would have been the short dumpy guy looking entirely out of place.
The caption for that photo might have noted that Jordan was the one with the fierce presence and incredible talent and Jackson was the one with the cunning.
And Krause?
Well, he was the one with big enough balls to stand up to both of them.
It’s unlikely that Krause will ever join the other two in the Hall of Fame, but if he does, the display might well be a huge set of cojones.
Jordan, you may recall, was the most intimidating presence in the history of the game, on and off the court. That was his gift and his curse, all rolled into one. It was his gift because he rode that Alpha Male nature to the heights of the sport, scaring everybody in his path along the way. The curse was that his talent transformed those around him into fawning groupies and sycophants. Everywhere Jordan turned, he encountered people eager to tell him what he wanted to hear.
Even Jackson, hugely intimidating in his own right, chose his words carefully and stepped softly around His Airness.
Krause, on the other hand, charged right in like the bull that he was, cocksure in his own view of things.
Krause was the one who just knew the Cinderella Bulls had to have Bill Cartwright to upgrade their center play with smarts and toughness. So he traded away Charles Oakley, Jordan’s dear friend and partner in crime, to get Cartwright. It was just one of several Krause acts that Jordan never forgave.
“We didn’t win until we got Bill Cartwright,” Krause told me in a long conversation a few months back. “People today don’t realize how good Bill Cartwright was.”
Cartwright was the key to the Bulls’ first three championships from 1991-93, Krause said.
“Then the second group of three (1996-98) started when we got Dennis (Rodman). Without Dennis, we wouldn’t have done that.”
Jordan signed off on the Rodman acquisition, but there were plenty of other times Krause didn’t hesitate to run afoul of the team’s star.
Jordan lobbied hard for the drafting of Joe Wolf, a University of North Carolina star. Krause ignored him and drafted Horace Grant, another key in Chicago’s long, strange run of success.
Since the glory of his playing days ended, Jordan has struggled to find success and happiness in the game he virtually owned as a Bull.
Jordan has never phoned Krause, although he did contact him through an intermediary for the pivotal 2001 NBA draft. Jordan was an owner/executive for the Washington Wizards, and Krause was still working for the Bulls. They were both trying to sort out which big men to take among Tyson Chandler, Kwame Brown and Eddy Curry. Jordan made Brown his infamous selection, while Krause scooped up Chandler and Curry for Chicago.
“Michael didn’t try to pick my brain,” Krause said. “Michael didn’t have any respect for anybody’s brain. He did have Rod Higgins do a lot of his talking.”
Since his Bulls tenure ended a few years back, Krause has returned to his original love, scouting baseball.
Although Jordan is in charge of basketball operations for the Charlotte Bobcats these days and he could probably use Krause’s counsel on personnel issues, it’s not likely that the two will ever mend their differences.
And Krause scoffed when asked if he and Jackson would be getting together any time soon for a reunion of those great Bulls teams.
“I haven’t spoken to Phil since the last day he was with us in 1998,” Krause said.
Like Jordan, it would probably behoove Jackson to slice off a huge piece of humble pie and give Krause a call. After all, Jackson is in Los Angeles trying to duplicate the incredible feat they all accomplished together in Chicago – to build a championship team around a 2 guard.
Krause is quite a student of the game and he loves to point out that Chicago holds a distinction among all the great basketball teams.
“We were the only ones to build a championship team around a 2 guard,” he offered, adding that even attempting such a thing is almost silly. “That’s what I’m proudest of. It’s the hardest thing to do, really, really hard to do.”
WINTER
Their differences are enough to make you wonder how Krause and Jackson ever came to work together, but that in itself is the bittersweet heart of this story.
If Krause ever writes an autobiography, he plans to call it “One Million National Anthems.” That’s because he’s knocked around the games of baseball and basketball for years as a scout, taking bad flights, eating bad food, hanging out at practice, always looking for the hidden truth.
Even before that, when he was a student assistant charting plays at Bradley University, Krause caught his first glimpse of Tex Winter, then the coach at Kansas State. Krause was intrigued by the triangle offense and Winter’s intelligence and integrity.
“I liked what Tex did. I thought, ‘Boy, if he ever got good players that offense would be something.’”
Winter moved around in his coaching career as Krause moved into the netherworld of scouting, all the while keeping an eye on Winter and his teams. When Winter took the job at Northwestern, “we became better friends,” Krause said.
Winter recalls that he spent a lot of time with a projector, going over film, showing Krause a lot about the triangle.
“I wanted to learn about it,” Krause said. He also had hopes of becoming an NBA general manager someday and he offered promises that as soon as he did, he would hire Winter.
“I want you with me,” Krause told Winter. “I want you to teach the big people and to coach the coaches.”
“I always said, ‘I’m gonna hire him as an assistant coach, and I’m not gonna worry who the head coach is going to be,” Krause recalled.
In 1985, Krause’s labor came to fruition. He was hired as GM of the Bulls as Jordan was entering his second season. Sure enough, one of the first calls he made was to Winter.
First, Krause hired Stan Albeck as head coach. But Albeck didn’t want to listen to Winter and didn’t want to use the offense.
Krause also wanted him to hire a goofy young assistant named Phil Jackson. Krause had discovered Jackson, a lanky big guy at the University of North Dakota, while scouting small college ball. Krause had quickly come to believe that Jackson had a bright future. But Albeck absolutely refused to hire Jackson, who was viewed as something of an oddball back in the 1980s.
Krause fired Albeck and promoted a bright young coach, Doug Collins.
Krause wanted Collins to hire Jackson, but the new coach was reluctant.
“I went around some things with Doug, but I finally got Phil on his staff,” Krause said.
Once there, Jackson soon began working with Winter and learning from him. But like Albeck, Collins didn’t want to listen to Winter. He even barred Winter from Bulls practices at one point.
Finally, Krause grew fed up, fired Collins and hired Jackson as his head coach.
At last, Krause had the two people he had dreamed of putting in charge. It was the beginning of a coaching partnership that would win nine NBA titles.
“Phil was the first person to understand how good Tex was,” Krause said. “I give Phil a lot of credit. Phil is the best brain picker I have ever known. Phil has picked Tex’s mind for years. I’m a great brain picker myself. I’ve picked Tex’s mind for years. But Phil is by far the best I’ve ever seen because he took a genius and picked his brain. I hired Phil because he was a brilliant defensive coach. When Phil said he wanted to use Tex’s triangle, I said, ‘That’s great.’”
Krause doesn’t take credit for it, but the two would become the core of a great coaching staff, that included Johnny Bach, Jimmy Rodgers, Frank Hamblen and Jimmy Cleamons.
“I do believe the coaching staff we had in Chicago is the best staff in the history of the game,” Krause said. “They were a tremendous complement to Phil.”
For several years, Jackson and his staff proved the perfect match for Jordan, Scottie Pippen and the assemblage of talent. However, Krause’s strong personality wore on Jackson season after season.
Winter grew to become a moderating factor between the two. He said Jackson spent several years bending over backward to please Krause, but by late 1995, Jackson had grown weary of the process and began to rebel.
That rebellion grew into open warfare by 1996. Some accuse Jackson of using Jordan’s and Pippen’s dislike of Krause to motivate the team and drive the Bulls along a bitter road to their last three championships.
Krause soon found himself caught up in the web of Jackson’s mind games and the coach’s ability to use the media to achieve his goals.
“He’s always operated that way,” Krause said of Jackson. “Believe me, he’s stirred the pot with me a number of times. That’s the way he does things. I know the act, believe me.”
Observers watched Krause’s own hubris feed into the end game in Chicago. The team and coaching staff broke apart after the sixth title in 1998. Krause’s vision of Jackson and Winter had been special, then it turned into his nightmare.
Jackson “rode off into the sunset” was how the media termed the parting. Krause says he was disappointed in 1999 when Winter told him he was leaving the Bulls to accept a job working with Jackson and the Lakers.
“I wasn’t happy about it when he left,” Krause said of Winter, one of the elite few whom Krause calls ‘Coach.’ “I told him that. But Coach is still Coach with me. I don’t call many people coach. You gotta earn that with me.”
Now in his late 60s and still living in the Chicago area, Krause offers a matter-of-fact view of the experience and shows some callouses.
“I’ve got tapes of every game that was played in that era,” he says. “I’ve never looked at ‘em.”
Jackson was voted into the Hall of Fame last year, which served to remind Krause of his frustration at not getting the Hall to recognize Winter as an all-time great coach.
Winter is one of the game’s ultimate “geniuses,” he says.
Krause himself was on the selection committee for the Hall several years ago and resigned in protest over the issue.
“I did everything I could do,” Krause said, adding that the politics of selection has made Winter’s recognition as one of the game’s all-time great coaches an impossibility. “It ain’t gonna happen.”
He has grown to accept that reality as he has everything else that came to pass. He says he has moved on to his new life in baseball and is enjoying it immensely.
Don’t expect a warm reunion of one of pro basketball’s great teams, he says.
“It’s past history. It’s done. Phil is a great coach. For a long time, he was very easy to work with. Then he was not so easy. That’s life. Things change. Phil is Phil. I’m proud I hired him.”
Thank goodness for the consolation of gold and diamonds.
I can see Michael Jordan now, giving that little wink signaling that he was outta here and easing through the crowd of reporters squeezed in around him. Chicago Bulls PR man Tim Hallam used to call that tight circle of media a “pig fight.” That was when dozens of sportswriters and camera crews would crowd in around Jordan with their notebooks and microphones and body odor, snorting and squealing their questions, squeezing in closer to catch every word. We all knew Mike as a man who enjoyed the spotlight, but even he could stand only so much of a pig fight. In that regard, it’s no surprise that he got into the fragrance business.
Kobe Bryant has done an amazing job behind the scenes reviving his sorely battered Los Angeles Lakers teammates to get them ready to compete for this year’s championship.
Tex Winter is back in Oregon now, after having spent weeks in Kansas following a late April stroke.
For Phil Jackson, endings have always been much more powerful than beginnings.
Phoenix Suns fans these days are just starting to understand how Michael Jordan felt.
Tex Winter never pays much attention to what Shaquille O’Neal has to say. “He’s colorful, isn’t he?” the 86-year-old hoops guru says with a chuckle.
