HoopsHype.com NBA Blogs - Roland Lazenby

Jerry West has seen it.

So has Tex Winter.

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.

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What to do with Lamar Odom?

That’s the nagging question that’s been hanging in the air for the Los Angeles Lakers for a while now, ever since 2004 really, when the team cut loose center Shaquille O’Neal and coach Phil Jackson and the slow-down version of the triangle offense that had won them three championships.

Lakers owner Jerry Buss admitted then that he really didn’t like the triangle.

Buss wanted to return to the glory days of yore, to Showtime, when he had the majestic 6-9 Magic Johnson snaring a rebound on the defensive glass, then running a fastbreak that left opponents dizzy.

With Jackson’s firing, the team brought in Rudy Tomjanovich and began rebuilding the roster into a running team. The 6-9 Odom with the silky smooth open-court skills was a key acquisition for constructing the new-and-improved, up-tempo Lakers. Like the Magic of Showtime, Odom had the size to secure the defensive rebound and the ballhandling skills to power out on the fastbreak. Dude was born to run and feed the ball to teammates filling the lanes.

Only problem was, Buss’s dream soon derailed. First, the NBA of the new century is not the NBA of the 1980s. Jump-starting the pure running game proved oh so hard to do. Rudy T stepped down during a disastrous 2005 season, and that summer the Lakers rehired Jackson and his triangle approach.

All of a sudden, the elegant Odom was marooned. Like a racehorse hitched to a hay wagon.

With the behemoth Shaq gone, Jackson no longer insisted on running the triangle offense at a slug’s pace. Triangle guru Tex Winter had long been urging Jackson to run more, even with Shaq still around.

Odom gave the Lakers an opportunity to go, and to Jackson’s credit, he turned the team loose a bit and found some ways to take advantage of Odom’s gifts.

Still, the triangle features much half-court action, and the Lakers often found themselves slowed in the halfcourt, trying to move through the triangle options.

Lord knows that Odom has tried to get it. He’s always shown the team-first attitude. He’s a lovely, warm, genuine person. The Lakers adore him. But he has never been a good fit for the triangle. His hesitation in it feeds his inconsistency, Tex Winter has fussed over the past three seasons.

At first, Jackson likened Odom to Scottie Pippen, the versatile forward who ran the offense and set the table for Michael Jordan when Jackson coached the Chicago Bulls to six championships.

Alas, we knew Scottie Pippen, and Odom is no Pippen.

The Lakers front office has hemmed and hawed and kicked the tires, thinking about trading Odom several times over the years. But every time they thought about trading him they apparently got visions of what would happen if Odom fell into the hands of an evil genius such as Dr. Mike D’Antoni, once of the Phoenix Suns and now of the New York Knicks.

Basketball hell is giving up a talented player who then becomes the secret ingredient to the success of one of your sworn enemies.

Problem is, Odom’s such a talented, intriguing player that he presents a challenge for Jackson on how to use him. If the coaching staff could only harness that talent. …

The best answer the Lakers coaches could come up with was to move him to power forward, where he could rebound, defend and benefit from mismatches with slower opponents. That worked to a degree, but it left several things unresolved.

First, there was the open-court element of Odom’s talent just going to waste. That’s the kind of thing that keeps coaches awake at night.

Then there were the obvious things exposed in last year’s NBA championship series against the Celtics. Caught in the frontcourt playing in the triangle offense, Odom was often pretty damn good. But there were also numerous times he presented the figure of an unsure, inconsistent player.

The coaching staff was able to rationalize such inefficiency so long as the Lakers were winning and moving through the playoffs. But in the championship series, Los Angeles became a team exposed for its lack of mental toughness and inconsistency – and Odom became something of a poster child for those issues.

Plus the Lakers now face another head-scratcher. Center Andrew Bynum returns from injury this season, which moves Pau Gasol back to power forward. The Lakers hope to run a Twin Towers approach with the two 7-footers, although Winter has his doubts it’ll work in the “Small Is Beautiful” NBA of 2008.

Gasol at power forward would mean moving Odom to small forward, or so it seemed. (Actually, Odom remains an insurance policy. If the Twin Towers doesn’t work, he returns to power forward).

But as every single person in the Western World has learned by now, Jackson opened training camp this year by suggesting that Odom perhaps come off the bench. He made this announcement, of course, without discussing the issue at length with Odom himself.

Now, if you’ve ever played for Jackson, or played on a team that has gone up against Jackson, the last thing you want to do is trigger one of his mind games.

Unfortunately, it’s what Phil does best.

“Phil is the master of mind games,” Jordan said back in 1996 of the master manipulation that Jackson practiced.

Later, Jordan watched Jackson coach the Lakers and he declared, “He’s still the master of mind games, only better. He challenges you mentally. That’s his strong point.”

These mind games come in such variety that many times the people around Jackson proceed through the game without even being aware that they are participating, that he has engaged them in it and manipulated them. (He is magnificent at manipulating the media; reporters often seem least aware of his skill, perhaps because they’re easy suckers for the ego candy he feeds them).

His players are usually a bit smarter than reporters, so they have at least a dim awareness.

“There’s meanings in everything and why things are done not everyone always knows,” Bill Wennington, who played for Jackson in Chicago, explained. “Phil is a really deep thinker, and everything he says seems to have a lot of thought put into it. Most of the things he says have at least two meanings, and at times you have to figure out which one he means. But that’s part of Phil. He wants you to think; he wants you to figure out what’s going on. He doesn’t want you to do things just by rote, and he uses that term a lot. He wants you to think and know what’s going on and why you’re doing things.”

In the process of thinking about what Jackson has said to them, players sometimes discover that there was even a third or fourth intended meaning, Wennington said.

“At times you think back and you find a third or fourth meaning that you maybe didn’t see it right away. He knows how to push buttons and get guys going and get them to achieve goals that maybe other people can’t get.”

Odom, having played for Jackson for three seasons, is fully aware of his mind games. That didn’t stop the forward from complaining openly and vehemently about the idea of coming off the bench.

Perhaps Odom trumped Jackson by responding vociferously to the coach’s trial balloon.

After all, Jackson abruptly changed tactics. Now, it seems, the Lakers are ready to try Odom handling the ball and playing some point guard, or point forward, with veteran Derek Fisher moving to off guard and Kobe Bryant moving to small forward.

Just maybe, though, as Bill Wennington would allege, this is what Jackson wanted all along.

Some veteran Lakers observers might fuss that Odom can’t play point guard for the team because he still doesn’t know the triangle well enough.

Then again, Fisher has always been able to get the Lakers into their half-court offense. He knows the triangle well. If he’s there at 2 guard, he can easily take over in those half-court situations. And maybe, like Ron Harper did in Chicago, Odom will finally get the hang of the triangle.

And Bryant at the small forward? That’s where the Lakers like to play him on offense anyway.

Maybe Jackson had wanted to move Odom from power forward all along, so he simply challenged Odom’s status as a starter. Suddenly Odom was so worried about being a starter – he has been a starter his entire basketball life – that he didn’t bother anymore about being a power forward.

Maybe that’s what Jackson wanted all along, that, as usual, he was playing chess a couple of moves ahead of everybody else.

Fact is, with Jackson, you never really know. It’s only after he’s gotten his way that you’re left to figure out what really happened.

Across the continent in Charlotte, where he sits these days as an owner/operator of the Bobcats while keeping an interested eye on Jackson and the Lakers, Jordan is surely smiling.

He knows Phil usually manages to get what he wants.

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