The greatest NBA free agent of all time, LeBron James, is quietly making overtures to the Los Angeles Lakers.
He wants to play for them. And James is not all that concerned whether Kobe Bryant is part of the equation. Bryant, of course, has yet to sign a contract extension with L.A. and could wind up a free-agent himself, albeit one with high mileage.
But the overtures have been made. LeBron wants to wear the purple and gold. Mainly, he wants to wear a championship ring, which means he wants to play for Lakers coach Phil Jackson.
“LeBron wants to win. He’s a smart guy,” explains one of my best inside sources, a close Jackson associate. “And Phil loves LeBron, absolutely LOVES him.”
There are many, many complicating factors to such a scenario, not the least of which is the fact that it’s way far from certain that Jackson will even be the coach of the Lakers next year.
“The Lakers have not made Phil an offer,” the Jackson source points out. However, rest assured of this, Jackson’s close associate maintained. “Phil will coach somewhere next year.”
Jackson wouldn’t dare take off next year if he’s not coaching the Lakers because he believes the following year will bring a lock-out, the source says. Jackson craves the chance to win another title before the NBA owners lock out the players in 2011-2012 to force a new contract.
“The whole league is under review,” the source points out. “Franchise values are falling, so the owners feel they must force a new labor agreement.”
The lock-out will bring a lost season, and the 64-year-old Jackson doesn’t want to miss two campaigns. So Jackson could wind up coaching Bron with another team next year, such as the New York Knickerbockers.
If all of this sounds fabulous, that’s because it is. These are strange days indeed for the NBA, and for the Lakers, with the planets aligning or converging or whatever with the upcoming off-season. “It feels like there’s a reckoning coming,” the Jackson source said.
THE TITANIC STRUGGLE
If you listen closely, you can hear the heavy breathing and grunting emanating from the Lakers offices beside the freeway in El Segundo. Behind the scenes, folks are wrestling for control of the franchise’s future, if not its very soul.
In other words, they’re partying like it’s 1998. That, of course, is a reference to the last time Jackson played multi-dimensional, high stakes poker with the owners of a team he was coaching.
There are those who think Jackson won that ’90s showdown when he coached the Chicago Bulls to their sixth title in the midst of a very ugly battle for control of the team, then walked away.
But if you ask Bulls superstar Michael Jordan, the experience, in retrospect, sure doesn’t smell anything like victory. Instead, 1998 still clings to his nostrils like the torturous stench of missed opportunity.
If everybody had been a mench, or at least an adult, Jordan could have kept playing for those Bulls and could have kept winning titles until somebody mustered the chutzpah to step up and stop him. As it is, Jordan sort of hangs in the shadows of the NBA these days, a mere ghost of the great competitive spirit that once struck fear everywhere.
I hope Kobe Bryant gets a good long look at him. MJ has always been Bryant’s guide star. They’ve played forthe same coach, in the same system, filled the same role with the same mannerisms and got some of the same results.
Bryant even knows that missed-opportunity aroma, dating back to 2004 when the Lakers blew up a championship steamroller, traded center Shaquille O’Neal and fired Phil Jackson.
Now, after rehiring Jackson a year later, the L.A. franchise has put together another club that could roll to a run of titles, and once again the whole thing is threatened by childish parlor games.
A cynic might say that these are the sort of monopolistic board games that an adolescent Jackson used to enjoy playing with his mother Betty. But you can’t really pin this current Lakers conflict solely on Phil.
He and 76-year-old Lakers owner Jerry Buss sort of deserve each other. They are the two best minds in the NBA, and you knew that eventually they were headed for a showdown for all the stakes, sort of like the finalists in the World Series Of Poker Tournament For All Eternity. For all their success together, Jerry Buss and PJ are just not a good mix. Jackson is “much to himself. He has his own thing.”
Jerry longs for the run and gun days of his 1980s Showtime Lakers teams. But Phil runs the frickin’ triangle, for chrissakes. “Phil’s just not sexy enough for Dr. Buss,” explains Jackson’s confidant. In all his years, though, Buss has never encountered an adversary like Jackson, who jumped in bed with the owner’s sexy daughter Jeaniejust days after coming to the Lakers in 1999. With that one brilliant move, Phil had Dr. Buss in check.
Soon Jackson was winning championships and charging Buss $12 million a season to do it. Buss has hated paying that much for a mere coach, especially one that was tupping his daughter. His counter move on Jackson was to vest power and control in the hands of son Jim, already a competitor with Jeanie Buss for daddy’s love and control of the franchise. The whole scenario has Jeanie quite upset and telling her friends, “They’re going to do this again. They don’t even care if he wins the championship this year.” Jeanie, of course, is making reference to the 2004 firing of Jackson by Jim and Jerry Buss.
She was particularly angered that Jerry Buss entertained former Laker (and rumored Jackson replacement) Byron Scott into the owner’s suite on the night Jackson became the winningest coach in Lakers history. “Jeanie was really upset by it,” the confidant said. “But Phil took the high road… He said (an agent) put Scott in the owner’s suite so he could get the Clippers job. They wanted to make it look like the Lakers were interested to get the Clippers to bite.”
Jeanie apparently doesn’t buy that. One fabulous scenario has Phil, Kobe and Jeanie all going to the cross-town Clippers in an off-season package deal, but that seems a bit dramatic. The circumstances have left Jeanie with agonizingly divided loyalties. She adores Jackson but feels the ties to her father and brother no matter how much their chauvinism irks her. She is the executive who runs the team, but her father insists on turning the real power of the franchise over to Jim.
In the middle of it all, Jeanie and Jim still hold onto sibling affection, the confidant quipped. “Trust funds make strange bedfellows.” Jackson himself has been quite accommodating of Jim Buss, who travels with the team frequently if for no other reason than to remind the coach of the value of young center Andrew Bynum. Jim Buss believes Bynum is the next Kareem Abdul-Jabbar while the coaching staff would like Bynum to quit pouting about shots and anchor the defense with enthusiasm.
“Phil puts up with it,” the confidant said of his exchanges with Jim Buss. “I was talking to your brother…,” Jackson will tell Jeanie in informing her of events. The wild card in all of this is Bryant himself. Jackson’s camp wonders why the L.A. press hasn’t put questions to Bryant to get him to complain that Jackson is being driven out. Jordan spoke out on Jackson’s behalf early in the 1997-98 season, and that enhanced the coach’s power in his struggle with Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and GM Jerry Krause.
“Kobe’s the only guy that can press the issue as a Laker,” Jackson’s confidant explained. “What Kobe says will speak volumes. Kobe could go to management right now and say he wants to spend the rest of his career as a Laker with PJ as his coach.” This time around, though, Bryant has kept his own counsel and stayed above the fray. Perhaps he has sought advice from Jordan, who felt let down when Jackson walked away after the 1998 championship. Jordan got into the fight and spoke up for Phil but still lost the balance of his career when Jackson quit anyway.
Bryant certainly knows that the best way to guarantee that Jackson spends another year with the team is to win a second straight championship for the Lakers. That’s chore enough for the team’s star, one that requiresplenty of focus. In the final analysis, that’s certainly the main argument for Jim and Jerry Buss bringing the speculation to an end. Jackson has brought them lots of money and value with his wins. Saving $7 million a year with Byron Scott is nothing next to what they’ve gained with Jackson at the helm.
In Chicago in 1998, Jackson and the Bulls rode all the speculation and tension to a title. But there are doubts that will work this time around. Yes, the Lakers are holding their own at the top of the Western Conference, but as Jackson’s source pointed out, “It’s incredible how miserable they seem winning.” That in itself may clear up Bron’s future as well. A title in Cleveland means he likely stays put. A title in L.A. could turn the quiet overtures into serious negotiations.
It’s one of those questions that heats up late January for the NBA. Does Pau Gasol deserve to be selected by Western Conference coaches to fill an at-large spot on the All-Star roster?
The Los Angeles Lakers’ loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers this past week would have seemed to settle the issue in some minds. Gasol seemed weak, ineffectual, couldn’t hold position.
“Weenie Gasol,” declared a heading on at least one Lakers internet discussion board after he struggled against the Cavs.
At least that’s how some fickle, frustrated fans see it.
That’s not necessarily the view of the coaches and support personnel around the league, however.
“He’s had those hamstring injuries,” explained a close associate of Lakers coach Phil Jackson. “Pau couldn’t hold position, hasn’t been able to get a lot of lift. That’s what happens to people with bad hamstrings. They can’t perform. That’s all that is.”
“He’s still in the All-Star mix, and he should be.”
Indeed.
There’s a high regard for Gasol among coaches around the league based on what he’s done since coming to the Lakers in an early 2008 trade, especially his play in last June’s championship run by the Lakers.
You can hear that same regard in the voices of his teammates.
“Pau’s always prepared,” said the Lakers’ Lamar Odom in late December. “You see him catch the ball and just go with that pretty left hook. He has an awesome array of moves and shots.”
The seven-foot Spaniard missed the start of the season with a hamstring injury, but upon returning to the lineup and regaining some strength and flexibility, Gasol ripped off a series of huge rebounding games in December, prompting this reporter to ask him if he was trying to imitate Bill Russell.
Gasol laughed off the comment in typical fashion, but his value to the Lakers has been obvious from the moment he joined the team.
If you want a measure of that impact and the respect Gasol has earned, you only need to look at the double teams he draws virtually every time he catches the ball in the post.
“Teams double Pau a lot,” Odom said. “A lot.”
Those double-teams make it possible for the Lakers’ offense to operate at high efficiency. Statistics don’t cover Gasol’s full impact, but his presence has meant so much in terms of taking pressure off Kobe Bryant and creating space for the athletic guard to move and attack.
“Pau’s so versatile, so underrated,” Odom said. “There are so many ways he can hurt a team in so many different aspects. His passing. He hits me down low with passes all the time.”
Defenses simply have to be aware of Gasol at all times, and no one knows that better than the opposing coaches who will hold the votes that determine who makes the team.
His place on the team might not be an issue if it weren’t for the fine seasons being turned in by two other bigs in the Western Conference.
Forward Zach Randolph is averaging 20.9 points per game and 11.4 rebounds while appearing in the first 42 games for the Memphis Grizzlies.
Although center Chris Kaman has missed four games for the Clippers, he’s averaged 20.4 points and better than nine rebounds.
Both numbers appear better than the 16.9 points and 11 rebounds Gasol has averaged in 28 games for the Lakers.
Actually, Gasol is effective at both the four and five positions, and that versatility is a key argument for his inclusion on the team. Gasol is a key reason the Lakers are one of the top teams in the league. He sacrifices shots playing in L.A.’s deep lineup that includes Bryant, but that sacrifice is also reason for his selection.
Kaman is having a fine year, but he plays on the Clippers. Coaches have usually avoided selecting players from teams with losing records. Kaman, however, has twice been named Western Conference Player of the Week and is certainly deserving of consideration.
Randolph probably offers the stiffest competition, with the Grizzlies producing a winning record that hardly anyone expected heading into the season. A bulky forward, Randolph has long put up numbers on a series of losing teams. He has never been known as a strong defensive player.
What hurts his candidacy is that All-Star awards have long been cumulative honors. Coaches might be shy about selecting Randolph for a few months of inspired play with the fear that he could easily revert to old form.
Truth be told, the Lakers coaching and medical staffs are hoping Gasol isn’t selected. That would mean that instead of going to Dallas for a busy weekend, Gasol can get some much-needed rest and additional treatment for all that ails him.
The issue will be settled this coming Thursday when the All-Star reserves are announced.
Although the Los Angeles Lakers and Kobe Bryant have gotten off to a strong start this season despite early injuries, forward Lamar Odom says there’s no question they miss triangle guru Tex Winter, who still battles the effects of a stroke suffered last April.
Odom says he has no doubt what the perfectionist coach would be telling the club.
“He would be telling Kobe to move the ball,” Odom said with a laugh recently. “But he was always telling Kobe to move the ball, even when Kobe was moving the ball. He would tell us to ping the ball. He would say we should be passing a lot better, having a lot more assists.”
And if the team had defensive breakdowns, the 87-year-old Winter would blame the troubles on improper offensive execution, Odom said.
That’s because the triangle, a team offense, is predicated on floor balance that always leaves players in position to get back on defense.
Winter, the longtime assistant and mentor to Hall of Fame coach Phil Jackson, is himself nominated once again for the Hall of Fame this year, after failing to gain election on numerous occasions.
It’s a system good enough to win 10 of the last 20 NBA championships, but is it good enough to get Winter elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame?
His nomination goes against the Hall’s formula for electing the game’s star coaches and players. Assistant coaches simply aren’t elected to the Hall of Fame, as longtime Celtics player, coach and broadcaster TommyHeinsohn, himself a Hall of Fame player, explained.
But Winter’s career has broken the mold and merits special consideration, his supporters point out, largely because of the unique triangle offense and Winter’s ability to teach it and coach it.
Former Bulls GM Jerry Krause hired Winter, a veteran college coach who had great success at Kansas State and other places, as the “coach’s coach” in the late 1980s. Krause wanted Winter to teach his unique offense to Bulls head coach Doug Collins.
When Collins declined much of Winter’s advice, he was replaced by Phil Jackson, and the greatest coaching combo of all time was born. Working under Winter’s tutelage and using Winter’s offensive system, Jackson coached the Bulls and later the Lakers to 10 championships in 20 seasons, an unprecedented run.
Pro basketball had long been viewed as an undisciplined domain until it came to be ruled by Winter’s marvelously disciplined approach to team play.
“People don’t realize it’s mostly a zone offense,” Odom explained. “You overload one side, and you always have people in rebounding position. You just kind of pick your spots. It’s a pass-first offense. You just pass the ball to the open man and see what develops from there.”
Winter would be delighted to hear Odom discussing the triangle so authoritatively. Truth be told, Odom has never been all that well suited to Winter’s system.
Winter always said Odom is one of the finest humans he ever coached, and that’s saying something because Winter coached for better than six decades.
Still, as you might expect, Winter’s admiration never left him shy about lighting up Odom if the Lakers forward violated one of the principles of Winter’s system.
Over the past five seasons, Winter was often in Odom’s ear, sometimes fussing about one thing or another, or sometimes just talking about the game. But then the spry pioneer was silenced by a stroke last April.
The Lakers and Kobe Bryant are now moving through another season with hopes of defending the NBA title they won last June, and Odom says he can still feel Winter right there in his ear.
“Experience is the best teacher in the world,” Odom explained recently with more than a bit of tenderness in his voice. “He’d been around the block. And Tex always had stories for me. I miss his presence. We all miss Tex. A lot.”
Odom is a brilliant open-court player, able to operate instinctively on the break like only a select few in the world can do. Yet it says much about Odom that he’s willing to give himself over to system basketball with so little complaint.
Winter has long marveled at Jackson’s ability to sell modern NBA players on the merits of the unusual offense.
Then again, Winter has spent years in Jackson’s ear too. Winter not only provided Jackson the triangle offense and all of its various schematics, but the older mentor gave the younger Jackson the essential sets of drills and fundamentals for playing in his system.
Initially, Jackson provided a vision and an uncanny ability to relate to players and to build them into a team. But over the years, Jackson came to grasp the triangle and to teach it in ways that awed even Winter.
It became apparent that Jackson grew tremendously from their unique relationship and became the kind of coach who has dominated the game.
At every turn, there are regular reminders as to why Odom and today’s younger Lakers players keep plugging away at the different rhythms of the triangle. Odom got one such reminder recently when the Lakers visited Chicago, where Jackson and Winter coached the Bulls to six NBA championships.
Odom said he walked into the United Center and he was immediately left stunned when he glanced up to see the banners that the coaches won with teams led by Michael Jordan.
“I came in here, it was like I forgot,” Odom said. “I see like six championship banners? Then he won three more with the Lakers. I was like, ‘Wow.’ And then I was able to win one more with him last spring? And for me to be here in this presence?”
It’s like walking with history, Odom said.
That’s not to say the versatile forward hasn’t had tremendous frustrations with the system. He laughed heartily when he heard that new teammate Ron Artest talked of the triangle as an impetuous lady who needs constant romance.
“You can call it that,” Odom said. “Romance is good. It’s always better when you take your time.”
The Lakers’ relationship with the triangle has evolved over the course of every season, and this is no different. It’s a constant adventure, Odom admitted with a laugh. “Any given night, you never know. It can be your night to take four shots. Or it can be your night to take 14 shots. That’s how it is. You just have to be prepared.”
That, of course, was part of Winter’s uncanny grand plan to keep the opponent off balance.
NOW IT’S JACKSON’S SHOW TO RUN
In seasons past, Winter has always been the guardian of how the Lakers play the game. Now, Jackson is moving through his first full season without his longtime mentor and assistant. The Lakers coach is also without top assistant Kurt Rambis, now the head coach for the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Odom says Jackson and the team have managed the way they always have.
“We’re always growing,” he explained, “and most people say they don’t change. But I don’t think we can help but change. I think it’s nature, you know?”
For example, the Lakers changed much over the course of the 2009 season, and that helped make them champions.
“P.J., he’s probably more outgoing, speaks a little bit more” now that Winter and Rambis are no longer around, Odom said, adding that Jackson also is now enjoying better health. “I know he feels better with his back and his legs and he’s moving around more. He feels good. He’s upbeat.”
Odom means that literally. Jackson still brings out his “warrior’s drum” and beats it for the team before every home game, a ritual that seems hard to fathom for some opponents in the NBA. The beating drum, according to Jackson’s belief, stirs the heart, just as it did for Native American warriors.
“He gives you that push, that pump that you always need,” Odom said of Jackson. “You want to play for and with the best.”
If it seems like Odom is extremely appreciative of where he is in life, he is. Lakers fans recall that he suffered through substantial off-season anxiety as a free agent before finally re-signing with the Lakers.
Where Jackson used to have psychologist George Mumford lead the team in meditation, Jackson himself now takes the team through these sessions. “Our energy many times is mental,” Odom explained. “The way we meditate with each other and stay poised, it feeds our energy.”
BRYANT/GASOL
If the triangle and Jackson’s methods remain something of a mystery for the team, one thing does not — Bryant’s approach to the game.
“We know what he wants to do,” Odom said with a laugh. “He’s gonna come out and be offensively aggressive at all times. But he earns that. He earns that.”
Lakers center/forward Pau Gasol recently pointed out that he has to keep working the offensive boards because he’s only getting about five shots a game in the offense.
Some observers might take that as criticism of Bryant or teammates, but both Gasol and Odom say that’s not the case at all.
It’s more a testament to Gasol’s effectiveness and the efforts of opposing defenses, Odom explained. “Pau’s always prepared. You see him catch the ball and just go with that pretty left hook. He has an awesome array of moves and shots.
“Teams double Pau a lot,” Odom said. “We try to get him the ball as much as possible. When Kobe gets going, you got to understand that he’s going to stay aggressive, he’s gonna stay in the attack mode. Pau’s so versatile, so underrated as a rebounder. There are so many ways he can hurt a team in so many different. His passing. He hits me down low with passes all the time. He’s always around four or five or six assists a night.”
The situation itself reminds Odom of why Winter, who continues to battle the effects of the stroke at his Oregon residence, remains in his thoughts.
“There are always going to be nights where the defenses are going to take something away,” he explains, echoing Winter.
So it remains the job of the system and the team to produce another option, another way to succeed. That’s the way of the triangle, Odom explained.
Yes, the older coach always had stories for Odom, and it’s clear that Winter didn’t just train players. He also taught them to be guardians of the game in their own right.
In that regard, Odom has placed himself among the elite, because he’s always been the kind of guy to take the things that Winter said to heart.
Perhaps the people involved in the highly secretive Hall of Fame election process will finally do the same.
We’ll begin this one with an ancient line from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
“We have all been here before.”
Damn, Phil Jackson is masterful. Well, most of the time.
He just happens to pick the world’s largest media market to launch his counter-attack. Jackson is the king of mismatches, whether it’s on the basketball floor, or in his media wars for control of a franchise.
In his pre-game chat with the media before the Los Angeles Lakers played the New Jersey Nets, Jackson casually floated the notion that he might not coach next year.
Oh, the stories that reporters have launched from that one.
The only problem is, Jackson was too coy to complete the equation for them. He identified his concerns and anxiety. He mentioned the state of the franchise, the success of the team, his salary, his feelings – all as factors in whether he returns next year as coach of the Lakers.
But he smartly left it to the media themselves to connect the dots as to the cause of his anxiety. Actually the math isn’t all that complicated.
Frankly, I began wondering about two months ago and trying to figure when the shoe was going to fall.
You see, the drama, or the latest act of the drama, actually began at the start of the season when Lakers owner Jerry Buss brought son Jim out for his yearly meeting with the media.
Jerry picked the moment to announce that he was stepping back and turning the franchise over to son Jim.
Think about the insult of that for the power couple of daughter Jeanie Buss and longtime boyfriend Jackson.
Let’s see, the California economy has been in a free fall, literally a disaster, for more than a year now. Yet, Jeanie Buss has brought in season-ticket renewals at something very close to a perfect one hundred percent. She has taken the traditionally cold and indifferent face of the franchise and made a warm, welcoming community in Staples Center. She’s there every night on the front row, greeting season ticket holders taking care of problems, making sure the team runs like a charm.
She’s been running the business and marketing end of the Lakers for years now, and in that time has gained a widespread reputation around the league for her business and media smarts. She’s one of the bright spots in a league dogged by recession.
As for Jackson himself, well, let’s see. He’s fought off the ravages of bad hips and vascular troubles with his legs, not to mention the incapacitation of his longtime mentor, Tex Winter, with a stroke – Jackson battled through all those things to guide the Lakers to the 2009 NBA title.
So, in his one meeting with the media each season, Buss uses the occasion not to talk toast their accomplishments but to announce that he’s turning the keys to the machine over to Jim Buss?
Jerry Buss didn’t say a whole lot that day about daughter Jeanie and Phil, and his silence on their accomplishments speaks volumes.
Jeanie’s friends have been furious over the situation for some time now. They like to point out that Jim Buss didn’t even have an office in the team compound, that his big move has been to put his personal bartender on the team payroll.
As one Jeanie confidant explains, Jerry Buss is a misogynist who refuses to accept the idea that his daughter might ascend to run the franchise that he has owned for 30 years.
Buss made up his mind long ago that he was going to turn the franchise over to Jim. As Jerry West once explained of the team owner, “Once Jerry Buss makes up his mind, he normally doesn’t change it.”
Still, Jim Buss has been credited with making a series of moves five years ago that cost the franchise dearly, namely pushing for the firing of Jackson and the hiring of Rudy Tomjanovich as coach.
Jeanie’s allies insist that Jim Buss made that move without so much as consulting with anyone else, and Tomjanovich’s short tenure cost the team millions.
It’s no wonder that Jeanie and Phil are uneasy about trying to keep things headed in the right direction with Jim Buss in power.
Yes, Jim Buss was one of the voices in Lakers’ management that pushed for the drafting of center AndrewBynum, but Jim has also played a role in the alienation of Bynum from Jackson and the team.
Although Bynum is signed to a long-term contract, his relationship with Jackson and the team remains a touchy issue.
Even though the Lakers sit atop the Western Conference and have nice momentum on their run to defend their championship, Jackson’s words fell, if not like bombshells, at least like mortar rounds in New York.
He told reporters that whether the Lakers repeat as NBA champions will be a big factor – but not the only one – in determining whether he returns.
“They have a great chance to be a very good team for a while, and Drew (Bynum) is locked in, and that’s a great start from the standpoint of putting a great roster together that has some commonality, that has played together, it’ll give them a real good basis,” Jackson said of the Lakers. “They have a couple other things that they have to get done and then I’m going to feel good about it.”
The Los Angeles Times reported the Lakers and Pau Gasol (who earns $16.5 million this season and $17.8 million next season) have agreed in principle to a three-year extension that will carry Gasol through the 2013-14 season. The Times also suggested that Kobe Bryant, who has the right to opt out of his contract at the conclusion of this season and become an unrestricted free agent, could also soon be in the fold long-term.
The news about Bryant and Gasol would seem to be great news for Jackson, the NBA’s highest-paid coach with $12 million annual salary and its biggest winner with 10 championships under his belt.
But Jackson said he will not decide on his future until June or July.
Repeating as champions would improve his prospects of staying, Jackson said.
“Oh sure, it really does. But it’s not a definite that I would continue even if we would be. If things didn’t go well and we didn’t win, that would obviously be something that would be, you know, you think maybe it’s time for someone else to look at this job and carry this team forward from there.
“That’s possibly not going to happen that way, but just winning it outright doesn’t mean it’s a natural to come back and coach this team. I just don’t see that as a natural thing. A lot of it has to do with the direction the league is going, the direction the ownership wants to go in. People are cutting costs all around the league, and coaches are obviously going to take a cut too, so they may not even want to hire me. They may want to save some money.”
When reporters asked Jackson if he would take a pay cut, he ended the session by saying, “Why would you?”
Longtime Jackson observers recognize the agenda he is setting. Indeed, we have all been here before, including:
• In 1998, when Jackson was coach of the Chicago Bulls, he engaged in a similar campaign with Bulls GM Jerry Krause, even as Jackson was driving the club to its sixth NBA title.
• In 2000, he conducted a smaller, more focused effort in dislodging then Lakers executive Jerry West from the franchise.
• In 2004, Jackson failed in a similar effort to get rid of star Kobe Bryant and was in fact fired by Jim and Jerry Buss.
Jackson, of course, was rehired by the team in 2005, and this time around he appears to have a much stronger relationship with Bryant.
Will Jackson be successful in reducing the role of Jim Buss and securing power for Jeanie and himself?
Lakers fans better hope the Buss family is smart enough not to escalate an internal power struggle for the team. That could quickly become a zero sum game.
As Krause, West and a long line of basketball experts have discovered, Jackson is central to the success of his teams, regardless of what conventional thinking suggests.
If Jim and Jerry Buss want my advice – and I’m pretty sure they don’t – they can save themselves a lot of grief and messy embarrassment if they’ll just sit back and chill, and let Phil and Jeanie take over.
Otherwise, it looks like Phil’s about to unleash another storm on the basketball world. Jerry and Jim Buss don’t want that. If they don’t believe me, they can just ask Jerry Krause.
“The Answer” might well have roosted near the top of this list if he had somehow managed to be a team player and a disciplined leader. Those qualities, however, were not in his portfolio. What he did have were quickness and fearlessness in abundance. He could break down virtually any defense and find an open shot when none seemed possible. As a defender he gathered steals in amazing bunches, although his size sometimes left him being exploited by taller opponents. His weakness was justifiably viewed as his attitude toward playing the team game, yet Iverson could also amaze with his passing displays. In the end, he remained a mystery, infinitely talented yet unable to compromise on so many of the team issues central to the game.
9. Paul Pierce
Pierce might have been overlooked on this list if his stupendous performance in the 2008 league championship series hadn’t revealed his remarkable abilities. He literally ran the Lakers’ defense into the ground and exposed Los Angeles during that series. It was the kind of performance that made observers stop and think about Pierce’s great effort on undermanned Boston teams throughout the decade. He had been forced to carry undermanned teams on his back, and when his chance came in the NBA Finals, Pierce took his place among the best. And the Lakers nor any other team in the league could do anything to stop him.
8. Steve Nash
He’s not blessed with the greatest athleticism, but he is athletic enough. Rather, it is his brilliant and rare court vision and passing ability that have allowed Nash to reign as a two-time Most Valuable Player in the NBA. He found the high gear of his game with the up-tempo Phoenix Suns, a team that pushed the pace at the expense of defense. If not for defensive questions, Nash might surely rate higher on this list, because he has the ability to turn mediocre teams into very good ones. He is simply one of the best open court players in the history of the game.
7. Dirk Nowitzki
Nowitzki is the big man with the perimeter skills of a guard and the rebounding abilities of a dedicated role player. He has become one of the toughest matchups in the NBA today and the primary reason that the Dallas Mavericks have remained in contention for the duration of the decade. Not only has he been consistently good, but he has continued to get better over the course of his career in Dallas. Versatility is one of his key functions as well, as he can play multiple frontcourt positions in a league where athleticism and specialty make that a true accomplishment. His passing isn’t bad either.
6. Dwyane Wade
Wade’s ability to get to the rim and his quickness and crossover dribble immediately branded him a star as soon as he entered the NBA. Naturally, he’s a powerful combo guard, able to play some at the point although he thrives at the wing. His natural leadership abilities and defensive competence help complete the package. He literally drove the Miami Heat to the 2006 title with the help of Shaquille O’Neal and an array of role players. His outside shot has made steady progress over his years as a pro. Much of his future is also yet to be decided as he attempts to find stronger supporting players to fit his leadership and drive.
5. Kevin Garnett
Garnett labored for years in frustration with the Minnesota Timberwolves (where he was named league Most Valuable Player) before his 2007 trade to the Boston Celtics. But it was in Boston where Garnett realized his championship possibilities. His size and strength and durability helped define him as a power forward, but nothing framed his persona more than his legendary intensity. His competitiveness drove the teams he played on and established his place as one of the game’s all-time greats. His characteristic weapon was the face-up jumper from the top of the key, but really Garnett could score from any spot of his choosing. And his defense intimidated even the best opponents.
4. LeBron James
James is the unproven upstart who has seen his teams thrive during the regular season only to fail in the playoffs. Clearly he has lacked the supporting players that other greats of the decade have employed to win their titles. But none of the other greats have survived the childhood difficulties that James faced as the single son of a drug- and alcohol-addicted mother. In some ways, James is a blend of Bryant and O’Neal – a physical specimen with the athleticism of a Michael Jordan. His best days seemingly lie ahead, depending on what supporting cast he can find.
3. Kobe Bryant
No player over the decade matched Bryant’s determination, effort and dedication. He was the supremely disciplined star in command of every phase of the game not just because of his talent but because of his labor to perfect every element. His talent thrilled crowds like no big man ever could. Bryant has long been viewed as the “second coming” of Michael Jordan, but one thing that the high-scoring, high-flying Bryant established over the course of winning four NBA titles during the decade – he is his own man. That, in itself, meant that he frustrated Phil Jackson and Tex Winter as Bryant matured into the game’s top player late in the decade.
2. Shaquille O’Neal
The Shaq fans see today is a mere shadow of his former self. In 2000, his size and strength terrorized the league. The undisciplined O’Neal finally found a coach he respected in Phil Jackson, and that brought the best focus of his career. O’Neal became more disciplined that year, although he still disliked setting screens or defending the pick and roll. The Lakers’ new triangle offense put O’Neal in position to do what he did best – score at point blank range. His longstanding feud with teammate Kobe Bryant began to wane and Jackson made sure Shaq got the ball. He led the league in scoring at 29.7 points. Shaquille O’Neal was at the height of his powers in the 2001 NBA Finals, where he averaged 33 points and almost 16 rebounds over five games. But there’s also the sense that his habits and bull-headedness meant that he wasted much of his immense talent.
1. Tim Duncan
Shaquille O’Neal teasingly nicknamed Tim Duncan “The Big Fundamental.” That brought more publicity than the naturally reserved Duncan cared for. However, the name was true. Strong and smart, Duncan presented a skill set and an intelligence that no big man in the NBA could match. His presence on the block demanded fast double-teams, but he also struck terror in opponents with his face-up bank shots. His consistency proved to be the perfect centerpiece for building a championship team. He was the one player admired by all the retired Legends from the NBA’s past. They loved how he played the game with the highest skill and kept his mouth shut. And true lovers of the game treasure his ability to pass the basketball.
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.
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.
The greatest NBA free agent of all time, LeBron James, is quietly making overtures to the Los Angeles Lakers.
It’s one of those questions that heats up late January for the NBA. Does Pau Gasol deserve to be selected by Western Conference coaches to fill an at-large spot on the All-Star roster?
Although the Los Angeles Lakers and Kobe Bryant have gotten off to a strong start this season despite early injuries, forward Lamar Odom says there’s no question they miss triangle guru Tex Winter, who still battles the effects of a stroke suffered last April.
We’ll begin this one with an ancient line from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
10. Allen Iverson
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.
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.