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.

Roland Lazenby is the author of ‘Jerry West, the life and legend of a basketball icon‘, just released by ESPN books.

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.

Always frank in his assessments, Kaman offered the opinion recently that Gasol shouldn’t be an All-Star because he really isn’t a center and he’s missed a lot of games.

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.

Gilbert Arenas

Yes, he’s been short-sighted, but he’s hardly a lone figure in the history of American basketball.

I suspect that the level of ostracizing he faces has much to do with his contract that is worth better than $100 million.

With that level of money, he should have been very, very careful. But in some ways it’s understandable that he made light of the issue after he was confronted with it. After all, that’s how the basketball world has traditionally treated the issues of guns and gambling.

Ever see the movie “White Men Can’t Jump”?

Over the years I’ve interviewed many of the game’s old timers and former legends. They’ve all joked about the issues in interviews I’ve done with them. That’s because gunplay and gambling are as old as peach baskets and balls with laces.

Truth be told, the problem is common. Years ago I had a gun shoved in my face during a pickup game gone wrong. Anybody who’s played on America’s public courts for any length of time has probably encountered similar experiences with guns.

From its earliest days in the YMCA gyms, basketball quickly became known for its emotional outbursts and ensuing fistfights. That’s why gyms often banned the playing of the sport in the early days. Take all the emotion of the sport and throw in a little hustling and it’s easy to see how people end up getting shot.

Even though gambling and guns are serious issues, that doesn’t mean that pro basketballers haven’t traditionally made light of them.

Take, for example, the strange tale of Reggie Harding, gun-toting character who inhabited the margins of the game.

REGGIE

The Chicago Bulls lost their first nine games in the fall of 1967, won one in Seattle, then lost another six. Desperate to shore up their weakness at center, the Bulls pulled in 6-11 Reggie Harding from the Detroit Pistons. One of the first players to move directly from high school to the pros, Harding had been suspended for the 1965-66 season. Sadly, he had been raised on Detroit’s mean streets and could never overcome his gangster background. (He would be shot to death in 1972.) He was known for finishing practice and leaving without showering, pausing only to towel off and spin the cylinder on his revolver. Once while playing in Detroit, Harding was said to have shot at teammate Terry Dischinger’s feet to make him “dance.”

One night Bulls roommate Flynn Robinson awakened in the dark, cut on the light and found Reggie pointing a gun at him. Legend has it that Harding robbed the same gas station three times in his own Detroit neighborhood. According to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the third time a masked Harding robbed the place, the attendant said,  “I know that’s you, Reggie.”

“No, man, it ain’t me,” Reg was said to have replied. “Shut up and give me the money!”

“I got a chance to get Reggie Harding,” the late Johnny “Red” Kerr once told me of his days as coach of the Bulls. “We needed a big center. I had heard about his pistol. Rumor had it that he carried it in his gym bag. . . He’d play one-on-one with Flynn Robinson. Flynn would beat him, and Reggie would say, ‘Get out of here Flynn before I pistol whip you.’ Everybody figured he might have it with him.

“When we were in the midst of that losing streak in 1967-68, we played the Lakers in Los Angeles,” Kerr recalled. “We needed a win in the worst way, and we had a one-point lead with just a few seconds left on the clock. The Lakers got the ball at half court, and I put Reggie in to guard Mel Counts, their big guy. I didn’t want them getting an alley-oop. Counts set up out near the free throw line, but Walt Hazzard, who was taking the ball out of bounds, threw the ball over the backboard and the buzzer sounded. I was jumping around and screaming because we had finally won a game. I looked up, and Reggie had decked Mel Counts. Counts got up and shot two free throws and beat us.”

During that West Coast road trip, Harding was called home for his mother’s funeral. For the next 10 days, the Bulls didn’t hear from him. Finally he returned, saying that he had been appointed executor of his mother’s estate and needed the extra time away. A few days later, the Bulls placed Reggie Harding on waivers. It seems the gun had only a little to do with it.

DEAL ‘EM UP

Card playing has been an element of basketball – and all other sports for that matter – from the very beginning. Players have long dealt ‘em up to even out the highs and lows of winning and losing on the court.

“Hot Rod” Hundley often tells tales of 1957-58, his first year with the Minneapolis Lakers.

“My rookie year we were in last place,” Hundley once told me. “By the end of the season we were 19-53. There was a lot of poker playing. Slick Leonard, Dick Garmaker, Corky Devlin and me, we were the four ringleaders that played a lot of cards.”

Hundley and Leonard had teamed up in training camp as a pair who liked to drink, smoke and run around all night. Coach George Mikan didn’t seek to stop them. He just wanted to join ‘em, Hundley recalled.

“Mikan missed his playing days. He wanted to run around with us, but we wouldn’t let him. We told him that having the coach along just wouldn’t be fun.”

Long before Hundley arrived, Lakers’ road trips were dominated by partying and marathon late-night poker games.

“There was a lot of gambling,” former Lakers coach and Hall of Famer John Kundla once told me.

“It was Mikan who gave Slick his nickname ‘cause he lost so much money to him,” Hundley recalled with a chuckle. “We took a lot of George’s money.”

The Lakers were not a good team, which allowed them to get Elgin Baylor in the 1958 draft. But soon the team’s owners feared that the hard-partying veterans would corrupt the brilliant rookie.

To make matters worse, Baylor was inducted in the army right before the season started, meaning he couldn’t be in training camp.

“He couldn’t come to the team, so we took the team to him to practice,” Hundley recalled. “That was kind of fun. Down in Texas. Elgin was in basic training at Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio. Elgin would play solider all day and then he would join us at night for these open gyms. There’d be a couple of thousand people watching us practice. At night after practice, we sampled the South Texas night life. When we got bored with that, we’d go down into Mexico. We stayed in a barracks, which we pretty soon trashed. The army brass got wind of our partying and poker playing and made us clean the place up. That meant we spent even more time down in Mexico sipping Mexican beer and partying with the senoritas.”

Despite the disaster of training camp, Baylor opened the season by scoring 52 against Detroit. A few nights later, on November 8, 1959, he rang up 64 points against the Celtics, breaking the league’s single-game record set a decade earlier by Jumpin’ Joe Fulks.

Soon fans were lining up to see this phenomenal young scoring machine wherever the Lakers played. But the atmosphere around the team remained a joke so the owners soon brought in former Laker great Jim Pollard to clean up the mess.

“One of my first moves was to stop the poker playing,” Pollard once told me. “Slick Leonard and Dick Garmaker were winning a lot of money from Elgin. I didn’t think it was good for the team’s best player to be losing that much. Elgin wasn’t that bad of a player, really. But Slick was a great poker player.”

Pollard, however, only coached the Lakers their last season in Minneapolis. The next year, they moved to Los Angeles, and Baylor became one of the game’s all time great card players in his own right with his own nickname – “Motormouth.”

If you ask just about any NBA old timers, they’ll tell you the card games between their battles on the court offered some of their best fun and best memories.

That’s why Lakers coach Phil Jackson spoke out against the idea of the NBA banning card playing on its teams. It has long played a part in building team chemistry – when it wasn’t playing a part in tearing down team chemistry.

As for the guns, they’ve now become a gnarly issue that has suddenly come to dog the game, and these days it’s no laughing matter, no matter how much you laugh about the good old days.

If you don’t believe that, just ask Gilbert Arenas.

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 Tommy Heinsohn, 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 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.

She’s even managed to take the standoffish and sometimes arrogant Jackson and transform him into an endearing figure, all accomplished with the use of short snippets of offbeat video on the team’s webpage.

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 Andrew Bynum, 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.

I recall that Allen Iverson had plenty of both in the late fall of 1996 as he made his way through his rookie year in the NBA.

When I interviewed him after just his second NBA game, played in Chicago against the Bulls, Iverson’s jewelry quickly grabbed my immediate attention. The necklace was a chainwork of gold with nice little diamonds set between each link. It was a long chain, reaching to his breastbone, where it was anchored by a gold and diamond crucifix.

“Wow,” I remember thinking. “Quite stunning.”

The bracelet was matching gold chain link and more sparkling stones. First he fiddled with it nervously on his right wrist while trying to answer reporters’ questions in the visitors’ locker room at Chicago’s United Center. Then he moved it to his left wrist, where he fixed the clasp and left it.

There might have been matching earrings, but I don’t remember. After all, it was an evening for jewelry, and my mind could only hold so many scintillating images.

Just a couple of hours earlier, the Bulls had gotten some gaudy accoutrements of their own, the rewards for their remarkably disciplined team play. The occasion was their first home game of the 1996-97 NBA season, which meant it was time for the members of the 1995-96 team to receive their championship rings. The Bulls’ jewelry came packaged in distinctive black boxes. A paperweight of gold, with an onyx setting, encrusted with 76 sweet little diamonds, one for each of the team’s record 72 wins that season, plus another four representing the franchise’s four NBA titles.

Each ring cost about $35,000.

The Bulls received them in a coronation ceremony that included taped flourishes of horns and a stroll by each player down a long red carpet out to the spotlight at center court. After that, Michael Jordan’s Bulls raised their fourth championship banner to the rafters, then proceeded to destroy Iverson’s Philadelphia ‘76ers. Destroyed them competitively. Mentally. Physically. Probably even spiritually.

Those Sixers featured Iverson and his talented young backcourt mate, Jerry Stackhouse, but they were through by the end of the third quarter, their team down by 30 points. They sat together on the floor, leaning against a press table, looking thoroughly befuddled and embarrassed. The Bulls, of course, had a way of doing that to people, particularly spirited rookies.

As early as his junior season in high school, Iverson was telling his coaches that he was good enough to take Michael Jordan. And that confidence wasn’t completely unwarranted. He had displayed his unbridled brilliance in two seasons at Georgetown and came to the NBA as the top pick in that spring’s draft. And Iverson had scored 30 points against the Milwaukee Bucks as the 76ers narrowly lost their league opener.

That had only given Philly’s young guards confidence that they could maybe outrun the elderly Bulls.

“They’re the world champions, but they’re gonna have to keep up,” Stackhouse had told me before the game. “We’re getting out.”

Things started out smoothly enough for Philadelphia. Iverson’s first shot was a silky three-pointer. But within minutes, Bulls forward Dennis Rodman had opened Iverson’s head and climbed right in. Rodman used sly comments and physical play to challenge Iverson.

Rather than ignore those comments, the 20-year-old point guard sought to turn the game into a contest of individual skills. His quickness, unbelievable as it was, was no match for the Bulls’ veteran team play.

Instead of the Sixers getting out and running, it was the Bulls who turned the game into a track meet as one Iverson penetration after another ended badly. Soon, Iverson was so distracted and distraught that Jordan felt the need to talk to him to calm him down.

“Allen got a little frustrated tonight,” Jordan said afterward. “I can’t say that I blame him. It’s a situation where he comes from a heck of a program at Georgetown that wins consistently. At this level, you have to learn to accept losing – not accept, but accept it in a way that’s a learning experience. You utilize it to make you better as a player.

“There are gonna be a lot of other players trying to get into your head, and if you let them into your head, you’re fighting a losing battle. You forget about the overall concept of what you mean to your team and what your team is trying to do.

“Once Dennis and some of the other players got into his head it became a game of individuality for him,” Jordan explained. “And that’s the thing he’s always gonna have to fight against. He’s an extremely talented player, and a very emotive player. So there’s a lot of envy out there, a lot of jealousy, because of what he’s gotten thus far. He’s got to learn to control those emotions.”

Matched against Chicago’s Ron Harper, Iverson had little trouble penetrating.

“He’s quick as hell,” Harper said. “I’ve never seen anyone that quick in my life. He went by me about three or four times. I was like, ‘Damn!’ I thought I could play defense.”

Yet Iverson’s penetration often left him making hasty interior passes to his teammates, most of which they fumbled, leading to turnovers and seemingly endless Bulls fastbreaks.

His coaches, Sixers head man Johnny Davis and assistant Maurice Cheeks, approached the aftermath with a grim resignation.

They had seen it coming.

Maurice Cheeks said: “He has great ability, and he just needs to learn how to play the game.”

Iverson himself agreed: “It’s timing, it ’s communication, everything,” he said, fumbling with the diamond bracelet.

Another keen observer was Bulls back-up guard Randy Brown: “Once they get established as a team and he becomes more of a team player, he’ll be a much better point guard. He’s young, he’s got a lot to learn. If he’s willing to learn it, he’s gonna be a great player.

“He’s playing a position where he’s got to get his teammates involved. If he’s not willing to do that, it’s gonna be a long process for him. But if he gets better at doing that, he’s gonna be a great point guard.”

As usual, though, the best advice and observations came from MJ.

“He’s got a lot of good basketball skills,” Jordan offered. “He’s gonna improve. Johnny Davis is giving him an opportunity to gain his confidence playing on this level. And I think that’s only gonna enhance his individual talent. But just like myself, at some point in time, he’s gonna have to learn how to blend in with the team. Certainly he’s got to make his team as good as possible and keep his teammates involved. I think he’s got unbelievable talent and quickness. He’s a little runt running around. A couple of times he could have gotten hurt, but he’s fearless. And that’s how we all are when we’re young.

“It was a frustrating night for them. Very frustrating. Believe me. I went through some of these nights, going against Boston and some of the better teams when I was coming up. You learn. You try to pick little motivational factors from games like this. It’s a lot of envy being on the other side, being the ones who are getting killed by 30. So it’s a motivational situation for them.

“They can look at it in a lot of different ways,” Jordan added, “but no matter how you look at it, it was a lesson. I mean basketball teaches you a lot of different things. If you’re willing to learn it, then you’re gonna get better. If you’re not, if you continue to fight it, then you’re gonna stay at the same level.”

Watching Iverson through his years in Philly, his stops in Denver, Detroit and now Memphis, you get the strong sense that 13 years later, through hundreds and hundreds of games and every kind of experience, the warrior who is AI has managed to make himself a very rich man, just as he has been able to score lots of points. Otherwise, he seems to have failed to grasp the lesson of the jewelry.

Those fundamentals of team play, the basic mind-set of the group, remain as elusive to him today as they were those very first nights in the league.

One of the game’s greatest talents just doesn’t get the idea of team. He never really has. Now in Memphis, Iverson has taken a leave of absence to deal with personal issues, following a stormy few weeks debating his role with the team.

When Iverson returns to the Grizzlies, his pro career will be down to the final act, if it isn’t already. Redemption is still possible for him, but for it to come, he’ll have to be blinded by the light.

I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen. But if you love basketball, there’s nothing you’d love better than seeing a supreme and fearless competitor like Iverson finally get the notion of team play. Some might say that an older player, especially a scorer like Iverson, can’t make such a transition. But Jerry West made huge changes in 1972, when new coach Bill Sharman asked West to back off of all the scoring he had done for a dozen years in the league as an off guard.

West became the Lakers true point guard for the first time in his career. Instead of scoring at a high pace, West took over the job of feeding the ball to his teammates (he would still average 25 points per game).

Iverson could gain much by agreeing to play something other than the dominant role he has insisted on throughout his career.

It would be good for him, good for the game, if he finally gave himself over to the idea of team. After years of ignoring the issue, it’s time for the Answer to realize that he must face up to the Question.

It was the 1996 pre-season, and my first inclination is to recall that Jordan then was at the height of his fame, except that his fame in those days seemed to know no heights or any other boundaries.

With his signal that the interview session was over, the path out of the locker room cleared just enough for His Airness to make an escape. The piggies parted, but in a flash, the gap closed. A boy, probably 12, with a brand new basketball and a black marker, stepped out of the shadows, too dumfounded to speak, mesmerized to be in Mike’s presence.

Mike gave him that “Yo, baby, whatcha need?” look.

The young fella just stood there, his mind gone so transparent you could read it.

“Here I am, standing next to god!!!” he was thinking, his eyes glazing over with a filmy sort of ecstasy. “It really is Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan!!! And I’m standing next to him. Out of the millions of people wanting to do this, it’s actually me. Me!!! Standing next to Michael!!!”

Mike furrowed his face and looked at the boy. “Do I get paid for this?” he said as he reached for the ball and marker. “Normally I get seven digits.”

Somehow the young fella managed to speak.

“I… I got five dollars,” he offered hopefully.

Mike smiled. “No problem,” he replied, trying to make it clear that he was just joking.

The marker, though, was nearly out of ink, and when Jordan stroked his signature across the face of the ball, it barely took, as if he were writing on air. Jordan frowned.

“Man,” he said, “you gave me this cheap pen.”

A mix of horror, panic and disbelief spread across the boy’s face. He quickly jammed his hand in his pocket to bring out a raft of pens for another try.

“I thought you were reaching for some money,” Jordan said, laughing.

Jordan, of course, could be excused for thinking that the young fan was digging for his cash. For years he had been on the receiving end of an immense transfer of wealth, as just about everyone on the planet made a donation to his surging bank account, as if the universe itself was his personal ATM. Back in the 1995-96 season alone, it was estimated that Jordan raked in better than $40 million in off-court endorsement income. But that’s small change compared to 1996-97, when the numbers were buggin’, what with Mike introducing his new cologne line (it sold a jaw-dropping 1.5 million bottles the first two months on the market) and his acting gig in Space Jam, which set theater ticket sales records on its opening weekend. But that’s why they called him Money, wasn’t it? Twelve-year-olds were conditioned to reach in their pockets and offer him their allowance.

Anyway, his off-court sum that year became a tidy match to the $30 million he received under a one-year contract extension for playing with the Bulls. He would sign another monster one-year deal the following season which convinced NBA ownership that it needed to put the brakes on things and adopt a salary structure to keep mega deals from soaring off into even Rarer Air.

For all the money he made for himself, Jordan’s take was a fraction of the treasure he created for the National Basketball Association itself (not to mention what he did for the University of North Carolina Tar Heel brand). His entry into the league in 1984 ignited the NBA’s annual revenues to balloon tenfold, from under $150 million that year to an astounding $2 billion or more per season by the mid 1990s.

There were other reasons for the NBA’s growth, but by and large it was Mike.

Mike the money magnet.

Mike in the air, tongue out. Slammin’. Makin’ rims rattle and registers ring.

People would have paid to be like Mike, if they only could.

Instead, they paid to see him, to be near him, to wear his shoes, his jersey, to drink his Gatorade, gobble his french fries at Mickey D’s, to buy the briefs, to whack the golf balls, to read his books and enshrine his trading cards.

He even figured a way to bottle his popularity and sell it. That would be the cologne, the ultimate jock-sniffer acquisition.

This is what they call a cultural icon? It was more like madness. Mike Madness. And it was global. The NBA had long been a decidedly obscure enterprise, but Jordan’s great passion and competence made people everywhere care about it. In the 1990s, a Jordan tour business flourished, as Japanese tourists came by the thousands to be bused by MJ’s home in the Chicago suburbs, then taken to the United Center to stand in awe in front of his statue there.

In China, they called him something that sounded like Chow Dan.

“He is like a gift from God to the basketball game,” Huang Gang, a hoopster from Beijing, told reporters at the time. “We try to imitate his ground moves. But you can’t copy him in the air. He is unique.”

Indeed, dude. For more than almost two full decades, Jordan was pro basketball’s master poet while the rest of the players were mere stenographers. He was the champ and everybody else just chumps.

His other contemporaries didn’t seem to mind this too much at first because Jordan’s popularity made millionaires out of them all, hundreds of very average NBA jocks, including a couple of dozen college kids every year who signed big contracts guaranteeing them plenty of cash before they proved they could even play in the league, much less drive a team to championships.

Mike, in the meantime, tried to say on occasion that he didn’t really play for the money. But that wasn’t true. Money was just one of his ways of keeping score, and Jordan kept score on everything because that was what the most competitive guy in the history of games was supposed to do. That’s why he lorded over not just basketball but the entire sports world year after year, winning scoring title after scoring title and carrying his Bulls to six NBA championships.

When I think of Jordan, I like to remember that pre-season in 1996. He had just carried his Bulls to a 72-win season. He was about to turn 34 and could have easily packed it in and ended all the maniacally hard work. But he wasn’t done with his greatness, even though others around the league were smelling opportunity.

“I’m going to send Mike home this year,” Shaquille O’Neal had promised me that pre-season, a threat that would ring as empty as all the others.

Told of O’Neal’s boast, Jordan smiled and quipped that if Shaq planned on doing that he better practice his free throws.

O’Neal, of course, was like a lot of other NBA stars that year. They had had enough of Jordan’s domination and the humiliation. They wanted it to end.

Jordan knew it.

He felt it in his 34-year-old knees.

But he had a wellspring of competitiveness, deep as a Saudi sheik’s oil reserves, vast as the space between Dennis Rodman’s ears.

Yes, Jordan had already done it all by the end of the 1996 season, but his effort and success over the next two campaigns would simply astound.

He served notice in January 1997 with a 51-point game against the New York Knicks and his league-leading 30.9 points per game scoring average. There have been a couple of dozen people fortunate enough to score more than 50 points in an NBA game. Wilt Chamberlain, in fact, accomplished that feat 122 times. But no one had accomplished the feat as late in life as Jordan. Most players hit 50 points as young superstars. Wilt’s magnificent run of big games ended when he was 32.

While he had begun to show his age, Jordan had shown no signs whatsoever of backing down. He still wanted to rule.

“I want to be consistent every night,” he explained as the 1996-97 season opened. “I want to step on the court and accept every challenge.”

Being consistent sounded nice, but it was a gigantic challenge when you’re the king of the NBA hill, because it meant fighting through the physical defenses night after night in an age when the NBA allowed very physical defense; it meant overcoming the daily pain and the nagging injuries that accompany age. Yet even there, Jordan forged an edge.

“Between games, Jordan can bounce back from injuries that would sideline other players for weeks,” Bulls trainer Chip Schaefer pointed out. “He has a remarkable body.”

And a remarkable will. Nobody worked harder at the fundamentals of the game; nobody worked harder at conditioning. Not only the greatest player, he was the greatest practice player. The stories of his intensity in Bulls scrimmages were legendary.

“At my age, I have to work harder,” Jordan explained. “I can’t afford to cut corners.”

He never did.

And so, now, as he prepares to enter the Hall of Fame in the grandest introduction ever, I feel mostly sadness. This is it, the final reality is settling in.

I interviewed him last year during the pre-draft camp in Orlando as he watched a crop of college players try to impress NBA executives, and I remember feeling sad after that talk too and thinking he was born to compete, not to sit around bored, studying lesser beings.

In the end, I’m just like that 12-year-old kid with the bad marker. I don’t want to see him writing on air. It’s very hard for me to think of Michael Jordan as a relic.

I just wish he could play forever.

Kobe Bryant

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

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.”

That special something has just recently clicked with the Lakers after years of work. As Walton explained, the players themselves realized it in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals when they soared to a different level and destroyed the Denver Nuggets.

And then came Game 1 of the league championship series against the Orlando Magic Thursday night, and the same great tide lifted the Lakers again and carried them off to that special place. Yes, the “great tide” is the play of Kobe Bryant, who scored 40 points against Orlando. But it’s also much more than that. It’s how he and the Lakers did it.

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.”

Even though Bryant took 34 shots and scored 40 points in Game 1 against the Magic, there wasn’t a sense among his teammates that he had attempted to go it alone. Bryant was simply reading and taking what the Magic defense was giving.

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.”