Lakernoise by Roland Lazenby

Tex On Kobe Vs. MJ

2007-03-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

Well before Air Jordan had even finished playing, folks began a feverish hunt for Heir Jordan, as if there could ever be another one.
But that’s what everyone — team owners, fans, reporters, publicists, advertising and broadcasting executives, even players and coaches — wanted, someone to thrill them in the way that Jordan had.
Phil Jackson and his assistant coaches were no different.
Even before they truly settled in their offices in Los Angeles in 1999, they began the comparisons.
MJ vs. the Kobester.
After all, the public debate had started as early as 1997 and ’98 when the teen-aged Bryant was breaking on the NBA scene and gunning to take on the master. Like every hot-handed young whippersnapper, he elicited comparisons to the professional game’s standard, the incomparable Jordan.
After all, that question had raged for years unanswered, who is the next Jordan?
The klieg lights had blinded one young candidate after another in the 1990s. USC’s Harold Miner, the “Baby Jordan.” Ron Harper before his knee injury. Grant Hill. Vince Carter.
It enraged some fans that the audacious Mr. Bryant seemed to openly court such comparison. He would deny it, of course, but this only seemed to fuel their rage.
They cursed and shook their heads when his youthful affectations seemed intentionally Jordanesque.
Today, a lot of fans consider the debate beneath themselves, because it’s “so nineties.”
Yeah, right.
I wrote a little column last week about how Bryant has finally earned the kind of respect from Phil Jackson that the coach once accorded Jordan.
Henry Abbott’s megafun ESPN blog, True Hoop, linked to the column and it elicited a staggering 258 (and counting) comments from jacked-up readers and posters in a raging debate over the merits of MJ or Kobe. Those figures don’t include the thousands of readers quietly seething over the issue, readers who simply don’t vent in a blog.
Some readers spew that it’s the stupid media causing all this, that it’s trite to compare the two, that there is no comparison.
Poppycock.
Such debates are the reason we follow sports. They’re just an extension of the competition. In fact, they’re the essence of NBA lore.
Russell vs. Wilt.
West vs. Oscar.
Bird vs. Magic.
Hakeem vs. Patrick.
Mention any one of those and it sets fans to woofing.
Even 85-year-old Tex Winter likes to jump in the fray.
A few years back, the Lakers coaching staff concluded Bryant and Jordan were much alike, almost eerie, in fact, when it came to the alpha male qualities of their competitive natures.
Kobe and Michael were ruthless when it came to winning, everyone agreed.
And their skills were similar.
Except Michael’s hands were larger.
The major difference between the two came with college experience. Jordan had played in a basketball system for Dean Smith at North Carolina, thus he was better prepared to play within a team concept.
Bryant had come into the league directly from high school with stars in his eyes.
This week I again raised the issue with Tex Winter, who spent years coaching each man.
“I tend to think how very much they’re alike,” he replied. “They both display tremendous reaction, quickness and jumping ability. Both have a good shooting touch. Some people say Kobe is a better shooter, but Michael really developed as a shooter as he went along. I don’t know if Kobe is a better shooter than Michael was at his best.”
Observers like to point out that Jordan played on a Chicago Bulls team with no great center, but Winter always countered that Jordan was a great post-up player and in essence was the premier post weapon of his time.
Bryant himself came into the NBA with amazingly good post skills, but there was never room for him to play in the post with Shaquille O’Neal occupying the lane during their years together with the Lakers.
In a lot of ways, Bryant is Jordan’s equal as a post player, Winter said, except for one critical element. “What’s happened to Kobe and his post play — and he is a great post player — is that he’s catching the ball just out of the lane and the defenders are forcing him out toward the wing.
“It’s hard for him to get a deep post position,” Winter explained. “Michael had a knack for holding his ground a little better than Kobe. Those strong defenders force Kobe out of there. When that happens, we need to go away from Kobe, instead of challenging the defense there. You don’t want him to start on the post and end up out on the wing.”
The situation leads some to wonder if Bryant’s difficulties in the post don’t lead him sometimes to an over-reliance on the 3-pointer.
“I like to see him take 3s when he’s got ‘em,” Winter said. “He’s an excellent 3-point shooter. I like to see him take them when the floor is spaced and the defense is not closing out fast enough. If the ball is moved quickly, then he has a chance at a good look. Plus defenders foul him on the close-out and he gets a chance at a four-point play. He would get more four-point plays if officials called it when defenders fouled him on the 3.”
Bryant also gets a lot of excellent looks when he charges up in transition and the defense is slow to react to him, Winter said. “He’ll bring the ball up. If they back up on him, he’ll move right to that 3-point line and hit it.”
Bryant has always faced questions about the quality and quantity of his shots.
“We study the tapes,” Winter said of Bryant’s recent scoring binge. “Actually, for the most part, he’s not forcing up a lot of bad shots. When he gets hot, he does take shots that would be questionable for other players. But a lot of the shots he’s taken go in.”
What constitutes a forced shot for most players is not necessarily a bad shot for Bryant, Winter explained. “He’ll take shots that not many other players are going to be able to hit, and he hits them.”
Long known as the innovator and developer of the triangle offense, Winter acknowledges that of recent Bryant has done much of his scoring while “not really running the triangle sequence options” that define the offense.
“But he is running out of the triangle format and making use of the offense’s spacing and ball movement,” Winter offered.
When the team does run the offense, Bryant finds most of his success at small forward, which allows him to work “behind the defense,” as Winter has often explained. “He gets the ball in position where he’s isolated and can attack the basket a little better. He gets more isolation that way. The triangle creates opportunity for him and he knows that.”
Even with all of Bryant’s offensive success, Winter said the team needs to keep the ball moving, that Bryant’s teammates still defer to him too much.
The main message that Winter, a Lakers consultant, would like to get across to Bryant is that the problem is not his offense.
“I’d like to see him play better defense,” Winter said, adding that he had addressed the issue recently with Bryant but didn’t come away with the idea that Bryant was intent on changing his approach.
“You know Kobe,” Winter said with a chuckle. “He has his game plan. I think he heard me. But he feels there’s a certain way he’s got to play the game. But it doesn’t involve a lot of basically sound defense.”
Because the Lakers need so much of his effort at the offensive end, Bryant has adopted a save-energy plan on the defensive end, Winter said. “He’s basically playing a lot of one-man zone. He’s doing a lot of switching, zoning up, trying to come up with the interception.
“The way Kobe plays defensively affects the team,” Winter added. “Anybody that doesn’t play consistently good defense hurts the team. That’s not only Kobe. Our other guards tend to gamble and get beat. Another problem is that the screen and roll is not played correctly.”

RECENT COLUMNS

Winter offered some opinions on my recent columns.
Last week I wrote in “Blood In The Water” that Phil Jackson had begun displaying the kind of respect for Bryant that he once offered only to Jordan.
Winter agreed with that assessment: “I think Phil is appreciative of what Kobe is and what he can do for a team. He’s given him a lot more green light recently than he would ordinarily.”
Asked if Bryant now has the same kind of green light that Jordan once enjoyed, Winter replied: “Pretty much.”
Another of my recent columns said Bryant’s four-game streak of 50-point games was more impressive than Wilt Chamberlain’s seven-game streak in 1961-62. Winter again agreed: “It is more impressive. Wilt’s streak was more about gimmickry that season. Kobe’s gotten these points against tough competition (Winter thinks just about all NBA team offer superior competition in this age, including the Memphis Grizzlies), which is something else Wilt didn’t face, not consistently.”
Other than Bill Russell there weren’t many quality big men in an NBA that featured fewer than a dozen teams, Winter offered. “He just out-manned most of the centers in those days.
“Kobe is not a 7-foot-1 giant. He’s a normal-sized 2 or 3 man. For him to go off on the kind of scoring tear that he did is remarkable. It was necessary for this team to win five straight games. Without it, I doubt seriously if we could have won.”
Winter, of course, felt compelled to mention that his Kansas State team in 1958 ended Chamberlain’s season early at the University of Kansas. Winter’s State team also beat Chamberlain and the Jayhawks on their own floor.
“When Kansas got Wilt as a recruit, everyone just assumed they’d win three straight championships,” he recalled.
After losing to UNC in triple overtime in the 1957 NCAA championship game as a sophomore, Wilt’s team lost to Winter’s team in the playoffs his junior year. Frustrated, Chamberlain left college ball to tour with the Harlem Globetrotters during his senior season and joined the NBA a year later, in 1960.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, a comprehensive oral history of the Lakers. Mindgames, Lazenby’s biography of Phil Jackson, has just been released by the University of Nebraska’s Bison Books in a new special edition.

Kobe's Streak Better Than Wilt's?

2007-03-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

Kobe Bryant's streak has ended in Los Angeles, where just about everyone agrees it was time. Bryant's scoring binge served to refire the Lakers' slumping season, but once it served that purpose it quickly became a distortion of competitive basketball.
And it will remain that way — unless or until the Lakers need another similar explosion.
Some people like to point out that Wilt Chamberlain's record of seven straight 50-point games is better than Bryant's four-game streak of 50-point games.
Those people, however, don't know about Eddie Gottlieb, the old owner/manager/coach of the Philadelphia Warriors.
A legend in Philadelphia basketball, Gottlieb is a pioneer of pro basketball.
He is also remembered as one of the game's biggest tightwads.
Truth is, he couldn't have been one without being the other.
He was among the original owners and promoters when the Basketball Associaton of American formed after World War II. The BAA was the early version of the NBA.
Gottlieb had to make sure that his Warriors drew well because pro basketball teams died a quick death in those days.
As the late Paul Seymour once explained to me, Gottlieb knew that to sell tickets he had to have a superstar, somebody who could score an obscene amount of points.
In the 1940s, this somebody became Jumpin' Joe Fulks, a Kentucky hillbilly with one of the game's first jump shots.
In the league's first season, during the days of excruciatingly slow basketball, Fulks led the league in scoring at a whopping 23.6 points per game, huge numbers in those early years when the best shooters were lucky to hit 30 percent of their shots.
"Gottlieb always liked a big scorer," Seymour told me in a 1990 interview. "He figured that's what he had to have to draw the people."
So Gottlieb left Fulks in the game and told him to fire at will. Never mind that the game was a blow-out, the Warriors' job was to get the ball to Fulks and let him blast. He played nearly every minute of every game, because Gottlieb was sure that a high scoring average sold tickets.
In those days, pro basketball was only about survival. You had to sell enough tickets to last the season.
In 1959-60, Gottlieb finally got his hands on the ultimate "somebody," Wilt Chamberlain. He played heavy minutes as a rookie and averaged 37.6 points per game.
But that first year was nothing compared with 1961-62, when he averaged an all-time best 50.4 points a game.
Gottlieb made sure that Chamberlain played virtually every minute of the season, including all the blowouts. Of the 3,890 minutes the Warriors played during the regular season, Chamberlain spent just eight minutes on the bench the entire year.
As his average reveals, he took 3,159 shots, nearly one for every minute he played, and rang up a stunning 4,029 points.
Bryant's critics complain bitterly if he takes 36 shots over the course of a contested game.
Wilt, on the other hand, became the NBA's freak show.
Like Bryant, he seemed to have a hard time earning the love of the fans.
Nobody loves Goliath, remarked Franklin Mieuli, who bought the Warriors and moved them to San Fransciso. "Chamberlain is not an easy man to love. I don't mean that I personally dislike him. He's a good friend of mine. But the fans in San Francisco never learned to love him. I guess most fans are for the little man and the underdog, ,and Wilt is neither. He's easy to hate, and we were the best draw on the road when people came to see him lose."
Bryant, of course, has similar issues for different reasons. But which scoring streak came closer to happening in a competitive context?
Probably Bryant's recent streak fits that better.
On the other hand, does it matter?
If you're interested in the maximum limits of human performance, yes, it does.
But if you're interested in winning team basketball, well, it's championships won that cements the reputation of a great player.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, a comprehensive oral history of The Lakers. He also has written Mindgames, a biography of Phil Jackson recently released in a special paperback edition by the University of Nebraska's Bison Books imprint.

Blood In The Water

2007-03-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

I remember chatting with Kobe Bryant on the phone years ago. He was a lost 20-year-old kid, in his third year with the Lakers, just becoming aware that Shaquille O’Neal was stepping on his neck with an inconceivable hatred.
We were in Houston. I was writing a book called Mad Game, The NBA Education of Kobe Bryant.
There was no question that Bryant had huge blind spots about himself and his relationships with older teammates. What 20-year-old doesn’t have blind spots? Bryant, though, had huge ambition, thus huge blind spots. He didn’t see that his ambition itself, his over-the-top work ethic, immensely irritated the veterans around him.
Anyway, we were chatting on the phone before the Lakers played the Rockets that night. Bryant had awakened from a good nap and was willing to continue our running conversation about his unusual life.
He had scored his first 50-point game in January 1996 as a senior leading his Lower Merion, Penn., high school team to a 95-64 win over Marple Newtown.
As we talked, he recalled the absolute exhilaration, the complete sense of domination, that scoring 50 points brought him.
That night in high school had helped him articulate the goal in his basketball life. “I just want to be the man,” he told me. “I just want to dominate.”
It wasn’t idle boasting by some punked-out kid. Bryant was earnestly expressing his destiny.
Scoring 50 points was a feeling that he wanted to experience again and again. He was sure he could do it in the NBA if he could only get people to understand. His frustration was that no one saw what he saw. He knew he could do it. Knew he could find a way, if someone would just let him. He didn’t know how that would happen.
“I just want to be the man,” he repeated.
It wasn’t a statement he made around his teammates and coaches. He didn’t have to. His every action spoke it. Every little thing he did declared “I’m on my way to greatness.”
Every little thing he did was a match that torched the anger of the people around him.
As a response, nearly everyone he encountered in the NBA sought to harness his game. Even as a young player he could produce 26-point halves, but it was as if no one wanted to see them. Instead of seeing them as things of beauty, his coaches and teammates saw his scoring outbursts as unbridled acts of vanity.
They sought to bridle him.
“I will not let them change me,” he told me. “I will find a way. I don’t know how, but I will find a way.”
Over the years, Bryant has endured much pain trying to establish that destiny.
His ambition has been blamed for wrecking a Lakers dynasty. He has battled himself, his teammates, his coaches, the game itself. He has done so fearlessly, relentlessly, with little sign of regret or doubt, only the dogged pursuit of his vision of what he is supposed to be.
There was no question that Bryant could on any given night be blinded by his own brilliance, just as his teammates could be mesmerized by it.
Soon many fans came to equate his every action with selfishness, so that no matter what he did, or how brilliantly he did it, his accomplishments were met with derision.
The realization of this first drove Bryant to despair; then it drove him to compromise.
I like to hammer Phil Jackson in this column, almost as much as I like to extol the virtues of Tex Winter. Both men deserve much credit for their work with Bryant. Winter guided and nurtured him through the harsh phases of his career.
And after being Bryant’s uncommunicative enemy for several seasons, Jackson has become his ally, the man responsible for guiding him toward a team mind-set.
Often Jackson and Winter have differed in their opinions on how to handle Bryant. Now, though, they seem to agree that the Lakers absolutely need Bryant and the full firepower of his arsenal to push the team out of its doldrums and back on track toward the playoffs.
As a result, Bryant is now realizing his vision of 50 point games, of dominating, of “being the man.”
After Bryant scored 60 in a road win over the Memphis Grizzlies recently, Jackson told reporters, “At one point, we got the offensive rebound and (had) a whole new 24-second (shot clock) left. Lamar (Odom) gave the ball right back to him and Kobe went right back at them. He just smells blood in the water and he’s going to go after you.”
I interviewed Jackson many times during his years as coach of the Chicago Bulls. The “blood in the water” quote was the sort of commentary he frequently offered about the incomparable Michael Jordan.
In Bryant’s career with the Lakers, I can’t recall Jackson offering a truly Jordanesque quote about Bryant. Oh, Jackson has had plenty of nice things to say, some of them genuine.
But I perceive this quote as different. Kobe Bryant has finally achieved the status he has sought so long.
He finally has neared the level of respect, even reverence, that Jackson accorded Jordan.
It has taken him a long time to earn that status. Fans still withhold from him the respect they gave to Jordan, the sense that Jordan was bullet-proof, that he could do no wrong in their eyes.
Because of the criminal allegations in his past, because of the perception of his selfishness, Bryant may never be accorded that level of respect by the fans.
But there’s no question this is a new day. Bryant has arrived at his moment, able to use his full arsenal truly for the first time. His three big scoring games in a row all resulted in Lakers wins. He is the man at last, the dominance he sought in his youthful vision.
There’s only a sense, that as the team charges down the schedule toward the playoffs, there are more big performances to come, each of them to be prized the way Phil Jackson once prized Jordan’s every move.
As the Rolling Stones would say, Let It Bleed.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, a comprehensive oral history of the Lakers. His biography of Phil Jackson, Mindgames, was recently released by the University of Nebraska’s Bison Books in a special paperback edition.

Mystery, Irony, All That Good Stuff

2007-03-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

You just never know what to expect from Kobe Bryant. That’s both a charming and a frustrating element for fans of the Los Angeles Lakers.
Ditto for the team’s coaches.
Bryant’s unpredictability has often left triangle offense guru Tex Winter fussing about his “impetuousness.”
Head coach Phil Jackson figured that Bryant’s nature would wreck his team headed into the 2001 playoffs. The coach was so sure of it, in fact, he attempted to have Bryant traded and even joked about it on national TV. But a stunningly mature Bryant came back from injury that year and played nearly perfect basketball in sending the Lakers on a blistering championship run.
In 2006, he wowed the NBA with an 81-point game but later befuddled Lakers fans with a strangely quiet second half as Los Angeles lost to Phoenix in Game 7 of their first-round playoff battle.
This season, when Lakers forward Lamar Odom went out with a knee injury, many observers expected Bryant to veer off on one scoring binge after another. Instead he sat back and smiled while doling out assists and guiding his young teammates to a series of surprising victories. Unfortunately, those injuries continued to mount for the Lakers and their good start to the season soon melted into frustration. Even then, Bryant offered a restrained approach, until finally his frustration boiled over in recent games against Portland and Minnesota.
His scoring outburst of 65 and 50 points was just what the team needed to leave behind a seven-game losing streak.
Now, with a promising season dangerously close to slipping away, both Jackson and Winter have given their approval to Bryant unleashing his full scoring power.
“We need him,” Winter said recently. “Let’s hope he can turn it on like he did a couple of years ago when he ran off that string of 40 point games.”
Both Jackson and Winter have found themselves in these circumstances before — having to rely on the superhuman abilities of one superstar. They did it year in and year out with the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan.
Winter used to watch Jordan on game nights and marvel. Jordan was the biggest mystery he ever coached, Winter would confide. “On many nights, Michael was a mystery, even to himself.”
Asked recently if Bryant’s mystery had become as big as Jordan’s, Winter scoffed and replied, “Oh, heaven’s yes. Kobe is much more of a mystery than Michael. So many nights you don’t know how he’s going to respond to events.”
Asked about Winter’s statement, Bryant replied with a smile, “Considering the company, I’ll take that as a compliment. That’s good company to keep (with Jordan).”
However, like many of Winter’s statements, this one was neither compliment or criticism, just observation.
Bryant’s critics are quick to point out that his mystery has a dark side. What really happened in Colorado in 2003, many have asked. Or how about his spate of suspensions this season for blows delivered to opposing defenders as Bryant has tried to draw fouls and get to the line?
Those closest to Bryant scoff at such questions. They draw their fascination from his absolute dedication and his unique approach to the game.
“It’s hard to know what Kobe is thinking, particularly in regards to basketball,” Winter explained. “He’s a very quick learner. He picks up things and he knows how to do things right. He knows the offense better than anyone. Because he is astute he spends a lot of time directing his teammates.
“Still a lot of times he goes off on tangents,” Winter said, echoing a complaint he has made over the years. “He’s impetuous. That’s one of the mysteries about him. Sometimes the way he likes to play is a mystery. He’s pretty aggressive in whatever he does. If he elects to not take shots, then he spends time getting the ball to his teammates.
“Or, if he elects to ignore his teammates and take a lot of shots, he’ll do that.”
That unpredictable nature has sometimes left his teammates unsure of how to respond.
“Kobe is a big talent,” explained Lakers forward Luke Walton. “You have to adjust your game to learn to play with him. It’s always a learning process.”
On the nights that Bryant elects to take over a game, his teammates seem to enjoy his talent and power. But that leads to criticism that they tend to become passive and content just to watch him work, something that isn’t always good for team play.
At the end of a six-game road trip in December, Bryant came out aggressively against the Charlotte Bobcats (and produced another 50-point game in a losing effort), and he later explained that he simply didn’t want to let his team get off to another slow start before a sell-out crowd on the road.
“He can score,” says Winter, Bryant’s mentor who doesn’t hesitate to criticize him. “That’s not the problem. The problem is, how are we going to play as a team?”
That’s a question that Bryant seemed more and more concerned with this season. He and Jackson have spent much of the past two seasons building a strong player/coach relationship. Jackson’s goal was to improve Bryant’s “team” game, to develop his leadership abilities, to control that “impetuousness.”
As several journalists have noted this season, Bryant has clearly enjoyed changing his own approach and watching his young teammates grow into their roles.
“I’d much rather not do that,” Bryant said of his big scoring nights. “It’s too tiring. Sometimes you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to keep the team together and get a win. Then you move on and hope you don’t have to do that the next time.”
Under Jackson’s tutelage, Bryant’s big concern became teaching his teammates how to carry their share of the burden, and how to be confident doing it.
“We’re learning how to close out games,” Bryant said of the team earlier in the season. “That’s a big thing for us. We’re getting better at it.”
Bryant’s confidence became critical to the team itself, Walton said.
So did lessons about Bryant’s own unique perspective on the game. Failure doesn’t weigh heavily on Bryant, and that’s another lesson he has tried to impart to his teammates. You have to compete very hard, then accept the results without dwelling on them.
“You can’t make a loss any bigger than what it is,” he says. “You can’t over-dramatize the situation. It is what it is. A loss is a loss. It’s not going to make or break our season. So you just move on from it. You don’t want to over-dramatize it. A loss is a loss. Hats off to the other team and move on. It’s just one game.”
This mental approach is all part of the unique package that is Kobe Bryant, says longtime Lakers broadcaster Stu Lantz, who has observed Bryant up close since he came into the league in 1996. “His own expectations are huge. I don’t think anyone else could possibly have bigger expectations than those that Kobe has for himself. I’ve been around a lot of players, first as a player and now as an announcer all these years, and I don’t think I’ve been around anybody that has the internal drive to be the best that Kobe has. There’s all this pressure that he puts on himself. How he copes with all that is a mystery to me. Maybe sometimes when people think he’s aloof or mysterious or whatever he is, it’s just him dealing with all the things that he has to deal with, with all the things that he puts on himself. The guy plays hurt, he plays sick. It doesn’t matter to him. He doesn’t make excuses. He loves to play, as all the great ones do.”
Winter says that part of the mystery earlier this season was Bryant’s health. He had off-season knee surgery but came back early from the injury because the team needed him.
Bryant predicted that he would be fully healthy by February, just in time to make other teams truly fear the Lakers. The problem with that plan was that as Bryant became healthy other parts of the machine broke down. Odom, Walton and Kwame Brown spent months out with injuries.
So now the Lakers find themselves in a fix as the likely seventh seed in the Western playoffs, likely to face Phoenix again in the first round.
Funny, that Jackson, Winter and the Lakers now find themselves come round again to needing Kobe Bryant, the superstar, more than they need Kobe Bryant, team player.
Actually, his coaches will tell you they want him to be both, to fill that rarest of roles in basketball, a sensational scorer able to move in and out of his own game while helping teammates to find theirs.
It’s a tall challenge, yet it’s one that Bryant has trained for his entire life. Are Lakers fans about to witness something special?
The answer to that is clearly another big part of the Bryant mystery.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, a comprehensive oral history of the Lakers. His biography of Phil Jackson, Mindgames, was recently released by the University of Nebraska’s Bison Books in a special paperback edition.

Sea What I Mean?

2007-03-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

To celebrate his 85th birthday, Tex Winter gathered up a group of relatives and took to the high seas recently for a cruise of the Western Caribbean.
Throughout the trip, he worked to keep up with his beloved Lakers through their seven-game losing streak.
Never mind that he was more than 1,000 miles away, Winter could feel just what they were going through. Buffeted by bad weather and stormy waters, his cruise ship couldn’t even dock at some of the ports. The Grand Caymans? Forget it. The weather was simply dreary.
Fortunately, the cruise featured one great meal after another, key for Winter, long known as a chow hound.
“Eat and poop. Poop and eat,” Winter confided. “That’s about all we did.”
The same was true for the Lakers, whose only respite from the losing was perhaps the sumptuous fare on their charter flights and in their first class hotels.
In their case, the routine became: “Eat and play like poop. Play like poop and eat.”
Actually, the preceding punch line is a bit unfair. Considering their injuries and the difficulty of the recent schedule, Winter said it would be hard to say the Lakers underperformed during the stretch, even though it resulted in seven straight losses, the longest such streak of Phil Jackson’s celebrated coaching career.
As he watched events unfold from afar, Winter had two main concerns:
1) He wondered about Jackson’s health as his team plummeted. Ultimately, though, Winter figured the losing streak was good for Jackson. Anything that humbles the coach seems to benefit him. “He handles adversity pretty well,” Winter said proudly.
2) The other concern was Kobe Bryant’s frustration level. “He appeared to be very out of sorts,” Winter said. That’s why his scoring outbursts in recent games have been important, Winter added. Like Jackson, the losing streak may have helped Bryant because it helped him see just how important Lamar Odom and Luke Walton were to him and the team.
The absence of Odom and Walton (and center Kwame Brown) have also made things hard on the other starters, especially point guard Smush Parker. Fans grew shrill in their criticism of Parker during the losing streak, but he did something important. He remained healthy and was able to hang tough through extremely challenging times. Lesser men would have easily disappeared. Not Smush. He’s the kind of guy who hangs around and keeps playing through the low points.
Sometimes that’s how you have to evaluate a player.
On the other hand, Winter’s evaluation of Andrew Bynum remains less than glowing. “Bynum hasn’t made a whole lot of progress,” Winter said, adding that the center is playing about the same way now as he was earlier in the season.
Bynum remains a young player (thus deserving of some benefit of doubt), but Winter clearly had expectations that he would develop more this year.
Jackson has begun to express a similar frustration and openly chastised Bynum for poor play toward the end of the Minnesota game. “Phil is Phil,” Winter observed. “He knows when to turn it on and turn it off. He’s been firm at times. He was very stern with Bynum at the end of the Minnesota game. I don’t know what the kid is thinking.”
Bynum responded by returning Jackson’s anger.
The Lakers may be showing some signs of selfishness, Winter said. The NBA may not be the rah-rah environment of college ball, “but you still have to have character,” he added.
In his years of working with Jackson, Winter has often been the voice encouraging him to abandon his laid-back approach and take action. He’s been pleased by what he’s seen from Jackson recently.
“I don’t think Phil can sit back and let things take their course,” he said. “He’s got to step up and show leadership. That’s what he gets paid that fabulous salary for, to face pressure.”
Winter also heartily approves of Jackson’s recent decision to turn Bryant loose as a scoring machine.
“We’re in a situation where we’ve got to rely on Kobe,” Winter said, adding that he hopes Bryant can produce a run of big games as he has done on occasion in years past.
Those Bryant scoring binges can lift the team out of the doldrums and actually boost its confidence.
Winter also answered criticism of the triangle offense, another target of frustrated fans who point out the Lakers have no running game and are mired in the triangle’s half-court attack.
Winter’s response is that the triangle has always been structured to feature the running game. With Shaquille O’Neal as the Lakers’ center, Jackson refused to allow even a hint of a run.
The Lakers opened this season determined to become a running team by relying on the ability of Lamar Odom and Luke Walton to rebound and push the ball.
“When Luke and Odom were healthy, they were getting the rebound and powering out on the break,” he said. “To run, you’ve got to rebound the ball and get it out. That in turn makes guys want to get out and fill that lane and get a basket out of the break. When that was happening early in the season, we were a pretty good running team.”
With Walton and Odom out, that running game ground to a halt. Now that they’re back from injury, it still isn’t running because “Odom and Walton still aren’t in basketball shape. They’ve been hurt so much.”
As for fan complaints that the offense is too predictable, Winter said injuries again are a factor there. With Walton and Odom out, execution of the triangle is limited, thus more predictable.
“The offense is not predictable,” he said. “You get more possibilities out of it than you would any other offense.”
Injuries are a fact of life in the NBA, Winter said, yet few teams have had injuries to as many key players as have the Lakers.
While Walton and Odom try to round their way back into shape, the team has finally turned to Bryant. Here’s hoping he has the sea legs to see the task through.

Roland Lazenby, the author of The Show, an oral history of the Lakers, also wrote Mindgames, a biography of Phil Jackson which has been released recently in a special revised paperback edition by the University of Nebraska’s Bison Books.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

2007-03-13T07:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, when it comes to the Lakers in 2007 it’s mostly about injuries.
Or is it?
Is there something else going on here?
If there is, be sure of this: If it involves Phil Jackson, it’s complicated. Extremely complicated.
And it definitely involves good old PJ.
Some of his old friends wonder if he hasn’t lost his way.
Check that.
They don’t wonder.
They’ve been saying for a while now that he’s lost his way, that he sold out, that he began believing the hype in a big way, that the things that once worked for him now strangle him and his team, that just maybe his ruthlessness has caught up to him, that he changed when he got caught up in all that California worship, and not for the better.
They say there are too many yes men around him.
They say that he’s put himself on a pedestal, much like the big chair he perches atop each game night.
That he’s gotten old.
That he’s gotten greedy, grubbing his big salary around himself while refusing to accept the personal challenges that would make him face reality.
They say it’s too easy to sit on that big chair each game night, smug in the loftiness of Michael Jordan’s and Scottie Pippen’s six championships, smug in Shaquille O’Neal’s and Kobe Bryant’s three championships.
They say he doesn’t need this current Lakers thing, at least not for his reputation.
They say he came back to the Lakers because he felt guilty about all those nasty lies and half-truths he told about Kobe Bryant in his public comments and in that horrible book, “The Last Season.” (Note: PJ has written a great book, Sacred Hoops; a very good book, Maverick; and two books that weren’t worthy of him.)
They say he came back because he wanted to help Kobe. (Note to Kobe: Be wary of help.)
Oh, and they say he came back for the money, to be paid like a rock star, to be sucked up to like a rock star.
Well, are “they” correct?
Is that Phil in his 60s? A mere shadow of the former man of light and energy and innovation.
Perhaps. Only Phil himself really knows for sure. Or maybe nobody knows.
This much is true. If Lamar Odom and Kwame Brown and Luke Walton had stayed healthy, we’re probably not having this conversation.
But this is the NBA. Excuses are for losers. Phil and his Lakers are treading dangerously close to that domain. Land there and suddenly Phil no longer has his miracle worker status. Land there and suddenly Phil is just another working stiff, a coach whose blah-blah emits no light.
So it’s gut check time. Time to search.
And the dominant question is, what exactly is Phil Jackson’s genius?
Well, longtime assistant and mentor Tex Winter knows him better than anyone. (By the way, Tex is not one of the “theys” quoted earlier, so don’t even think about cheap retribution against the guy that has meant so much to you, Phil).
Tex has always said that one of the most amazing among the numerous amazing things about Phil is his ability to establish a relationship with his superstars.
Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan. Perhaps the ultimate coach/player relationship in the history of the game. Nothing lovey/dovey. Just cutting edge competitive mindset. Wolves sharpening their teeth together.
Just as important was the number two relationship in Chicago: Phil and Scottie Pippen. Pip had no great high attention needs, no high maintenance. Happy to be Michael’s number two guy.
Phil’s other great superstar relationship came with Shaq. Not anywhere near as fulfilling as working with Michael, Phil once told me. Shaq’s different. Not as keen, not as brilliant, not nearly as energetic. Shaq was all about focusing raw power and sometimes juvenile emotions. Still, a very productive relationship.
Of note was Phil’s lack of a relationship with Kobe Bryant. Not allowed, not possible to make nice with Kobe if he wanted to keep that special bond with Shaq. The big fella couldn’t handle it.
So Kobe was disrespected. Big time.
Phil proved to be very good at disrespect. In retrospect, he realized he was too good. Some people around him told him he was wrong in how he was treating Kobe. Phil’s answer? He banished those people. Or marginalized them.
And Jerry Buss saw it happen and did a beautiful thing. He fired Phil Jackson, sent Mr. Nine Championships packing.
So Phil spent a year away from the game.
And came back with a mission to form a third great bond with a superstar. He now wanted to nurture Kobe and explore the range of his vast competitive nature.
This effort produced growth in that first season, just as it did with Michael in 1989-90. The harsh, selfish young Jordan began to mature.
And then things went very right in Michael’s second season with Phil.
It seemed a reasonable and correct formula for reviving the Lakers. Nice progress the first year. And big things simmered early in their second season “together.”
But the NBA often offers a harsh bottom line. As a player, PJ learned this lesson long ago. As a coach, he has been fortunate to avoid it for most of his career.
Now, the Lakers have many injuries. Which means that the supporting cast that was growing around Bryant has been shattered.
Where Phil’s relationship with Michael and Shaq worked because of a strong supporting cast, Phil’s relationship with Kobe is now perhaps suffocating a superstar.
Once he forms a relationship, Phil tends to cut off communication between the rest of the coaching staff and the superstar. It’s Phil and the star, with little outside interference tolerated.
This season for the Lakers is mostly kaput. IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
So Phil needs to lighten up a bit with Kobe. Let him loose to enjoy whatever they can find in this year’s circumstances.
But Laker fans also have to lighten up. Phil’s basic premise, his MO of forming a strong bond with his superstar, is a proven thing.
The Lakers must start again next season, once again bringing along the supporting cast as Kobe matures into the star and leader he can be. When they were healthy and growing dynamically as a team, they earned the fans’ patience and forbearance.
In this case, “wait until next season” is not a platitude. It’s a legitimate strategy. Kobe was making tremendous progress, despite coming off difficult knee surgery.
So, fans, hear me again. Lighten up.
And Phil. Come down off your perch on high. Listen to your old friends. They may not be entirely right. But they love you. They’ve seen you at your best. They know what works, and best of all, they understand your magic.

Roland Lazenby is the author of Mindgames, a Phil Jackson biography, recently released by the University of Nebraska’s Bison Books in special revised edition.

How Will The Lakers Err? Pip or No Pip?

2007-02-20T06:41:00.000-08:00

Note: Readers, I apologize for not posting a blog over the past two months. During that time, I dealt with some personal issues, sat back and observed, then decided that when I have something to say, I’ll say it. But I’m not going to write just to write. For those of you who have contacted me, I appreciate your interest and concern. Here’s a new post:

Scottie Pippen certainly needs the money, now that a St. Louis court has ruled that he owes an airplane finance company about $5 million in cash for a failed attempt to launch his Air Pip company.
But will his decision to attempt an NBA comeback at age 41 come to be known as Err Pip?
That’s what the Lakers are trying to determine as they ponder what personnel moves to make in the wake of mounting injuries. Their latest casualty is forward Vladamir Radmanovic, lost for up to eight weeks with a separated shoulder.
Actually, even before Radmanovic slipped on a patch of ice and injured his shoulder, the Lakers took note of Pippen’s comments last week to Chicago Tribune columnist Sam Smith.
“Phil has a very high regard for Pippen, as do I,” Lakers consultant Tex Winter said of coach Phil Jackson. “There’s no player who picked up the triangle offense faster than Pippen, nor one who understood it better.”
The Pippen of old was known for doing all the little things that took immense pressure off of Chicago Bulls teammate Michael Jordan.
That, in part, is why Kobe Bryant immediately spoke out in favor of the Lakers bringing in Pip.
Certainly the history is there. Pippen anchored the Bulls’ defense through six championships. Pippen ran the team’s triangle offense. Pippen was the regulator on the floor for Jackson. He controlled tempo perhaps like no other player in the history of the game.
In some respects, the Lakers picking up Pippen seems like a no-brainer. He doesn’t want a lot of money. He just wants to come in and help a team down the stretch to the playoffs.
Ideal for Los Angeles.
Except.
At 41, does he have anything left in the tank? Bryant and numerous others talk about Pippen’s exceptional conditioning, his healed knee, his freakishly low body fat.
Does he even want to play for the Lakers? To date, there’s been no official contact. As Winter explained, Pippen seems determined to go to work for a playoff/championship contender, and right now, the Lakers are fading fast from that category.
How do owner Jerry Buss and GM Mitch Kupchak feel about adding Pippen? There’s no clear indication they have enthusiasm for adding him.
Lakernoise conclusion: Running the triangle offense means the Lakers have limited personnel options, because so many players, especially veterans, struggle to learn the offense.
That’s part of the hesitation over Nets guard Jason Kidd. He rebelled mightily against the triangle when Jim Cleamons tried to run it as coach of the Dallas Mavericks in the 1990s.
“Kidd does like to have the ball in his hands an awful lot,” triangle guru Tex Winter observed.
Would Jason Kidd be the second coming of Gary Payton?
That could well be.
Which means Pippen could be all the more valuable to the Lakers, as someone who could help organize bench play and then jump into the mix with the starters for key runs of execution down the stretch.
This much is clear: The Lakers have to do something.
The coaches had a two-hour meeting Monday morning after the All-Star break to figure out how to stop the bleeding of a five-game losing streak.

BREAKDOWN THE BLUES

The key to the team’s offensive production now is forward Lamar Odom, just coming back from injury himself, according to Winter.
The team is getting almost no fast-break opportunities, thus no easy baskets. So it’s up to Odom to snag the defensive rebound and power out on the break.
In that regard, and in terms of triangle execution, the team also misses Luke Walton, who should return from injury shortly.
Walton, too, has that ability to control the defensive rebound and to ignite the break.
However, the onus is on Odom, who is still rounding back into form after missing a couple of months with a knee injury.
The defensive woes, on the other hand, can be tied to two things: 1) Kwame Brown’s absence, also due to injury, in the post (“Peope don’t realize how important he is to us,” Winter says of Brown); 2) Kobe Bryant’s mysteriously lackluster defensive play.
Phil Jackson and Bryant are now tight, which means Jackson wants to control more of the coaching input with Bryant. That, in turn, limits what assistant coaches offer Bryant.
Jackson has raised the defense issue with Bryant, but those conversations remain between the two.
One theory: Bryant has an immense blind spot, aided by his considerable confidence, when it comes to the current state of his defense. He simply doesn’t recognize how bad things are.
Perhaps that’s the best reason for bringing back Pippen. He’s a fresh voice, one who has Bryant’s respect and attention, one who has mastered virtually every element of defense, one who could jumpstart a Bryant resurgence.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, an oral history of the Lakers published by McGraw Hill. Lazenby’s Phil Jackson biography, Mindgames, is set to be released in a special paperback edition from Bison Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press.

Fisher Has Always Understood The Simple Truths

2006-12-26T22:33:00.001-08:00

Where is Derek Fisher when you need him?
The Los Angeles Lakers displayed an alarming fragility in their Christmas showdown with Miami. Worse, it was the kind of performance that blindsided a lot of their fans, because it came just as the Lakers seemed on the verge of finding their stride without Lamar Odom, who is out with a knee injury.
Odom has come to be the foundation of Phil Jackson’s Lakers team, much as Scottie Pippen provided the base for Jackson’s Chicago Bulls teams.
Whenever Pippen was out, those Bulls of yore turned wobbly and inconsistent.
Jackson’s Lakers are the same way.
That’s a fact, not an excuse. Jackson mentor Tex Winter predicted the situation about three weeks ago when Odom went out.
Now the Lakers face a huge test, a moment of truth, in their efforts to rebuild into a championship contender. Are they going to fall apart? Or will they find the toughness and leadership to hang together during hard times?
“What happens in these next two games is pretty important,” Winter told me Tuesday, the day after L.A.’s fiasco against the Miami Heat. “You have to see how they respond, how they come back.”
Sensing the situation on the horizon, I had recently gone looking for the steadiest Laker I’ve ever known, Derek Fisher, only he’s not a Laker anymore but a Utah Jazz, whatever that is.
I’ve always said that Fisher has a rich, abiding character and an innate honesty. When I got to know him a decade ago, he immediately reminded me of a young Joe Dumars, not his style of play but his deep commitment and unimpeachable professionalism.
Usually pro basketball players get $33 million contracts because they can dunk and run and shoot. Derek Fisher got his contract because of his character and professionalism and leadership. The day that he got his deal in 2004 I knew the NBA was going to be all right, because it was still a league that rewarded special people like Derek Fisher.
Utah coach Jerry Sloan had had his eye on Fisher for more than a decade. When Fisher was a late first-round pick of the Lakers out of Arkansas-Little Rock in 1996, the Jazz had harbored secret hopes of getting him.
Sloan has always operated by a basic credo: Basketball is not a complicated game— if you just lay your heart on the line every night.
As Laker fans well know, that describes “Fish” to a T.
Heart on the line. Every night.
That’s why Sloan and the Jazz went after Fisher over the summer when they saw the opportunity. As Sloan told me last week, they haven’t been disappointed. Sloan even has him starting at 2 guard, just because he’s so tough, so professional.
“I’ll play wherever they want me to play, even out of position, if it helps the team,” Fish told me. “I like being on the floor.”
Another old Laker, Jazz broadcaster Hot Rod Hundley, is a huge Fisher fan. “He’s been great. Been absolutely great,” Hundley told me. “He has a lot of respect coming his way because he won three world championships with the Lakers. People have all seen him hit those shots at the buzzer. He’s been a great pickup for this team. In fact, he was coming off the bench, but he was playing so well they put him in the starting line up. He’s got a great locker room presence. Good leader. He plays hard. He’s a tough guy. He doesn’t back off of anybody. You’ve got to like him. It was a great move for us.”
After a sizzling start to the season, the Jazz have slipped to playing around .500 ball. It’s just the reason they wanted Fisher in the first place, for times like these.
“This is a part of this business,” Fisher said after a lackluster Utah loss in Charlotte recently. “You have to be able to respond to situations when things aren’t going your way. In games sometimes, when things aren’t going your way, you have to keep fighting back. And over the course of a season, you have stretches where the team is just not playing good basketball and things just don’t seem to be going right. You have to be able to hold it together and keep trying to win games.”
That Fisher toughness is just what the Lakers themselves need right now as they face their first major challenges of the season. Fans will recall his quiet strength that held things together during that hellish 2004 season, which he capped with the 0.04 shot that sent the team back to the league championship series.
“His value in the locker room, the way he handles his teammates, the way he looks at the whole game, is exceptional,” Tex Winter says of Fisher. “We’re (the Lakers) lacking it right now. And we could really use it. Kobe (Bryant) has really blossomed as a leader, but Kobe doesn’t look at the game quite like Fisher does. Not many do.”
When he speaks about the Lakers, Fisher’s voice still turns a bit pensive, like a man speaking about an old, irretrievably lost love. After eight seasons, he left the team as a free agent after that 2004 season for a huge paycheck with Golden State, where he spent two lost years.
“I’ve tried to watch them when I get the opportunity,” he says of the Lakers. “They’re playing good basketball. They got a solid team. Kobe is leading those young guys. He’s grown up a great deal. I’m very happy for him and I’m proud of him.”
Fisher and Bryant share more than a bit of history, having come in as rookies together in 1996. Leery of all the team’s veterans then, the young Bryant slowly came to trust Fisher as someone willing to work as hard as he.
Today, that means that the two remain close.
“We talk a lot, actually,” Fisher said. “He’s really taken to the role of big brother, to the guy that everybody has to look to, not only for statistically carrying the team, but really the rock of the organization and of the team. It’s a role that he’s always felt like he was capable of handling. And now he’s getting an opportunity, and he’s relishing it, and he’s doing a great job.”
The irony, of course, is now that he has the mantle of leadership, Bryant continues to struggle in returning from off-season knee surgery. Winter says he still has yet to see Bryant’s old explosiveness and quickness, or his defensive ability return.
“He can’t do some of the things he used to do and get away with it,” Winter said. “Right now, he can’t go into a crowd (of defenders) and make the plays that he used to make. I don’t know what he’s thinking. But he’s not playing the kind of game that he ought to be playing.”
Strangely, Winter thinks Bryant needs to do more. “He wants to involve his teammates,” Winter explained. “Perhaps he’s trying to do that too much. He needs to be more selective, but — you almost hate to say it — he also needs to be more aggressive. He can’t be so passive. It’s gonna be very hard for us, the way he’s playing right now.”
The problem is even more pronounced defensively, Winter said. “Kobe’s defense is not what it used to be. He’s kind of a roamer and he’s getting burned quite a bit.”
The thing that shelters Bryant in these circumstances is his trademark confidence. Always unwavering, always a bit chippy, Bryant irritated some fans by seemingly minimizing the play of Washington’s Gilbert Arenas after he lit up the Lakers and Bryant recently. But that’s just his signature expression of confidence, something that in the past has fortified both himself and the team.
“One thing we know, he doesn’t make excuses and he doesn’t offer alibis,” Winter said of Bryant. “Somebody ought to make excuses for him. He’s not in the playing condition he needs to be in.”
This is an issue that has concerned Winter since what he saw as Bryant’s premature return in November.
Even with the current turbulence, Winter sees plenty that is encouraging. The Lakers lost a road game in Chicago they should have won, but recovered quickly with wins over Minnesota and New Jersey.
“That victory against New Jersey was really good,” Winter said.
The two wins highlighted a previously suspect Laker bench. “That second unit has been playing better basketball than the first unit,” Winter said.
That might have continued against Miami, except that the first unit struggled so much that the coaching staff started searching for answers. That search interrupted the substitution patterns. The Lakers never found a footing in the game, with Miami’s Dwyane Wade breaking down the defense at will.
The emergence of the second unit is the sign that Fisher looks for in the hard casing of a team. Tough times can do that for a team, if they’re negotiated with a lot a starch and a little patience.
Kobe Bryant may want to get on the phone with his old friend this week to get a refresher course on that important element of leadership.
Fisher will tell him it’s all about pulling together as a team. The good news for both Bryant and Fisher is that it’s always been about hard work. That remains a simple truth for the Lakers now. “With the work that I’ve always had to put in to try to compete at this level, it feels great when everybody on the team competes that way and everybody’s giving their best effort,” Fisher says. “It’s a great feeling. It really is.”

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, a comprehensive oral history of the Lakers published by McGraw-Hill.

You Better Have Some Zen

2006-12-17T07:44:00.001-08:00

The epiphanies are special for Tex Winter. And that’s not just because he’ll be 85 in February.
He’s always looked harder at the game, always pushed himself to see more. Anyone who’s ever spent any time at a basketball game knows what a challenge that is.
It’s a four-act opera played at hyperspeed.
Yet Winter tries to take it all in, filling his notebooks with the 50-caliber observations that challenge convention, challenge his associates, challenge everything about the game.
The epiphany came somewhere during the Lakers’ recent double-overtime win over Houston, at the crest of a maddening week.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in all my life,” Winter said. “It’s got me wondering about the game of basketball. What’s happening to it?”
The Lakers have a 27 point lead in the fourth quarter in Houston, then watch the Rockets furiously whittle it down to 2 and still the Lakers wind up winning on a series of missed Rockets free throws and a no-call (yes, Winter said it looked to him like Kwame Brown goal-tended on that late shot attempt).
Then, the Lakes are down by 21 in a rematch with the Rockets at home in Staples Center and somehow end up winning in double-overtime.
“Unbelievable,” Winter said.
So is the epiphany.
Which came at the tail end of all the fury.
That’s when Winter saw the truth that had been sitting under his own nose for years now.
“In this coaching business, you have to be a Zen master,” he realized.
It’s not that Winter, who was hired years ago in Chicago to be the “coach’s coach,” didn’t believe in Phil Jackson and his quirky ways.
In fact, when Jackson moved the Bulls into heavy meditation sessions during his Chicago days, Winter was right there with them, sitting cross-legged on the floor
“Oh, yeah, with the Bulls we ALL did a lot of meditating. I liked it. It helped me deal with things that were going on in my life,” Winter said. “We don’t do that as much as we used to.”
That’s partly because psychologist/meditation guide George Mumford hasn’t been used regularly by the team since 2002, the last year the Lakers won a championship. That’s apparently because management/ownership did not want to bring Mumford back.
The Lakers still meditate occasionally, and Kwame Brown recently told a reporter he thought it was helping him.
The epiphany to Winter, however, regarded coaching. He suddenly realized that Jackson’s Zen approach to the game has almost become essential for coaching success.
The game has become that crazy.
And Jackson’s Zen is that strong.
Don’t be surprised if the revised edition of Winter’s classic book, The Triple Post Offense, (http://www.amazon.com/Triple-Post-Offense-Book-Winter/) doesn’t soon include a new chapter, Zen And The Art Of Team Maintenance.
“It’s gotten to the point in this coaching business, things are so crazy, that you have to be a Zen master,” Winter said.
The coach’s coach suggested that Jackson has done things well for years, yet he’s moved it to a new level and gotten substantially better as a coach later in his career.
“The way he handles a team is really something,” Winter explained. “He can sit there in the midst of chaos, see things happening and then calmly do something to change the course of events.
“He really is a Zen master with these players. You’ve got to be a great psychologist, you’ve got to be that because of the game’s speed and complexity and the pressure on the players.”
That became apparent during the double-overtime with Houston.
“We were really out of the ball game,” Winter said. “A lot of teams would have folded their tent.”
Houston center Yao Ming was killing the Lakers inside with eight blocked shots. And when Ming rested veteran backup Dikembe Mutombo blocked another three and punctuated each with the trademark wag of his finger. Unable to attack the basket effectively, the Lakers were dying.
Then Jackson started running screen and rolls with whomever Ming was guarding. Ming was forced to step out and defend, which moved him away from the basket.
The Houston center was reluctant to do that, which produced some open looks and helped convince him to step out more.
“We had to get him out from under that basket. He was destroying us,” Winter said.
Yet this is not the story of a simple in-game adjustment.
It’s about Jackson’s entire approach, which has been developing for years.
“He pulls some strange things out of the hat,” Winter admitted.
Jackson’s approach, however, resonates with the one public that really matters — his players. “It’s just his mannerisms, his conduct, the way he handles the team. Over the years, his teams have just responded to him more and more,” Winter said.
Long known for eschewing timeouts, Jackson has still somehow managed to become the master of managing them, making the most of a 20 or a full. “He stays calm, but he’s very firm and hard with his players. He gets in their faces at times,” Winter explained.
This face work is always done for effect and seldom is it the result of unrestrained anger or frustration.
Part of that comes from the way Jackson spends most of the timeout conferring with his assistants, then steps back with the team and delivers strong, clear messages for everyone.
“They seem to accept everything he says,” Winter added.
Even, as in the turbulence of the recent week, when Jackson offered particularly pointed remarks and criticism.
Jackson delivers his message without demeaning his players, Winter said. “The important thing is that he doesn’t destroy their confidence. So many coaches do that. It’s his demeanor, the way he handles people, the way he communicates what he wants done. He does this in a very positive manner, even in very stressful situations. Like I say, you have to be a Zen master in today’s game.”

GONNA NEED IT
Whatever Jackson’s special sauce, he’s going to have to spread it thickly over the coming weeks with Lamar Odom out with a strained knee.
“It’s gonna be tough without Odom,” Winter offered. “We’re not the same ball club without Lamar.”
Specifically, the Lakers will miss Odom’s rebounding the defensive board and powering out to start the fast break. That means less running and more use of the half-court offense.
Slowing down is going to put more pressure on the team to execute, more pressure on Kobe Bryant to produce.
“We’re still looking for early offensive opportunity,” Winter said. “If we don’t get good shots on the break, then we’ve gotta rely on our sets.”
That could be problematic, he said, because “our execution has not been good on our sets. Too many turnovers.”
Luke Walton’s role as the team’s organizer in the offense will have added importance. And like Odom, Walton can control the defensive rebound and power out to initiate the break. Walton just can’t do that as well and as fast as Odom, so the Lakers slow down.
Which begs the question, how long will Odom be out? “He’s on the training table all day long, every day,” Winter said. “They’re working on him. But it’s going to take some time.”

SMUSH

The double-overtime win emphasized another importance — defense in general and Smush Parker in particular.
“The defense did it for us,” Winter said. “Smush is really the guy who got us back in it with his steals and quickness.”
It was a turbulent night for the second-year guard.
“He got mad about a call in the first half,” Winter said. “Then Phil took him out of the ball game and he got really upset. When he came back in the game he was a man possessed.”
The turn of events points to the fact that, despite his critics, Parker plays a crucial role in the Lakers’ mix at guard.
Parker’s critics have seized on comments that he often pouts and have cited that as good reason for his benching. Parker, though, is an emotional player, feeds on that emotion and seems to be finding his way.
“With his speed, if he could just develop a consistent shot, he’d be really effective,” Winter said. “If he can just get confidence taking it to the basket and finishing….”

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, The Inside Story of the Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers in the Words of Those Who Lived It, published earlier this year by McGraw-Hill. Booklist called it “the best book about the NBA since The Jordan Rules.” http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071430342/ref=cm_arms_pdp_dp/002-6872593-7623219

Where The Dinosaurs Roam

2006-12-13T07:16:00.001-08:00

Talk about a reversal of karma, it wasn't even two years ago that NBA insiders were describing Kwame Brown as a head case and one of those eternal basketball blights, a number one overall draft pick who didn't pan out.
Back when he was with the Washington Wizards, Brown seemed to fit what former Bulls GM Jerry Krause used to call a recipe for the perfect asshole: Take a young player out of high school or college with a high pick in the draft, put him on a struggling team with suspect leadership, heap tons of pressure and expectations on him, and watch him turn into your worst nightmare.
Yes, Brown seemed destined to sully not only his own reputation but that of Michael Jordan, who selected him with the top pick in the 2001 NBA draft. Kwame Brown was the second coming of LaRue Martin.
Until he got traded to the Lakers in 2005.
It's not like Brown has become a beast in his 18 months in Los Angeles. Fans in Washington still smirk when you mention his name.
But Brown is quietly and steadily impressing the only person who really matters, his boss, Lakers coach Phil Jackson.
"Phil really likes Kwame," Lakers consultant/guru Tex Winter offered recently. "He thinks he's one of the best defensive centers in the league, with his quickness and strength."
Yes, Kwame Brown is quite a reclamation project.
And he's not Jackson's first.
Bulls fans and old NBA hands will recall the raised eyebrows when Jackson's Chicago team acquired 7-foot-2 Luc Longley from the Minnesota Timberwolves in February 1994. Longley had been considered pretty much a wasted draft pick after the T-Wolves took him with the seventh overall pick in 1991. The first Australian in the NBA, Longley had languished on Minnesota's bench, watching what little self esteem he had as a player melt away.
Jackson, though, liked Longley's big body (the better to counter Orlando's Shaquille O'Neal) and his soft touch on a face up jumper.
"There are only so many dinosaurs," Jackson said privately of the move.
Dinosaurs are those big NBA monsters, those 7-footers who can actually play, who can defend a little and can contribute on offense. Longley never became dominant with the Bulls. That wasn't the plan. But he used his size well on defense. Shot his face-up jumper that worked well in Chicago's scheme. And he worked well in the pinch post in the triangle offense.
Basically, Jackson helped Longley regain his self-respect. Even on those nights when Tex Winter would light the big guy up for lackadaisical play.
For his efforts, Jackson made a lifelong friend of Luc Longley. When the coach was on his forced sabbitical during the 2004-05 NBA season, when he needed to travel and sort out why he had been fired by the Lakers, Jackson made a journey to New Zealand/Australia, to visit with Longley.
His time playing around with Longley in the Pacific Ocean seems to have been the perfect balm for Jackson.
The coach, after all, has long known what it felt like to be an undervalued big man in the NBA.
A second round draft pick of the New York Knicks out of the University of North Dakota, Jackson had a suspect future in pro basketball until Red Holzman replaced Dick McGuire as coach of the Knicks. Then Jackson suffered a back injury and surgery that sidelined him for more than a season. To many, his future seemed over before it happened.
Holzman's Knicks, though, became the first pro team to rely heavily on the press. In practice, Holzman would stand courtside, dressed in shorts and a windbreaker, urging his players to "see the ball." On the press, he wanted them anticipating where the offense was going to throw it in attempting to escape the trap. Holzman wanted his players feeding off those passes. That would become their trademark, creating turnovers and converting them into points in easy bunches. "Any game we're down even 10 points going into the fourth quarter we can still win," Willis Reed explained at the time.
It was the press that would provide Jackson a reason for his NBA existence. In short time, Jackson would find a role coming off the bench with Holzman's pressing unit in the second period, where his long arms and mobility were not just an advantage but a weapon.
If the game slowed down into the halfcourt during Jackson's first years in the league, the crowds in Madison Square Garden would groan and hiss about his ineptitude. "I remember him coming in and lighting a spark," the late Dave DeBusschere would say of Jackson during the period. "I also remember Red yelling at him, 'Don't dribble it!' And Phil would dribble it off his knee, and the ball would go two rows deep into the stands."
But when the pace was high, Phil Jackson was a difference maker in the Knick press.
His role allowed him to find his teammates' confidence and respect. "Whenever Phil got out there, you knew he was going to get physical and make something happen," DeBusschere once recalled. "People talk about what a free spirit he was, but he always worked hard and always played within the structure of the team."
"Jackson's style as a player developed in accordance with his build, which reminds me of a clothes hanger turned upside down," teammate and friend Bill Bradley later explained. "He surprised big men by his defensive skill and made them feel they were being guarded by a man with three sets of arms."
By the time the glory years rolled around in the 1970s, Holzman's teams had transformed the Garden crowd into a loud, silly horde. The upper deck screamed "dee-fense," and the city-hardened fans seemed to lose a little of their gaming edge and actually softened into something resembling cheerleaders. Over the next several seasons, they would even find it in the kindness of their hearts to drop the murmur of despair when Jackson produced a miscue on the floor. Finally, they would go so far as to give up some love for Jackson and his mad-scramble ways. They would even take to calling him by his college nickname, "Action Jackson."
Red Holzman had shown him the path away from ridicule.
"Red was a big influence on my basketball philosophy," Jackson would explain later. "Everyone on those teams had their own sphere, but Red knew how to let everyone find their own niche."
Jackson admired Holzman's "tender touch," the ability to compromise, to reconcile differences. "He never overloaded you with advice. He doled it out in small packets and in a variety of ways," Jackson explained. "He had a featherweight punch that hit you like a knockout blow."
And Jackson's knack for instigating a change of pace as a coach, giving his players books or taking a sidetrip through the countryside instead of pushing his team through another practice, those things stemmed from the appreciation for the other, finer things in life that Holzman showed his players. Years later, as they watched Jackson at work, the former Knicks would note how much he was like Holzman.
That has been Jackson's approach with the Longleys and Browns that have happened onto his roster. Like Holzman once did for him, he's helped them find their niche.
It's not that Kwame Brown exactly fits the dinosaur mold. He's big, to be sure, but quickness and strength are his main assets. On the other hand, Andrew Bynum, the Lakers' 19-year-old center, is still growing his way toward 7-feet-2, a baby dinosaur if you will, one who will surely find a big role as he matures.
"Phil has always understood his players," Tex Winter once told me. "He's been where they've been. He remembers it, too."
Coming off a shoulder injury, Brown is averaging 9.1 points, 6.4 rebounds and an outstanding 2.4 assists this season. He's beginning to learn how to use his strength and quickness offensively as well.
And while Bynum began the season as a starter and now comes off the bench, Winter says the coaches are also pleased with the young guy's progress.
Rebounding, however, remains a team weakness, and if the Laker frontcourt is to get any true respect around the league, those numbers are going to have to increase. Plus, both Brown and Bynum will have to step up their pace, now that Lamar Odom is out indefinitely with a knee injury.
It seems a safe bet to say that Brown will relish the opportunity to step up. The NBA life that Phil Jackson has helped him find is so much more than what he had before.

BIRD UPDATE

It was nice of the Boston Globe's Peter May to follow up on my Brian Shaw interview comparing Larry Bird and Kobe Bryant. May reported that Bird was "fascinated" when he read my blog online.
"Shaw, now a Lakers assistant coach, was asked by veteran scribe Roland Lazenby to compare and contrast the Bird-McHale relationship with that of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal," May wrote.
"'The difference was, they respected each other and what they did on the court,' Shaw said of Bird and McHale. 'So when they stepped between the lines, all that other peripheral stuff, it was on the outside. They said, 'We're going for the same goal between these lines. I'm gonna help you achieve what you want to achieve. You're gonna help me. I'm gonna help you. Then when the game is over, you're gonna go your separate way and I'm gonna go mine. And that's OK.'
"Shaw said Shaq and Kobe seemed to have that kind of respect only occasionally, and they allowed 'trivial stuff' to mushroom into bigger things. Bird's take was that he simply was playing basketball the way he knew how, and it didn't matter whether the other guy was his best buddy.
"'In my three years in Boston, I don't remember Kevin McHale and Larry Bird hanging out together,' Shaw said.
"They might have done so earlier in their careers," May continued, "but by the time Shaw got there in 1988, Bird and McHale had grown even more distant."

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, The Inside Story of the Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers in the Words of Those Who Lived It, published earlier this year by McGraw-Hill.

Trust The Laker Media?

2006-12-03T05:22:00.000-08:00

Anonymous responded to my blog yesterday in which I acknowledged the work of many reporters and media figures covering the Lakers:

"Are you kidding me that Bresnahan doing any good covering the Lakers/Kobe? He tried to undermine Kobe as a player and a person starting from about the 2nd half of 2004-2005. Remember that so-called Atkins' GM comment?

"Brad Turner sided with Shaq and after the trade he was biased against the Lakers/Kobe. I remember his Malone incident witness stuff and all the Kobe selfish "stories."

"No need to sugarcoat some spinning and twisting of your peers or even making stuff up. They villified Kobe and looked down the Lakers, Buss, Mitch, etc.

"Some of them may jump back on the bandwagon, but they lost any credibility to us fans."

MY RESPONSE
Atkins made the GM comment. The reality is that it reflected the attitude of elements on the team, at that time. I think it was good reporting on Bresnahan's part. It's not a reporter's job to tell fans what they want to hear but what he observes.
I myself quoted Tex as saying that Kobe had tried too hard to be a leader in that season after Shaq left, and as a result, Kobe lost some of his teammates.
There is no question that following the breakup of the team, Bryant, Buss, Kupchak and other figures came under intense criticism, perhaps quite a bit of it unwarranted. But it's not hard to understand the frustration of both reporters and the public at the breakup of a championship-caliber team.

Do reporters get overdue influence from Phil?

You bet. It's incredibly difficult not to be influenced by Phil (or any coach), but especially Phil. That's where reporters get the bulk of their information. Phil's success makes him a powerful factor in terms of information.
There was a time when most of the reporters in L.A. were turned against Kobe. Kobe played a part in this himself. But I've reported these issues.
I guess I don't view the situation so severely now (I did then, and reported those facts with some indignation), because I know firsthand how seductive Phil's manipulation can be. Anyone who reads my work knows I keep Phil on a short leash. He's a very fine coach, but extremely manipulative in terms of the media.

So I tend not to hold grudges against reporters. It was a story they had to cover. They did the best job with the information available at the time and with Phil manipulating the information as he did. The reporters have moved on from that story and so have I.
Phil has even acknowledged some of his shortcomings in regard to the entire period. He hasn't come clean on everything, but he's done enough perhaps to heal the Lakers. He's come back to the job and dealt with Kobe Bryant in a straight-forward manner. I've documented how Phil did not do that during his first five years with the team, how he left Bryant out of the equation.

I tend not to blame the messengers when the primary figures — Phil, Shaq and Kobe — all share blame for the breakup.

On the other hand, I respect your right as a member of the reading public to hold all reporters, including me, to a high standard.
In fact, I think you, the reader, are the critical, most important, element in the equation. As reader and fan, you're the final judge of all of our actions.
In the end, you set the standards, and we all must meet them, or attempt to.
So, my response to your comments is, Thank you for making them. You have a valid point. And thank you for commenting on my blog. Your comments raise an interesting point of debate. And I'm not going to spend too much time defending certain reporters you've criticized. They need to answer for themselves. That's because you've raised valid issues.

As for me, I enjoy the media coverage of the Lakers. Like you, when I sense something out of line, I speak up.

That's the great thing about free speech. It works for all of us.

Peace.
If you can find it.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, The Inside Story of the Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers in the Words of Those Who Lived It, published by McGraw-Hill.

Wow. Learning To Ride The Bike

2006-12-02T05:15:00.000-08:00

Gatinho said...
Roland,

I noticed in the picture in the Times today that Tex gave Kobe a standing ovation when he checked out of the game and couldn't help but wonder if his applause was of the sardonic sort. I have read that he charts shots and decides what was "forced" and I know a couple of Kobe's third quarter shots were of that variety and a performance like that might tend to drive a purist like Tex nuts.

That being said, I also thought that he might be applauding Kobe's fourth quarter play, where he had 2 assists and no shot attempts.

Any thoughts would be appreciated and thanks for your continuing insightful info on the Lakers. Your site and book, my copy is ratty and dog eared, have really served to flesh out the Lakers and their intricacies and motivations rather than making us rely on unconventional media wisdom.

Gatinho,

A lot of coaches are filled with sarcasm, but Tex isn't one of them. He's as direct a person as you can find. He's standing and applauding all the things he admires about Kobe. Tex especially prizes "efficiency." And Kobe's 30-point third quarter against Utah is about as efficient as a player can be. Only a select few have ever displayed such efficiency. Jerry West, Bill Walton and MJ come to mind. Kobe scored 52 points on a "mere" 26 shots?
Tex has been in Kobe's corner since I first gave Kobe Tex's phone number in 1999. Kobe was lost as a young Laker, and Tex was a Chicago Bulls assistant. Kobe had dreamed that Tex would one day coach him and wanted to talk with him.
Tex assured Kobe when, as a young player, he was stricken by self doubt. They've been close ever since. "I love Tex," Kobe has told me many times. Those aren't words Kobe tosses around lightly. Does that mean they don't have their heated moments. Kobe told me that people misinterpret those moments. They are simply displays of passion from two men who are among basketball's most passionate.
When Phil said at the start of the season he wanted to Kobe to hold his game to 22 or 23 shots, Tex said the number of shots wasn't the issue. It was the quality of shots.
Of course, the tricky part of the equation comes with the "bad" shots that Kobe suddenly turns into good ones.
I suggest that the coaches of the Lakers and the team are adjusting better with each incident to Kobe's offensive outbursts, and those outbursts are no longer uncontrolled ravenous urges on Kobe's part. There's no question that those outbursts can affect the team, positively and negatively. So it's a balancing act, like learning to ride a bicycle.
I think we're having a lot of fun watching this team grow up, learning to ride the bike.
An excellent detail that you picked up, by the way, was Kobe's assists in the fourth.
As for your comments about my work, well, you made my day. Thank you.
However, I must point out that the "conventional" media in Los Angeles do what I think is a very fine job covering the Lakers. Mike Bresnahan with the Times has his hand on the pulse of the team, and how can you get a better view of the Lakers than Steve Springer's long take?
Kevin Ding over at the OC does his lion's share as do Ross at the Daily News and my buddy Brad at the Press Enterprise.
And I haven't even mentioned all the broadcast work in the market.
Having said that about the conventional media, I have to admit the internet sites focused on the team are amazing. The LATimes Blog is a rowdy riot, filled with passion and insight, and Kurt's thing with Forum Blue and Gold is astonishingly bright, and I'm just scraping the surface there. How about the absolutely crazy Lakers board? And let me count the ways you can feed your habit: Lakers Ground, Lakers Web, Show Time Blog, Club Lakers, Lakers Topbuzz, Real GM - Lakers, and Laker Dynasty 2K? Yikes.
You can say what you want about the drawbacks of the modern age, but you can't complain about the coverage of this team. Somebody is always throwing something up on the hump that gets the rest of us buzzin'.
That's especially true of you and all the other posters who make these blogs come alive.
Without you and your comments, we'd all be whistling in the dark. Thanks to each and every one of you.
Peace.
If you can find it.

Shaw Time: More Answers To More Comments

2006-11-30T06:14:00.000-08:00

Readers,
Thanks for your comments, kind and otherwise. It may disturb some Lakers fans to know that for five years I produced The Boston Celtics Greenbook (I also produced a similar guide on the Lakers for the ill-fated 1991 season when Magic abruptly retired). Reggie Lewis was one of my favorite people on the Celtics, a sweetheart of a person, always easy to talk to. I was always amazed by his mix of confidence and humility. Unfortunately, cocaine just about crushed the Celtics, beginning with the death of 1986 draft pick Len Bias and followed by the untimely death of Lewis in 1993.
I first wrote a story on Brian Shaw umpteen years ago when he was a young, unheralded guard faced with the job of replacing Celtics legend Dennis Johnson.Brian earned the trust of both Bird and McHale. “Dennis is the easiest guy I ever played with,” Larry Bird said at the time, then offered heady praise for Shaw. “He made things happen for me. Brian’s a little different because he looks to penetrate, looks to make things happen for himself out there. But Brian’s awful good. He does a little bit of everything. He rebounds, plays great defense. He's a total package.”
(Lakers fans love Shaw as the guy who ignited The Great Comeback against Portland in the fourth quarter of Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference finals.)
Bird and McHale never broke out in petty fighting or public disrespect of one another. Yet their relationship was chilly and hardly extended beyond the court (not really all that unusual because there is as much competition within a team for status as there is with the opponent on the floor). There were times they said little to one another, except on the court. Bottom line, as Shaw pointed out, they maintained respect for one another. That respect brought them three championships and allowed them to compete together until their playing days were over.
Kobe and Shaq won three championships as the heart of the Lakers, but the pettiness escalated between them, as Lakers fans well know.
On the economics front, Jellybean Bryant did tremendously well as a long-term pro basketballer, eight years in the NBA (his top salary well exceeded $75,000) and eight years as the darling of Europe. Kobe Bryant was raised as a child of privilege and opportunity.
I suggest that that makes his drive and toughness all the more remarkable.
As for the Redd factor, I don't think excuses are in order. They got their butts kicked. Redd has made himself a superior NBA scorer. When a player of that caliber is hot, only a rough, snake-biting defender has a chance to slow him down (aka Bruce Bowen, someone willing to "get into" the shooter). Kobe is a good defender, but he's not gonna hack and chop and shove to stop Redd. When the two teams meet again, maybe he will.
K's modus operandi, of course, is to outscore and silence such opponents. He's in more of a team mode these days, so don't expect him to accept personal challenges. The other factor is the zone the Bucks used. The Lakers did not play well against it.
Then there's the officials. Funny that Dwyane Wade got all those touch fouls last year in the Finals, yet Bryant can't get a call in a physical game at home.
Bryant surely has been known for his various ploys for drawing fouls in recent years, but what athletic 2 guard doesn't know how to work the circumstances?
Just maybe the officials are tired of the Phil/Kobe combo and they're sending a message that they're not in a giving mood.
Funny, but as Rod Thorn explained to me over the summer, the new rules interpretation was to allow the truly athletic players the ability to perform free from hooliganism.
Tex Winter, meanwhile, has thrown up his hands in disgust with the officials. He sees no consistency whatsoever, new rules interpretations included.
Last, of course, and the least of any excuses would be that Kobe is still recovering from his knee surgery and simply unable to keep up with a smokin' Michael Redd. But that's lame, as are all the other excuses.
The Lakers didn't play hard enough and smart enough to win. Simple as that. They can't afford a whole lot of nights like that.
I'm eager to phone Tex Winter to hear his take on things. People sometimes say that he's fussing too much. But as I pointed out in a previous column, if you don't stay on top of a team, your players are prone to drifting.
The Lakers got caught in a full drift against the Bucks.
And everyone in Lakersville will be eager to see how they respond tonight against Utah.
Peace.
If you can find it.

Larry and Kobe: Brian Shaw's Study In Mythology

2006-11-28T17:28:00.000-08:00

Brian Shaw knows all about high-powered locker rooms populated by huge egos.
The Lakers assistant coach was once a Boston Celtics rookie, back in the day when Larry Bird and Kevin McHale still ruled the NBA.
“When I first came in the league, I walked in the Boston Celtics locker room and saw Larry Bird and all these guys,” Shaw recalled. “They were mythical characters for me. Guys that I’d seen and watched growing up. Now I’m sitting in the locker room next to them, talking with them, playing with them every day. There’s a period where you see them do things on the court that you never imagined could be done. So you get caught in awe, like that deer in headlights.”
Now that he’s an assistant coach, he’s gotten to revisit those circumstances. Shaw watched last season as a roster of very young Lakers players sat in awe of Kobe Bryant.
It has become the job of the Lakers coaching staff “to get these guys past that.”
This season the team has shown signs of progress in growing beyond the situation. But it hasn’t been easy.
“You have someone like Kobe who is so competitive and so dominant,” Shaw observed. “When he senses that things aren’t going right he does everything in his power to take over and try to right things. In the process sometimes, some of the other guys become an afterthought. So they struggle. It’s difficult for them to figure out how and when to fit in. When they are so young, it’s difficult.”
Lakers guru Tex Winter has often expressed admiration for Shaw as a young coach. What makes him so effective for these Lakers is that he remembers clearly those days as a young Celtic trying to find his way playing alongside a fierce competitive nature like Larry Bird.
Larry and Kobe?
“It’s like comparing apples and apples,” Shaw says.
That’s because Bryant and Bird share something special.
“When Larry would maybe miss a shot that would have won the game for us, or something like that, he’d stay after and shoot,” Shaw recalled. “He’d be there first thing the next morning, shooting, working on his game at game speed. Kobe is the same way. He doesn’t want to lose in any thing. Cards, whatever it is he’s playing. Larry had it. Michael had it. Magic had it. All the great ones do. And Kobe’s right there with him.”
Dominique Wilkins once said of Bird: “Look in his eyes and you see a killer.”
Shaw sees the same thing when he looks at Bryant. “Basically, Kobe is a killer,” he said. “I say that, meaning that he’s not going to reach out and embrace you. He’s not going to respect you, if you aren’t true to your craft and you don’t show that killer instinct as well. To him it’s a sign of weakness. As long as you’re out there giving it your all, he’ll respect you, because he is, he’s giving it his all.”
Hearing Shaw talk about the two stars brings to mind the question, does Bird’s nasty streak run deeper than Bryant’s?
“Larry was nasty, and Kobe is nasty,” Shaw says. “Kobe’s only 28 years old, and he’s 10 years in the league already. He’s accomplished some things that most players haven’t been able to accomplish.”
Still, as Shaw himself pointed out, Larry Legend is, was and always will be a mythical figure in American basketball. Bryant’s never quite been allowed mythical status, despite his many accomplishments.
“Larry and Kobe came into the league under different circumstances,” Shaw said. “Kobe was 17 when he entered the NBA, playing amongst grown men, so there were a lot of things he couldn’t do. He couldn’t go out after a game and have a beer and hang out with the guys because he was too young. That isolated him from the rest of the guys in terms of the some of the social things they did off the court. I think you have to take that into account when comparing him to different people.
“Larry was more embraced by the public. He was more outgoing. Some of the reasons that Kobe still isn’t outgoing may stem from the fact that he was almost forced to be isolated because of his age.”
Age and status always made it easy for the fans and players of the NBA to accept Bird’s arrogance and super star confidence. Shaw concedes as much.
“Larry played three years in college, so people got to know him through his exploits and travels at Indiana State and get familiar with him before he got to the NBA,” Shaw said. “They got to see his run through the NCAA tournament and see him playing against Magic in the NCAA championship game. Larry had to overcome some other obstacles that Kobe didn’t have to. Being from Terra Haute, being poor from a small town and then coming into a sophisticated business world that he may not have been accustomed to. People made fun of the country twang he had when he spoke and his country mentality. That’s a different hurdle that he had to overcome.”
Bird has always had the toughness of a poor kid who came up the hard way with a father left alcoholic after serving his country in combat during the Korean War. Kobe, on the other hand, is a child of privilege, the son of a millionaire, able to enjoy wonderful opportunity.
How can a little rich kid like Kobe possibly have the same hard, hungry edge that poverty burnished into Larry Bird.
“He is a student of the game,” Shaw says of Bryant, without hesitation. “And it’s no accident he’s as good as he is. He’s the first person, when we get on the plane tonight after the game, he’ll want a copy, a DVD, of tonight’s game, as well as a copy of the tape on our upcoming opponent, so he can watch it and prepare for who he has to play next. He’ll watch what he did tonight. Not everybody in this league puts in that kind of dedication, that kind of effort. That’s what separates him from even the other superstars of the game, in my opinion, the Tracy McGradys, the Vince Carters, whoever else you want to name.
“Then there’s the time.” Shaw added, “that he takes tuning his body up, not just in the weight room, but working with our physical therapy guys to make sure everything’s adjusted, in alignment. The time that he takes stretching, the time that he takes studying his opponent, the time that he takes watching film of himself and studying how he can improve. That takes a lot of time. That takes a lot of discipline. That takes a lot of focus. Not everybody else has that discipline.”
What’s the chance of Bryant’s intense competitiveness rubbing off on his young Lakers teammates? Not much, according to Shaw. “His teammates, I know they see him doing this. But most people aren’t willing to dedicate themselves to putting in that type of time.”
If you ever got the opportunity to watch Bird work through his shootaround before each game, you get the picture of Bryant’s focus.
For a young team, such a leader is a blessing and a curse, perhaps.
Strong personalities need someone equally strong to stand up to them. “You have to discuss it with Kobe,” Shaw said of the challenge a coach faces in correcting Bryant. “And you have to tell him when he’s doing things wrong or things that you don’t like. Even if those things are sometimes miraculous. He respects those who will speak up, even if it’s against what he wants to do. He respects you more if you tell him about it.
“Kobe’s an alpha male.”
So are coach Phil Jackson and center Shaquille O’Neal, Shaw pointed out. That’s what it was so difficult having the three of them on the same team.
“That’s a lot of alpha males on one roster,” Shaw said. “When you have that, at some point, there’s a gotta be a breaking up.”
Bryant and O’Neal won three championships together but that run came to an end with an acrimonious parting after the 2004 NBA season. The Lakers traded O’Neal to Miami and decided to build their new team around Bryant.
“Even in my three years in Boston I don’t remember Kevin McHale and Larry Bird hanging out together,” Shaw said, acknowledging a well-known fact that despite winning three NBA titles together, the Celtic superstars weren’t close.
“The difference was, they respected each other and what they did on the court,” Shaw said. “So when they stepped between the lines, all that other peripheral stuff, it was on the outside. They said, ‘We’re going for the same goal between these lines. I’m gonna help you achieve what you want to achieve. You’re gonna help me. I’m gonna help you. Then when the game is over, you’re gonna go your separate way and I’m gonna go mine. And that’s okay.’”
With Kobe and Shaq “a lot of times some little trivial things are what caused problems,” Shaw said.
Because there seemed to be no basic respect, the trivial stuff grew into big problems.
After playing with the Celtics early in his career, Shaw got into a contract dispute with the team and retreated to Italy to play for a season. That’s where he met a pesky little adolescent named Kobe, whose father Joe Bryant also happened to be an NBA expatriate playing in the Italian League.
“I played against his father that year I went to Italy in ’89,” Shaw recalled. “That’s when I first met Kobe. I’ve known him for a long time.”
The fact that he goes way back with Bryant has given Shaw the confidence to address issues with the superstar that others might seek to avoid.
Their relationship is based on Shaw “knowing him for that long, but more than important than that, standing up to him when I know he’s wrong if he’s taking bad shots. He’s the kind of guy, he can take a bad shot and make it. It doesn’t matter if there are four or five guys on him, he feels like he can score on them. So as a teammate, I love to have somebody on my team like that, who thinks that way and feels that way and that no matter if we’re down 20 and there’s a minute left in the game he’s still thinking there’s maybe a way we can win. As a teammate you love to have somebody with that mentality on your team.”
Yet Shaw acknowledges it’s not a perfect world. Not every teammate appreciates the alpha male nature of a Kobe Bryant.
“If you’re a weak-minded individual, you look at it as if, ‘He’s taking all the shots, and I’m not getting to shoot.’ Well, that’s where you’re not gonna appreciate being on a team with a guy like that,” Shaw said. “You should look at it like, I know he’s gonna shoot the ball a lot, so I better go get rebounds and do these other things because I got to find another way to get my shot. Some guys he’s played with have understood that pecking order, like a Horace Grant.”
Now, Bryant is leading the Lakers through a third straight season without O’Neal, who went on to win a fourth championship with the Miami Heat last season. O’Neal’s success can only spur the hypercompetitive Bryant.
“He’s crossing ground that hasn’t been crossed before,” Shaw said. “With his competitive spirit, I’m sure he wants to show people that maybe he doesn’t need that 1-2 punch in order to succeed and win a championship. I think we have some pieces in place. It’s a matter of patience, waiting for a guy like Andrew Bynum to mature. I think he’s gonna be really good. Waiting for Lamar (Odom) to be more consistent. I think those things are on the way, as they get more familiar with Phil and the system.”
Maybe when that happens, Bryant will finally be accorded the mythical status that fans, teammates and opponents have given to Bird.
Until then, Bryant remains where he was as a young player trying to relate to his older teammates — a solitary figure left on the outside looking in.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, a comprehensive oral history of the Lakers published by McGraw-Hill.

Imagine Tex Coaching With Riles

2006-11-22T06:24:00.000-08:00

Longtime Lakers team trainer Gary Vitti likes to recall the Pat Riley regime with the Lakers.
Riles always had a way of keeping the pressure on.
Things were never going good enough.
If things did go well, then Riley began searching for the chink in the armor, the next thing that would bring the big letdown, the big disappointment.
There was never a break from his pressure. Never a chance to relax.
That, of course, is the real job of any coach in any league. To keep a team focused. To prevent slippage and failure. To make sure that no one ever naps.
That job is especially difficult in the NBA, where the games are physical and mental challenges, where so much of success depends on energy and focus.
To be all the guardian that he could be, Riley had his mental ploys.
And Phil Jackson has ... Tex Winter.
You could blame it on Winter's age. As he closes in on his 85th birthday, he deserves the right to be a contrarian, to be constantly questioning each of the Lakers players on every little thing.
Except it's not about age with Winter. (If you don't believe that, watch him work a jump rope.) He's probably been a contrarian since the days when he played junior college ball against Jackie Robinson.
Winter is one of the sweetest guys in the world. Unless he's dealing with basketball. He's usually politely pointed. But he can become a fire-breathing dragon, if someone isn't playing the game the right way. Just ask Luc Longley. There were some nights in Chicago when Winter had to be restrained from going after the giant center for lackluster play.
Even Lakers assistant Brian Shaw had a tangle with Winter when he was a player. (Shaw still smiles cautiously when asked about it.)
Just about all his players over the years have found a way to deflect the intense nature of Winter's scrutiny. Most do it with a scoffing laugh when reminded of something Winter has had to say about their games. Michael Jordan once snuck up behind Winter in practice and tugged his shorts to his ankles.
"There was Tex, with his bare butt hanging out of his jock strap," recalled longtime Bulls trainer Mark Pfiel.
Whether it's with an occasional pranks or a nervous laugh, players usually try to make light of Winter's assessment. But only the foolish ones don't take it to heart. And the very best of them find a way to respond.
For yesterday's blog, I caught Winter as he was preparing to leave L.A. today after many days of working with the team. He's headed to Kansas for an event (he coached for years at Kansas State) and will rejoin the Lakers later. He took the time out to offer a frank assessment of the Lakers, which I published Tuesday.
But his impact was seen all over the team later that night in the Lakers' meeting with the Clippers.
Kobe Bryant is not the Kobe of old, Winter had said frankly.
Bryant responded by scoring 40 points on just 23 shots.
The issue with Kwame Brown remains a question of competitiveness, Winter had said.
Kwame responded with a magnificent game off the bench.
Smush Parker needs to show consistency, Winter said.
Smush stepped up.
I roughly paraphrase the great writer Flannery O'Connor in her short story "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," who described one particularly annoying character by saying that she would be a good woman if she had someone to shoot her every day of her life.
That, of course, is what a great coach does. He shoots them every day of their lives. He stays vigilant against the worst inclinations of his players and constantly reminds them that they have to fight against those inclinations.
It's an exhausting job. Only a perfectionist like Riley could do it.
Or a guardian like Winter.
For years he has done that each and every game, each and every playoff series, for Phil Jackson.
As Steve Kerr and Longley and Scottie Pippen and Brian Shaw and numerous other Jackson players have told me over the years, Tex makes Phil's job much easier.
Because he does those things for Jackson so that the head coach doesn't have to worry and nag and confront his players constantly.
Why don't more NBA coaches get their assistants to do such dirty work?
Because none are as fierce about playing the game the right way, because none are as fearless as Winter in taking on the star players, because no assistant coach has the status of Tex Winter.
Jackson has asked Winter to take a lower profile this season, to not speak with the media so much. Winter actually talks little with the media, except for his weekly chats with me.
Winter, however, remains fiercely independent. He was hired years ago by the Bulls to be the "coach's coach," to train Jackson how to be a great coach. Tex is nine championships deep into that lesson. He knows that Jackson, like his players, is just like that woman in Flannery O'Connor's short story. Phil's got to have someone shooting him every day, too.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, a comprehensive oral history of the team published by McGraw-Hill.

What's Up With Kobe?

2006-11-21T13:28:00.000-08:00

Kobe Bryant is simply not the same old Kobe, Tex Winter says.
"He's having a tough time getting that speed of his back," says Winter, who has been one of Bryant's mentors for nearly a decade. "He's not as explosive as he used to be. Maybe he's protecting himself because of his knee (which underwent off-season surgery). Maybe he's doing it subconsciously. He says he feels ok, but you know Kobe. He's not one to make any excuses."
It's going to take time for the injury to heal, Winter said, adding that he hopes Bryant doesn't reinjure the knee trying to come back too soon.
Winter, a Lakers consultant who spends several days each month with the team, said he hasn't insisted that Bryant sit out (Bryant probably wouldn't heed that anyway), but Winter has urged him to be careful.
Meanwhile, Bryant is no where near the player who led the league in scoring last season. "He doesn't seem to mind distributing the ball to his teammates," Winter observed. "He knows he's not as explosive as he used to be. He really doesn't have the ability he used to have."
Winter said he hopes Bryant can regain much of his form over the next two to three weeks, as the season runs well into December.
With Bryant taking a slower pace, Lamar Odom has stepped up his energy and his aggressiveness, something Winter has called for.
"Sometimes he's too aggressive," Winter said with a chuckle, adding that Odom still doesn't fit well in the triangle offense.
"He needs to find a comfort zone in this offense," Winter said. "He still wants to take off on his own and attack the basket."
In a sense, Odom's ability to attack the basket outside the offense is important to the team, Winter said, especially with Bryant unwilling and unable to do so.
Actually, both Bryant and Odom need to continue to find some comfort with their new identities in the offense, Winter said, explaining that their comfort will be important to the rest of the team's growth in the offense.
All in all, Bryant and Odom "have done a very good job together," Winter said. "But now we're getting over the easy part of our schedule and things are going to get a little tougher. They've worked well together, and that will be even more important now."

THE BIG KID

Winter acknowledged that he and coach Phil Jackson have been caught unawares by the play of 19-year-old center Andrew Bynum. "The big kid has come along nicely. He's surprised me several times with his play. He's still inconsistent, but you expect that from a very young player. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has encouraged him a great deal and given him some confidence."
Also deserving credit in Bynum's coaching are Brian Shaw and Kurt Rambis, who have really worked with the kid in terms of the triangle offense, Winter added.

FARMAR WATCH

Add Winter to the list of people who are pondering rookie Jordan Farmar's move to replace Smush Parker as the team's starting point guard.
"If we continue to start Smush, he's got to step up and give us more consistency," Winter said. "In spots, Smush does well both on offense and defense. It's a question of consistency. Somebody might beat him out if he doesn't get more consistent."
Winter confirmed that that somebody would likely be Farmar, who has played well.
Such a move wouldn't happen immediately, however, as Farmar is nursing a sore ankle.

JACKSON'S APPROACH

With youngsters like Farmar and Bynum and with veteran players like Mo Evans and Vlade Radmanovich adjusting to the triangle, Jackson is taking a light-handed approach, as the coach himself still recovers from hip-replacement surgery.
"He's been very patient with these guys," Winter said. "His patience has run out at times in the past. But Phil hasn't been too tough, hasn't been too demanding with these guys."
That's a good approach, Winter said, because the team needs time to grow.
Evans and Radmanovich, in particular, are very much "in the learning process," Winter said. "You gotta have patience with them. It takes time. Both of them can go through the motions with the offense now. But to really be effective you have to know how to make it work. That takes time."
Evans' playing time is going to be limited because he plays behind Bryant, Winter pointed out. For Evans to see more playing time, the team will have to work him in at both the guard and forward spots.
"He's a good athlete, very competitive," Winter noted.
As for Kwame Brown returning from injury, Winter said, "He's gonna help us a great deal if he really gets out there and works at it and competes."
Brown hasn't done that yet, Winter said, and the coaches are trying to decide if it's the lingering effect of his shoulder injury or "just his nature."

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, a comprehensive oral history of the Lakers.

New Home

2006-11-15T04:55:00.000-08:00

This blog has a new home: You can find it at

http://www.lakernoise.com/

Questions To Answer; 10 Reasons The Lakers Wear Shades

2006-11-14T06:41:00.000-08:00

My last post generated a few questions, so I’ll attempt to answer them, first with a general view of the team, then specifically addressing two questions at the end. Before I get started, let me thank those of you who leave comments on Lakernoise.
Two questions in particular came from my appearance Nov. 13 on AM 570, where the hosts hit me with some outstanding questions.

First, what a great time to be a Laker fan. Championships are fun, but Phil Jackson has always pointed out that it’s the journey that makes it all worthwhile.
If that’s the case, this might be the time you sit back and enjoy the scenery, even if it involves taking in an ugly loss like the one to Detroit in Staples Center.
There are many major things going on here, but I’ll highlight just 10 reasons things are good for the Lakers.
1) The emergence of Lamar Odom as a fantastic player; he’s got so much talent, and while his comfort level with the triangle has grown slowly, Tex Winter thinks the coaches need to adjust the offense for LO so that more great things happen; get him on the wing at the 3, Tex says; let him work behind the defense at the mid wing, and also in the pinch post; then move him down to the post where he can do snaky things to drive defenses crazy;
2) The maturing of Kobe Bryant, from Boy Wonder to Veteran Leader (which is really just about the time in life that Michael Jordan began to emerge from his cacoon as well);
3) Luke Walton establishing his game on a pro level as a guy capable of feeding the team and still getting 20 on any given night (admit it—he has stunned many of you);
4) Andrew Bynum finding his way with unexpected playing time and the guidance of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Bynum’s emergence is a great tribute to the Cap, who, let’s face it, has been disrespected in his retirement years; now everyone understands just what a “special” coach is);
5) Phil Jackson regaining his health and vigor, which allows him to have a true enthusiasm for the game (this just might be item no. 1). I’ve had my differences with some of the games that Jackson has played in the past, but his coaching approach has always been liberating, not just for his players and teams, but for the game itself. Jackson’s biggest contribution just may be that he changes the way other coaches think about the game;
6) Tex Winter, at 84, remains ready and able to focus his brilliance and passion on the Lakers and the game itself, always playing devil’s advocate for Jackson, always willing to say exactly what he thinks, consequences be damned (I suspect this is the real reason the Hall of Fame gatekeepers won’t honor him with the admission he richly deserves; he has offended certain powerbrokers with his honesty). Jerry West could engineer Tex’s admission to the hall in a matter of months, but he hasn’t done so. Tex, meanwhile, will contribute more to the Lakers this year because his wife of many years has regained her health;
7) Jordan Farmar in his first weeks of NBA experience has goosed his many fans; they’re ecstatic with what he has shown to date;
8) Kwame Brown and Smush Parker remain notable reclamation projects, who will eventually find solid ways to contribute in a shifting team chemistry;
9) Mo Evans with his bountiful talent dancing at the edge of the picture, slipping into sight just long enough to blow people’s minds with something strong around the basket. He’s just learning the triangle, but as he does, look out. He’s got something for the NBA, and won’t people think Mitch K. is smart when Evans gets to show it;
10) The Running Game, long the heart of Laker lore, was put on the shelf while Jackson and Shaq walked their way to three championships. But now the Running Game is back baby, a tip of the hat to Mitch and Ronnie Lester and Jerry Buss; they found players that both fit the triangle and the running game; and as Tex always points out, the triangle is always ready to be morphed into what works best for the given talent on any team; that’s clearly the case with these Lakers; they just have to work out the kinks. Tex wants them to find ways to get out faster, to go, go, go, because that’s when they truly strike some terror in the hearts of their opponents.

November 13th, 2006 20:27
Heard you on AM 570 today, great insight. Keep up the good work.

Question- do you think that we will see more games like that against the Bucks where Kobe and Odom are both signifficant? Do you think that was a “fluke” or a sign of things to come? I realize that it was the bucks, and they are in serious trouble right now, but I nonetheless saw finally Kobe and Lamar both being big contributors as Tex talked about.
Elyse

Your question fits my list of 10 things so well, Elyse. Kobe and Lamar and the coaching staff long for that growing chemistry between the two, indeed with the rest of the team as well. Kobe and Lamar know that as their on-court work becomes more balanced, things will only get better. You hate to say that just as Pippen matured in Jordan’s shadow, then stepped out of it in absolutely brilliant way, that’s the way K. and LO will grow. They are not the same people as MJ and Scottie. But the circumstances are somewhat similar. This coaching staff has been here before. They know how to grow a team. The journey of it truly is our fun, to watch the progress, the backsliding, the adjustments. Let’s hope the basketball gods are with them on this one.

November 13th, 2006 20:39
I also heard you on 570 am this evening and really enjoyed your insight regarding Phil, Kobe, Shaq & the Lakers. I wonder if you could expand on your comment regarding Shaq not allowing Phil to have a meaningful relationship with Kobe? I find that very interesting and believe that Laker Nation is finally now ready to understand fully the problems Shaq caused with team chemistry.
Laker Larry

Shaq is a great guy, great wit, huge sense of humanity. He also propelled the Lakers to three championships. You gotta love the guy. But he ain’t perfect. Did he have shortcomings in regard to Kobe? You betcha. But Kobe contributed to those as well. As Tex says, “There was just always this thing between them.”
Phil needed that primo relationship with Shaq to coach the team. When Phil arrived, the way he won Shaq over was by showing allegiance to him, not Kobe. Phil did what he had to do. Phil’s critics said he did more than he had to do, perhaps tormenting Kobe too much to please Shaq and certain others. But the trophies are shining in their cases as we speak. They sparkle brightly for a Laker future. Hope is alive. Shaq and Kobe can eye each other from opposite sides of the continent, finally able to let some of the old conflict die down.
In fact, there’s the scent of real competition in the air. Shaq now bathes in the glow of his fourth championship ring.
In getting it, he told everybody that Pat Riley was the best coach he ever had. Phil is so competitive. And Kobe?
Those guys ache to answer.
To do that, they have to get all the Laker ducks in a row. That’s the journey.

Note to Readers

2006-11-07T07:16:00.000-08:00

This blog is also available in a new, easy-to-use format at

http://www.lakernoise.com/

Winter: Bench Bryant And Push Odom

2006-11-07T07:15:00.000-08:00

Note:

It’s a unique problem if you have Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan on your team. When do you run the offense, and when do you pass to the superstar?
That question will be critical for the Los Angeles Lakers as they try to develop team balance this season, according to Tex Winter, triangle offense guru and longtime assistant to Lakers coach Phil Jackson.
In fact, Winter says that’s the only real problem he’s seen with Lamar Odom’s newfound star status for the Lakers. How will he react now that Bryant has rejoined the team?
Will Odom defer to Bryant as he has in seasons past?
That’s a concern to the Lakers, said Winter. “After all, there is only one ball. Odom might defer. The whole team might.”
Chief among those concerned is Bryant himself.
“It’s not Kobe’s fault,” Winter said, adding that Bryant keeps encouraging Odom to be aggressive, to emerge as his own man.
Odom averaged 28 points over the first three games of this season, including one game in which Bryant returned to the lineup after a long layoff following knee surgery.
But in the fourth game, Odom and the rest of the team reverted to old form and deferred to Bryant, Winter said. Not surprisingly, the Lakers suffered their first loss of the season against Seattle.
The issue is critical for two reasons, Winter said.
First, the team needs to develop balance to grow and thrive.
Second, Bryant has returned too early from injury and does not have the physical conditioning to play, Winter said, adding that he sent an email to Phil Jackson, telling him to pull Bryant from the lineup so that he can condition until he’s ready to play.
Otherwise, Winter fears that Bryant will get injured trying to play his way into shape, especially if everyone on the team keeps deferring to him.
“Odom has an open shot but passes to Bryant. Luke Walton has an open shot but passes to Bryant,” Winter said of the loss to Seattle. “They all passed up good shots to get the ball to the superstar.”
The Chicago Bulls used to have the same problem when they ran the triangle under Jackson, Winter said.
But the one person who stood up and ran the system, who made the triangle work for those old Bulls, was Scottie Pippen, Winter explained.
Pippen was determined to move the ball to the open man, rather than Jordan. That open man might be Bill Cartwright or Luc Longley, it didn’t matter. Pippen was determined to make the offense work. That was the only way the Bulls would grow into a championship team.
Now, Jackson’s young Lakers team has to find the same determination, Winter said. They have to move the ball to the open man, not to Bryant every time.
And Odom is the key, in that regard.
For years, Odom has danced away from predictions that he would blossom into a star, Winter said. “Odom’s an exceptional player. Everybody has said he should be a superstar. What’s kept him from it is his own personality. He’s unselfish. He hasn’t had a real desire to score a lot of points.”
That changed with his numbers to open the season with Bryant on the bench. In the Lakers first game, a win over Phoenix, Odom had 34 points and 13 rebounds with six assists. He notched close to a triple-double in the Lakers’ second win with 22 points, nine rebounds and nine assists.
Upon Bryant’s return, Odom again scored 28, before falling into old habits against Seattle.
The team also rebounded poorly against Seattle, another bad habit the Lakers can’t afford, Winter said.
But the main chore for the Lakers coaching staff and players is to adjust to allow for Odom’s budding stardom.
“We need to structure the offense a little better so he can utilize his offense,” Winter said of Odom.
In particular, the team needs to look for ways to feature Odom in the post, where he has shown real effectiveness.
Another factor is to take even more advantage of Odom’s abilities on the defensive boards in igniting the fast break, Winter said. “We need to get guys filling the lanes quicker so we can get the ball out quicker.”
The 84-year-old coach loves seeing Odom go end to end “from the top of the foul circle at one end all the way to the basket.”
And when the game slows to a half-court triangle set, Winter would like to see Odom on the weak side, where he could get the ball from a quick reversal. From that point, Odom could really attack the defense, Winter said. “Not just get him in the pinch post, but get him out on the mid wing, where he could be effective.”
The Lakers’ solid start hasn’t surprised Winter. After worrying about what he saw in summer league play, the team consultant liked what the Lakers displayed during the preseason.
He’s also pleased with the considerable defensive improvement the team has shown.
Other key Winter observations:
• Consistency will be Rony Turiaf’s and Andrew Bynum’s challenge. How they respond will be a key to playing time. If they continue to develop, the Lakers are going to be quite qood.
• Luke Walton “is sometimes trying to over-pass. He’s got to look for his shot more. He has to be in the lineup. He makes us functional.”
• Mitch Kupchak is someone fans derisively label “Mitch Cupcake,” but the Lakers roster this season is proof that “he’s a good general manager. He deals with people honestly and straight-forwardly. What else can a GM do?”
• Mo Evans “is gonna help us. He’s a 3. He might develop in to a 2.”
• Smush Parker “offensively he doesn’t know how to utilize his physical abilities, but he’s learning. He definitely gives Phil what he wants, which is pressure on the ball. So does Sasha (Vujacic). Sasha played well in the preseason, but he’s played nervously to start the season. He has to lose that nervousness because he can help us.”
• Rookie Jordan Farmar is “gonna be good. He’s not quite ready yet. He’s got to get stronger and tougher defensively. As he gets more acquainted with the offense, he’ll be more effective. He has a good head for the game. As time goes on, he might really be important for us.”

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, a comprehensive team history of the Lakers, published by McGraw-Hill.

The Eulogies Are Nice, But Red Was Far From Loved And He Liked It That Way

2006-10-31T08:39:00.000-08:00

I still have the cigar that Red Auerbach gave me in 1988. I had gone to his office in Washington, D.C., to do an interview about his coaching days.
“That is something you’ll want to keep,” I told myself at the time.
Saturday night upon the news of his death, I went to the drawer where I kept the cigar and got it out. It looked ageless, pretty much like Auerbach himself.
This past spring marked the 40th anniversary of his retirement from coaching. During those four decades he remained a giant on the NBA landscape, testy enough to engage in a bit of serious verbal jousting with Phil Jackson when the Laker coach won his ninth NBA title in 2002, which tied Auerbach for the most titles won by an NBA coach.
As Jackson and other opponents around the league will attest, Auerbach remained a pretty fiery guy his entire life.
I recall the closing seconds of Boston's Game 6 defeat in the 1988 Eastern Conference finals. The scene had the makings of a real Celtic nightmare. The Pontiac Silverdome was packed to the rafters with 38,900 Pistons fans eager for a loud, rowdy, finger-shakin' victory celebration, the kind that would blow off Detroit's blues at not having reached the NBA finals in more than three decades. The situation presented what might have been perceived as a slight void in the Celtic leadership, with K.C. Jones having announced his retirement from coaching at the season's end and the season's end obviously imminent here in this least traditional of basketball places.
But as the clock ran down and Boston's fortunes seemed lowest,Auerbach moved from his seat in the stands and made his way down to the bench to lead his Celtics through the crowd back to the locker room. There was nothing downcast, or even hurried, in his stride. He moved with a purpose, past the celebrants and the cameras. It was obvious that he was not about to let this defeat diminish his, or his team's, Celtic Pride.
It was a deft move, perhaps second-nature, the kind Auerbach had become known for over the years. The subtle statement. The situation hadn't called for a puff from his trademark victory cigar, but he knew just the right touch all the same. He provided a silent, strong presence at a difficult moment. It seemed that whatever the Celtics needed over the decades— moxie, savvy, street smarts, even a tad of humility now and then—Auerbach found a way to provide it.
As he aged, some things did change for the redhead. For one thing, he suffered dumb questions from writers a little better than he used to.
During that 1988 interview I asked him if he missed coaching.
"Oh sure," he said, "you miss it a lot. You can't do something for 20 years at a professional level and not miss it."
Auerbach retired following the 1965-66 season, after his team had won its eighth straight (and ninth overall) NBA Championship. The Celtics went on to win two more championships over the next three seasons after Auerbach named Bill Russell as player/coach. Auerbach said he had no regrets about stepping down when he did.
"I had to make a choice," he explained. "Either I got into management then, when it had to be done, or wait four or five years and then look around and see. Everything is a matter of timing."
The timing in this case concerned the club's general managership. Long-time team owner Walter Brown had died in 1964, leaving Auerbach to fill the dual role of coach and general manager for two seasons. That task left him exhausted. He once explained to good friend Lefty Driesell that the mere act of putting on his sneakers to go to practice had become drudgery. At the end of the 1965 season, he knew he either had to find a coach or a general manager.
Having gotten his fill of the bench, Auerbach decided to coach one more season while he looked around for a successor. Once that was done, he would become a full-time general manager.
Without tremendous fanfare, Auerbach ended one of the most successful coaching career in the history of professional sports. In his 20 seasons of coaching, he won a league-record 938 regular-season games. It was a record that would eventually be broken, he predicted at the time. And it eventually was by Lenny Wilkens.
"It will be broken in time if guys can last that long mentally," Auerbach said. "Because I did it in 20 years; I don't know whether a lot of guys will do it in 20 years."
An immensely proud man, Auerbach said he took the most pride in the consistency of winning that the record represents. He was also immensely prideful that the Celtics accomplished their championships with meager team resources. Walter Brown, after all, had funded the team out of his own pocket for years, which meant that the entire Celtics organization consisted of four people. Auerbach had no assistant coaches. He did his own scouting and managed the team's business affairs, right down to booking plane flights and hotel rooms.
"We had no money to speak of," he said. "We were still in the process of selling the game to the Boston area."
Slowly New England fans took to the Celtics winning ways, but that still didn't translate into overwhelming cash flow. Whereas a wealthy team like the New York Knicks could afford to buy players, Auerbach spent his time shopping for bargains, either unheralded rookies or supposedly washed-up has-beens.
"We kept winning with mirrors, adding a player here, a player there," he said. "We did a lot of developing and teaching."
Auerbach also did a lot of motivating. The team's competitiveness was often driven by his temper. There is no better example of this than Game Three of the 1957 NBA Finals against the St. Louis Hawks, as the Celtics were on their way to their first championship. The St. Louis crowd in Kiel Auditorium had its rough edges, which included a reputation for racial and ant-Semitic epithets. Auerbach stirred this cauldron during pre-game warmups when he complained that one of the goals was too low. "I knew it was too low when Sharman and Cousy told me they could touch the rim," he explained. Auerbach took his complaint to the officials, who agreed to check the height. They found no problem. Hawks owner Ben Kerner, though, had become overheated by the delay and stalked out onto the floor to scream that Auerbach was embarrassing him in front of the home fans.
Auerbach promptly ended the tirade with a shot to Kerner's mouth. "I was talking to the refs," Auerbach later explained, "and he interrupted me."
So Auerbach later threw the punch.
The officials chose not to throw him out, he said, because the incident occurred before the game. The blow brought blood but no permanent damage to Kerner, who remained Red's friend long after the incident.
"When I retired he gave me wonderful gifts," Auerbach recalled.
I later talked to Kerner and he acknowledged his good friendship with Auerbach, although I don’t think Kerner had fond memories of getting punched just before tip-off of the league’s signature event.

THE PRIDE

After beating the Minneapolis Lakers 4-0 in 1959 for their second title, Auerbach’s Celtics emerged full-blown in the early 1960s. Bill Russell and Tommy Heinsohn were in their prime. Sam Jones moved in as a starter and a scorer to replace guard Bill Sharman, who retired in 1962. And while the careers of Bob Cousy and Frank Ramsey were winding down, Auerbach always seemed to have the right answer to keep the transition of talent flowing smoothly.
K.C. Jones was gaining experience as a backup to Cousy, and in 1962, the Celtics drafted John Havlicek, a good athlete but no superstar, out of Ohio State. Who could have seen that he would evolve into such a player? In retrospect, the development of the Boston dynasty was something to behold.
The Celtics beat the Hawks for the championship in 1960 and '61, and then defeated the new Los Angeles Lakers in 1962 to bring their title count to four straight. Still, many observers figured their day was over.
"The Boston Celtics are an old team," Sports Illustrated declared in March of 1963. "Tired blood courses through their varicose veins."
The Celtics, of course, would win their sixth title that spring and five more over the next six seasons. But SI's underestimation of Boston's strength still had some basis in fact. It seemed that each February of his career Cousy had blasted the NBA for seasons that were too long. Finally weary, Cousy announced that he would retire after the 1962-63 season. Observers saw his leaving as a major loss to the Celtics. And they didn't see the wheels of Auerbach's cunning turning.
The reason for this was Havlicek. Auerbach had never seen Havlicek play when he drafted him in 1962. Then in camp that summer he got his first look. "I remember I was stunned," Auerbach later told reporters. "All I could think of was, 'Ohh. Have I got something here? Are they going to think I'm smart.'"
But Havlicek was just one of several changing faces in the team's evolution. Later Auerbach would get Don Nelson and Bailey Howell and several more key pieces to the puzzle. Plus, Cousy's leaving meant the Jones duo of K.C. and Sam would become a larger factor. Most important, though, the Celtics had Bill Russell, whom former Lakers coach Fred Schaus called "the most dominant individual who ever played a team sport."
Built around this incredible player, the team's changes were made without problem. The coach and center had come to lord over the NBA, and it didn't make them popular. "At first I didn't like Red Auerbach," a rival NBA coach once said. "But in time I grew to hate him."
Those emotions have lasted for decades.
"Red was hated around the league," former NBA player and Hawks coach Paul Seymour told me in 1990. "He wasn't a very well-liked guy. He always had the talent. He was always shooting his mouth off. If you walked up to him in the old days, he was more than likely to tell you to get lost."
Having a great player like Russell made Auerbach a coach, former Syracuse coach Al Cervi told me. "He's the biggest phony who ever walked the streets of America."
Auerbach was an early master at working the refs. His foot-stomping tirades, usually punctuated by a lit cigar at the end of the game, had begun to wear on his opponents by the mid-1960s. Plus, the NBA was getting more television exposure, and his antics weren't always pleasant to view.
"Red was a very astute judge of talent," Schaus, whose Laker teams battled Auerbach's Celtics four times in the Finals, explained for me once. "When you have a lot of stars, you have to keep them happy and playing as a team. Red did that. I didn't like some of the things he did and said when I competed against him. Some of the things he said would bother me. But the guy who wore No. 6 out there bothered us more. You had to change your game completely because of Russell."
But for Lakers star Jerry West, Auerbach on the sidelines was more entertainment than irritation. "Red was outspoken," West told me. "His sideline antics were funny. I happened to like him very much. When you talk to his ex-players, they all have great respect for him. I don't know how many players feel that way about their former coaches."
Some coaches didn't have Auerbach's success because they didn't have his timing. They tried to intimidate the officials throughout the game, Auerbach explained. "You work the refs only when you feel you're right. You had to pick your spots. Sure I was active. You had to be active. But it wasn't all the time."
As for the enmity from other coaches that still burned decades later, Auerbach said, "Any time you're winning, you get criticism. Nothing instigates jealousy like winning. When you're winning, they find a thousand reasons to take potshots. You don't pay attention. You just keep doing what you're doing."
This debate over Auerbach flared regularly over the winter and spring of 1963. His relationship with official Sid Borgia carried a particular spite. The Boston press took to calling Borgia "Big Poison."
"I'm convinced," Auerbach said after one game, "that it would be the highlight of his career if he refereed the game in which we lost the championship. He doesn't like me, he doesn't like Cousy and he doesn't like the Celtics."
Whether he really wanted it or not, Borgia would never get that opportunity. Boston just didn’t lose in the championship round. The aged Celtics beat the Lakers in 1963 for their sixth title. "Please," Auerbach crowed to the press, "tell me some of these stories about Los Angeles being the basketball capital of the world."
"It's nice to be playing with the old pros," Russell said. "The old, old pros."
There was no champagne or beer in the Boston locker room. Why celebrate? replied Heinsohn when asked about it. "We've won five in a row."
The 1963-64 season brought Auerbach another series of crafty personnel moves to crow about—the addition of veteran center Clyde Lovellette and 6'6" Willie Naulls in the frontcourt. Naulls would provide double-figure scoring as a key substitute for three important years, and Lovellette gave them some good games, too. Auerbach also added Larry Siegfried, Havlicek's teammate out of Ohio State who would mature into a double-figures scorer in a few seasons.
The big change for 1963-64 came with the league's balance of power. Maurice Podoloff had retired as commissioner and was replaced by Walter Kennedy. In an even bigger move, the Warriors had left Philadelphia to move to San Francisco, where they took charge in the Western Conference with what appeared to be one of the most powerful teams in NBA history.
But that was on paper, Auerbach pointed out. "I've seen a lot of great teams, at least on paper, that won nothing."
Warriors coach Alex Hannum called it his "muscle and hustle team."
Wilt Chamberlain was the chief muscle. But there was plenty more. There was 6'11", 230-pound Nate Thurmond, a rookie out of Bowling Green who had yet to develop offensively. Then there were 6'8" Wayne Hightower, a fine shooter, and 6'6", 215-pound Tom Meschery, who helped in the muscle department. The crafty backcourt included Al Attles, Guy Rodgers and Gary Phillips.
It was a lineup brimming with future Hall of Famers.
"That was a powerful, physical team," Auerbach said. "Chamberlain and Thurmond were two of the best centers in the game."
But the Warriors were no match for Boston in the big show. Frank Ramsey, all of 6'3", psyched out Thurmond on defense, and the Celtics waltzed. Chamberlain was a power, but Russell forced him into taking a fallaway jumper. In one sequence in Game 1, a 108-96 Boston win, Russell blocked Wilt's shot, only to see Thurmond get the loose ball and take it back up. Russell blocked that one, too.
"He never stops throwing you something new," an impressed Rodgers said of Russell afterward.
The Celtics took the series, 4-1, for their sixth consecutive championship. "A lot of teams have come and gone since we first beat St. Louis in '57," Ramsey told reporters.
Auerbach had won seven championships and had never been named coach of the year. Still, he pushed on with his singular style.
During the 1964 season, he had fined several players for a transgression of team rules. They asked him to reconsider. "Get lost," he replied, "if you don't know by now that the Celtics are a dictatorship. I am a dictator and it's about time you found out."
Asked about his style, he told reporters: "Look, I don't worry about handling them. I worry about how they handle me. I'm not here as a doormat. Let them adjust to me. Anybody who comes to this team better take a little time to figure out what I'm like and learn to please me."
Despite his gruffness, he had a real flair for sales, and even represented several products on the side. "Selling keeps me alert during the season," he explained. "I meet clients when I'm on the road."
With this seventh title, it began to appear as if Boston might never lose. Auerbach projected that much. "The thrill never goes from winning," he said. "But maybe the reasons change. First, it was just trying to win a title. Now it is a question of going down as the greatest team of all time. That stimulates you."
The closing of the '64 season brought the retirement of Jim Loscutoff and Ramsey. Loscutoff had once sworn that as soon as he turned in his uniform he was going to belt Auerbach. Using the psychology he was known for, the coach had determined that he couldn't criticize Cousy, Ramsey or Russell. They just couldn't or wouldn't take it. So he had used Heinsohn or Loscutoff to tongue-lash when he needed to communicate displeasure with the team's play.
Loscutoff's plan was never realized. Like the rest of the Celtics, he said he loved Auerbach more than he hated him. The coach had an ability to be close and detached at the same time.
"His whole theory behind basketball is never get too close to the players' wives," Loscutoff once explained.
He couldn't make good coaching decisions if he knew a player's family well, Auerbach confided. "You can't be emotionally involved and impartial at the same time."

THE BURDEN

Walter Brown died in August 1964, leaving Auerbach alone to guide the Celtics on to greatness. Brown's passing and the fact that a new group of young officials had come into the league convinced the Boston coach to tone down his act somewhat.
He still prowled the sidelines while clutching a tightly rolled game program. And he still picked his spots. He just didn't pick them as often or as loudly. It some ways it didn't matter. Every time he stirred from the bench during a road game, the boos followed him.
In the spring of 1965, he appeared on a television talk show and seemed startled when the audience clapped politely. "How come they applauded?" Auerbach asked the host. "It makes me feel uneasy."
Still, he conceded his image had changed. Going into the 1965 playoffs, he had been fined less than $1,000 by the league, an unusually low figure for him. By no means was he squeaky clean, though.
"If you get obnoxious, you get incentive," he told his players.
He regularly offered young coaches tips on how to get ahead—place the scorer's and timer's table near your bench at home, and when you're on the road, wait until the other team has taken the floor for warm-ups to request their basket. Anything that disconcerted the opponent was viewed as an asset.
While he talked these precepts, he employed them less and less as he neared the end of his coaching career. Red had mellowed, the writers covering the Celtics concluded.
Still, there were some things in his act that he refused to tone down. League officials had sent him notes saying that it didn't look good for him to light cigars on the bench.
Auerbach told the league he would stop his cigars when other coaches stopped their cigarettes, a response that angered some of his colleagues in the profession. A few coaches complained that Auerbach had an endorsement with Blackstone, a cigar company, and that he was putting on "an act."
"If this was an act, I'd be an actor," he replied. "I wouldn't be a coach."
Boy, could he coach. The Celtics broke their own record for regular-season wins in 1964-65 with 62. And Auerbach finally got his coach-of-the-year award.
"He's getting the maximum out of me," Russell told reporters.
They added their eighth championship that year, but things in the Eastern Division became complicated at mid-season when San Francisco traded Chamberlain back to the new Philadelphia 76ers (the old Syracuse Nationals). Boston had finished well atop the standings but had to fight Philly in the playoffs through another seven-game series. Chamberlain's team wasn't vanquished until Havlicek stole an in-bounds pass under Philadelphia's basket with five seconds remaining, which, of course, led to Johnny Most's famous line, "Havlicek stole the ball!!!"
For the record, Havlicek deflected the ball to Sam Jones, who raced downcourt to celebrate.
With the momentum from that drama, the Celtics went on to meet the Lakers in the Finals once again. Los Angeles, though, had lost Elgin Baylor to a knee injury and fell yet again to Auerbach’s army.
After the playoffs, Auerbach announced that he would coach one more season, then retire to the front office. He explained privately that coaching had become a burden. Perhaps more than any NBA coach ever, he loved winning, but success had taken its toll. He was nearing 50 and feeling 70. With Walter Brown's death, the administrative load was heavier. Auerbach could no longer do both jobs.
Reporters asked Auerbach what the highlights of his coaching days had been. "After 1,500 games, who could remember?" he replied. "What you remember is how hard it was to get each individual win."
The wins got even harder in that final season of 1965-66. The Eastern Division was a dogfight. Chamberlain and the 76ers took some of the starch out of the Boston dynasty. Heinsohn had retired at the end of the previous season, and Havlicek became a starter. Don Nelson, acquired after Los Angeles released him, inherited the role of sixth man. For the first time in a decade, the Celtics didn't win the Eastern Division title. The 76ers won 55 games and Boston 54. But Boston regrouped in the playoffs. Philly had received a first-round bye, while Boston fended off Cincinnati in a preliminary round. The layoff hurt Chamberlain and the Sixers. They were caught flat in the Eastern finals as Boston won, 4-1. Boston had lost six of 10 games to Philadelphia during the season, but again it was Russell's team that went on to play for the title.
The 1966 championship series quickly turned into another Celtics/Lakers scrap. Baylor had returned from knee injury, and Los Angeles had regained its potency. The Celtics had a 38-20 lead in Game One in the Garden, but the Lakers fought back to tie it late. With the score even in the final minute, Russell blocked a Baylor shot and was called for goaltending. Sam Jones scored for Boston to send it to overtime, where Baylor and West propelled the Lakers to a win, 133-129, for a 1-0 lead. Baylor had scored 36, West 41. But instead of the glory and the psychological edge falling to the Lakers, the attention abruptly shifted to Boston. Auerbach picked the postgame interview session to announce that Russell would be his replacement as head coach. For months the speculation had been that Cousy, then the coach at Boston College, would get the job. Working as a player-coach, Boston's center would become the first black head coach in a major American sport. Auerbach had talked briefly with Cousy and Heinsohn about taking the job, but both men agreed no one could better motivate Russell than Russell himself.
The announcement made headlines the next morning, while the Lakers' major victory was almost obscured, a fact that leaves Auerbach gleeful to this day.
With the future of the team settled, the Celtics bore down on the Lakers, winning the second game in the Garden, 129-109, then adding two more victories in Los Angeles for a 3-1 lead.
Game 7 in the Garden was another classic. The Celtics took a big lead, as Baylor and West were a combined 3 for 18 from the floor in the first half. But as usual, the Lakers came back, cutting the Boston lead to six with 20 seconds left. Still, it seemed time for Red to light another victory cigar. The Lakers took fire with that, cutting the lead to two, 95-93, with four seconds left. Just as they had for years, the fans rushed the floor to celebrate a Boston championship. But the '66 celebration was premature and out-of-hand. Russell, who had played with a broken bone in his foot and had still gotten 32 rebounds, was knocked down. Orange juice containers on the Boston bench were spilled across the floor, and Celtic Satch Sanders lost his shirt to the crowd. Somehow, K.C. Jones got the inbounds pass to Havlicek, who dribbled out the clock for championship number nine, 95-93.
Schaus said later that he would have loved to have been able to shove the victory cigar down Auerbach's throat. "We came awfully close to putting that damn thing out," the Lakers coach told me years later.
At Auerbach's retirement dinner, Russell addressed the gathering: "When I took this job, somebody said, 'What did you take it for? You have nothing to gain. You got to follow Red Auerbach.'
"I don't think I'm going to be another Red Auerbach," Russell continued, then turned to his former coach. "Personally, I think you're the greatest basketball coach that ever lived. You know, over the years... I heard a lot of coaches and writers say the only thing that made you a great coach was Bill Russell. It helped. But that's not what did it.
"Now this is kind of embarrassing, but I'll go so far, Red, as to say this: I like you. And I'll admit there aren't very many men that I like. But you I do. For a number of reasons. First of all, I've always been able to respect you. I don't think you're a genius, just an extraordinarily intelligent man. We'll be friends until one of us dies. And I don't want too many friends, Red."
I agree with Russell. That’s why I saved the cigar.

Full Text Of 'The Death of Defense' Article

2006-10-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

It remains one of the enduring images of NBA lore—Joe Dumars guarding a determined young Michael Jordan in the 1990 Eastern Conference playoffs.
Dumars of the “Bad Boy” Detroit Pistons, the league’s two-time defending champs, looked like a gaucho corralling the ultimate toro, his feet moving furiously (maybe the best defensive slide in the history of the game), one forearm firmly barred into Jordan to keep contact, the other bent arm thrust into the air, giving Dumars his only hope of keeping his balance while trying to ride the Jordan whirlwind.
Jerry West watched the performance and remarked privately that most people considered Isiah Thomas the Pistons’ superstar, but West pointed out that it was Dumars who was the supreme talent.
Why?
Well, West said, both Thomas and Dumars could push the envelope offensively, “but Joe’s defense sets him apart.”
Just how good was that defense?
A key part of the Pistons' physical team defense, it left a supremely disappointed Jordan sobbing at the back of the team bus when the series was over (it’s also probably the only NBA defense ever to spawn a best-selling book: Sam Smith’s ‘The Jordan Rules’).
Indeed, it was a formative moment in pro basketball history because it brought Jordan the ultimate challenge and propelled him toward a greatness that fascinated a global audience. Whether they liked pro basketball or not, people felt compelled to watch “His Airness” grow up against the Pistons’ physical challenge.
“I think that ‘Jordan Rules’ defense, as much as anything else, played a part in the making of Michael Jordan,” said Tex Winter, who was an assistant coach for that Chicago team. The 1990 loss forced Jordan and the Bulls to find an answer to Detroit’s muscle.
“Those Jordan Rules were murder,” Winter explained. “The fact that we could win the next year even though they were playing that defense says everything about Jordan as a competitor. Any lesser player would have folded his tent.”
Jordan had to dig deeper to respond to the Pistons, and his effort pushed his Bulls to six championships over the next eight seasons.
The unfortunate footnote to this legacy is that under an interpretation of the rules adopted by the NBA last season, if Dumars were playing today he would not be allowed to guard Jordan so physically, or perhaps even guard him at all.
Today Dumars is the chief basketball executive of the team he once led as a player. He’s an honest man, which means he chooses his words carefully.
Asked in July if he could defend Jordan under today’s interpretation of the rules, Dumars first laughed, then offered a long pause before replying, “It would have been virtually impossible to defend Michael Jordan based on the way the game’s being called right now.”

THE NEW WAY

Just how is the game being called these days?
New Jersey Nets executive Rod Thorn, a longtime expert on NBA rules, acknowledges that last season the league adopted a dramatic shift in how it interpreted the rules of the game.
No longer would a defensive player on the perimeter be allowed to use his hand, a barred arm or any sort of physical contact to impede or block the movement of either a cutter or a ball handler.
In a recent interview, Thorn said that the NBA had changed the rule to give an advantage to the offensive player.
“It’s more difficult now to guard the quick wing player who can handle the ball,” Thorn said of the change. “I think it helps skilled players over someone who just has strength or toughness. What the NBA is trying to do is promote unimpeded movement for dribblers or cutters.”
Thorn said the change was made because muscular defensive players had gotten the upper hand.
“My opinion is that the game had gone too much toward favoring strong players over skilled players,” Thorn said.
“The NBA felt there was too much body, too much hand-checking, being used by defenders to the detriment of the game. There was a feeling that there was too much advantage for a defensive player who could merely use his strength to control the offensive player.”
The new rules interpretations have attempted to address that issue, Thorn said. “If the refs perceive that a defender is bumping the cutter, or bumping a ball-handler, then they’ll blow their whistles.”
Blow their whistles is exactly what officials began doing in both the NBA and its Development League (where many nights officials were whistling a whopping 60 to 70 fouls a game).
This new way of calling became increasingly apparent with each regular-season game last year, and it really made an impression during the playoffs. Free from the physical challenge of defenders, offensive players found many more opportunities to attack the basket — and draw fouls.
As a result, the new rules interpretation helped promote the emergence last season of a new generation of super stars, from Kobe Bryant scoring his 81 points during a regular season game, to LeBron James, Vince Carter, Gilbert Arenas and Dwyane Wade making big splashes in the playoffs.
“The good wing players — LeBron, Kobe, Arenas, Wade, Carter—shot a lot of free throws with the way the game is now called,” Thorn admitted.
The change became quite apparent during the NBA Finals in June as fans saw time and again Miami’s Wade attacking the basket against seemingly helpless Dallas defenders.
When they did try to stop Wade, those Dallas defenders often drew foul calls, which sent Wade to the line to shoot free throws.
The new approach even played a role in determining the NBA champion, as Wade played majestically in leading Miami from a two-game deficit to a four-games-to-two victory for the title.

NOT EVERYONE’S HAPPY

The results were immediate and pleasing to the league’s front office.
Offensive players were freed as never before and fans were thrilled by high-scoring games. Television ratings jumped with the excitement, and reporters began filing stories signaling an NBA revival not seen since the days when Jordan played for the Bulls.
The league had made an obvious move to try to pick up scoring averages that had been in decline since the late 1980s. And it seems to have worked.
But not everyone is enthused about the changes.
Tex Winter, now 84 and the veteran of more than a half century of coaching, has serious misgivings about what the league has done.
Winter acknowledges the outgrowth of the new rules interpretation is the rise of the super dominant offensive player, led by Wade’s performance in the NBA Finals and Bryant’s string of 40-, 50, even 60-point games during the regular season.
“It’s brought all these 40-point scorers,” Winter said. “They can’t score 40 points unless they get 15-20 free throws.”
And that’s exactly what they were getting on their big nights.
“They should be protected, but not that much,” Winter said of the current generation of talented offensive players. “I don’t think that just touching a player should be a foul.”
Yet there were key foul calls in the playoffs last year that came down to touch calls, which in turn sent the offensive player to the line for bonus points that ultimately decided games.
Ironically, this attempt to pick up scoring also slowed the pace of NBA games last year because numerous foul calls mean a parade of free throws on many game nights, Winter said. “The fans are not going to like that whistle blowing all the time. It’s slowed down the pace of the game.”
Winter’s other complaint with the new officiating is that the game now allows the same old physical play in the post while turning the perimeter and wing into a no-touch zone.
“That doesn’t make sense to me,” Winter said. “If you can do all that tough stuff inside, why can’t you do it outside?”
“Defense has basically stayed the same in the low post. Out on the court there’s no doubt that the interpretation has changed,” Thorn conceded.

FAVORING ONE STYLE OVER ANOTHER

Dumars put together a Pistons team that won an NBA championship in 2004 and made a return to the Finals in 2005. That team would have a harder time playing its defensive style in today’s game, Dumars said. “We could still compete, but it would be a lot tougher.”
As one of the top executives in the league, Dumars is hesitant to criticize the changes. He articulates his misgivings cautiously, but he makes it clear that the new rules may not allow for much diversity of play.
“I think the game is best played when everyone is allowed to play to their strengths,” he said. “I don’t think any one style should be elevated over another style.”
He said the league was at its best back in the late 80s and early 90s. “There were different styles. The Lakers had their Showtime style, getting out and running. We had our physical style as the Pistons. The Celtics had their style, as did the Bulls.
“There wasn’t anyone pushing for one style of play. That made it entertaining. When we played the Lakers, it was a battle of styles, their running against our physical game.”
Dumars said that clash of styles made for great basketball, great entertainment for the fans.
His comments beg the question: Has the league eliminated a defensive style with its new format?

OVERREACTION

Hall of Famer Rick Barry, a keen observer of the game, said he would love to see players of the past getting to attack the basket under the new officiating.
“They’d score a LOT more,” he said.
Barry called the new rules interpretation “on overreaction by the league to the low scoring teams that have arisen over the last 15 years.”
Actually the league was perhaps trying to remedy the wrong problem, Barry said.
The problem of low scoring is that coaches with less talented teams, beginning with Mike Fratello back in the 80s, put “an emphasis on ball control, on keeping down the number of possessions. That was the way Fratello kept his teams in ball games. It was the smart thing to do to win.”
Soon other coaches, who needed to win to avoid getting fired, began copying Fratello’s approach.
With that slower style also came the rise of muscular — some say illegal — defenses, such as Dumars’ “Bad Boy” Pistons and Pat Riley’s New York Knicks.
The combination of a slower tempo and the muscular defense turned the NBA’s running game into a half-court battle.
Rather than calling touch fouls, the NBA really should have considered shortening the shot clock to 20 or even 18 seconds, Barry said. “That would speed the game up.”
Still, Barry, a prodigious scorer, admits to being angered by hand-checking defenses back in the 70s. And the modern game had become dominated by hand-checking and other physical ploys.
“With the way the game was being played, how much skill does it take to hold and push and shove and grab excessively?” Barry asked. “Now, with the new rules, the athletic players are much more exciting for the fans to watch.”

THE ADJUSTMENT?

Rod Thorn concedes that the increased foul calls were a negative last season because a parade of free throws ultimately slows the tempo of a game and subtracts from the quality of basketball.
“Once the players get used to it, they’ll adjust,” he said.
The changes will not bring the end of defense as we know it, Thorn said. “The good defensive teams are still good. It’s just more difficult to cover those wing players, there’s no doubt about it.”
It does, however, raise questions about the style of defense. Teams that like ball pressure are already rethinking their approach.
Both Tex Winter and Joe Dumars agree that there will be adjustments, just as they agree that now that the NBA has found some new offensive life, there will be no turning back to the old ways.
So the upcoming season becomes a matter of how teams, coaches and players adjust to a new game.
Dumars, always a stoic as a player, takes the same approach as an executive.
“Everybody is going to have to adjust to how the game is being called,” he said. “There’s no sense in complaining about it because it’s not going to change. That’s been the history of the league. The game changes and you have to make adjustments.”
Teams will have to adjust their personnel, coaches will have to adjust their strategies and tactics, and players will have to adjust their play, Dumars said.
There will be adjustments before the season, before games, even during games, he added.
Winter, though, thinks adjustments should not be made just by players and coaches.
He thinks officials still need to adjust how they call the game. They can’t make it a sport of touch fouls.
“It’s pretty hard to play defense against these quicker guards without touching them a little bit,” Winter said. “I think the officials are going to have to make an adjustment too. They can’t call all those touch fouls.”
A big issue for Winter’s Lakers is how the guards will play defensively. Traditionally, Phil Jackson’s teams have featured lots of ball pressure. That means the Lakers’ pressure style has to shift.
“I think you have to play more of a containing defense,” explained Winter. “You can still put some pressure on the offense. You can contain them and slow the ball up.”
But the new guidelines “change how you force turnovers,” Winter explained. “You can’t be as aggressive as you’d like to be with your hands. You can’t be ‘into’ the guy as much.”
As a result, defense now becomes a matter of waiting for the offensive player to make a mistake, rather than forcing a turnover, Winter said.
The Lakers would like to exert the kind of ball pressure they used to deploy when Derek Fisher wore the Forum Blue and Gold.
But the new guidelines are still murky, Winter said.
Before games, officials have visited with teams to explain the new approach, Winter said. “They come in and tell us all this stuff. Then the first four or five plays of the game, you see them doing just the opposite from what they said. You don’t know what they’re going to call. So you have to adjust accordingly, depending what’s going on from game to game, even half to half.”
Barry agreed immediately, citing several incidents in the playoffs where veteran officials made questionable touch calls that had substantial impact on the outcome of a series.
Still, all in all, Barry says he likes the direction the league is taking toward eliminating hooliganism. Hockey finally did that, which now allows fans to see the brilliance of the world’s fastest, most athletic, skaters, Barry said.
As for Dumars, he’s already begun his adjustments. He signed Flip Murray in the offseason, primarily because he’s a young guard who knows how to move his feet and stay in front of an opponent with a killer crossover and lightning moves.
Dumars knows he’s got to find defenders who know that they can move their feet and look the opponent in the eye. They just can’t touch.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, an oral history of the Los Angeles Lakers, published this year by McGraw-Hill.

'Jackson Will Do A Better Job This Season' And Other Tex Observations

2006-10-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

Phil Jackson will be a better coach this NBA season.
That’s the opinion of Tex Winter, Jackson’s longtime assistant and mentor.
“He’ll have more enthusiasm and energy,” Winter confided recently. “It’s not that he’s done a bad job. But he coached in real pain through all of last year.”
Jackson’s recent hip replacement surgery has helped ease his pain, although the Laker coach could require surgery at some point after the season on his other hip.
“The operation has done him a LOT of good,” Winter said. “He’s walking much straighter now. He’s using a cane, but it doesn’t appear he really needs the cane. His mood seems to have lifted now that his hip is better.”
The coach’s improved condition is one of the reasons Winter — who revealed the extent of Jackson’s troubles during a summer interview — now believes the Lakers have a chance to show substantial improvement this NBA season.
Winter wasn’t so optimistic a few months back. After watching tape of the Lakers’ summer league team, the veteran coach expressed concern about the organization’s talent level.
Three weeks into the preseason, Winter still sees problems, but he also sees a lot more promise.
As he nears his 85th birthday, the spry Winter still reserves the right to disagree with and debate Jackson. For example, Winter would like to see Kobe Bryant play the small forward spot more often. Jackson hasn’t been as enthused publicly with that shift. “I’m not sure of Phil’s feelings on that,” Winter said. “He hasn’t said.”
Winter also adds a reserve clause to Jackson’s preseason comments that Bryant will have to take fewer shots to allow his teammates more opportunities.
Winter cautions that the number of Bryant’s shots should not be the focus. “The important thing is the quality of Kobe’s shots, not the quantity,” Winter said. “If he has a high percentage shot, the shot should be taken.”
Focusing on the number of Bryant’s shots could be a false indicator, the coach said.
The Lakers welcome such debate. There was a time that GM Mitch Kupchak said Winter was the only person in the organization who could really stand up to Jackson’s strong personality.
However, Winter points out that assistant coach Kurt Rambis has shown an ability to challenge Jackson in a positive way.
Rambis, who is running the team while Jackson recuperates (and observes practices), has a good job of organizing things and teaching, along with assistants Frank Hamblen, Jimmy Cleamons, and Brian Shaw.
The organization realizes that Jackson is also a better coach with Winter around. The Lakers have asked Winter to spend all the time he possibly can with the team.
This season, Winter’s involvement should be greater due to the improvement in the health of Winter’s wife, Nancy.
So his job is to help Jackson figure out how to bring about a change of pace. “We’re trying to run more,” Winter explained. “That’s Phil’s decision, and I agree with it. Phil from day one has said we’re putting emphasis on defense and running with the basketball.”
Such a shift raises new and old questions for the Lakers. For example, where to play budding star Lamar Odom? One, two, three or four?
“Where is Odom going to be the most effective?” Winter said.
Last year, Jackson began by talking of Odom as a player with skills that mirrored former Chicago Bulls great Scottie Pippen. There was talk of Odom playing Pippen to Bryant’s Jordanesque presence.
“Phil likes that big guard, that Pippen type, at the one or two position.”
Last year, Odom was just learning the triangle offense, so he wasn’t able to approximate Pippen’s performances within the offense.
“We’re hoping he’s closer to Pippen this year,” Winter said.
Defensively, it’s virtually impossible to copy Pippen’s effectiveness as a help defender who could recover and patrol the lane like a hydra.
Odom’s simply not that type of player. Perhaps no one is.
“Defensively, Odom’s not a Scottie Pippen,” Winter said. “But Odom has his own defensive strengths. One of those is his ability off the defensive boards, to pull down the ball and power out on the break. That’s a big factor for our team.”
Actually the player who has most impressed Winter in the preseason is Luke Walton, another versatile player who can work the boards with Odom.
“He can run this offense,” Winter said of Walton. “He’s the best playmaker we have.”
Walton can even bring the ball up against pressure, Winter said. “He can advance the ball in the backcourt. We trust him to do that. Plus he can rebound the ball and power out like Odom. He finds the open people and can really be a factor in our running game.”
Where Odom will play and whether Walton will play sixth man may ultimately depend on what happens at other positions.
The question marks for the Lakers remain big — about seven feet tall, to be exact. “We’ve got a chance to be a better team,” Winter said, “but an awful lot depends on our big people. The post position is ultimately the determining factor on how good we can be.”
The team is keeping a close eye on how Chris Mihm returns from an injury that first sidelined him last season against Charlotte.
Mihm is the team’s only true offensive threat at center. But his recovery has dragged on leaving huge questions.
The other posts — Kwame Brown and teen-ager Andrew Bynum — have both improved. “Brown and Bynum have got a long way to go,” Winter said. “They’re working hard, and Brown is a good strong defender, a strong rebounder. Bynum has improved and has turned in some good play recently.
“But neither one of them can score the ball. They both want to score and try to score, but they don’t. So we lose the post scoring option out of the triangle.”
That sort of flattens the offensive geometry into a beeline for Bryant.
What’s worse, with Brown and Bynum pressing so hard to score “they’re really not the feeders out of the post we want them to be. Seeing and feeding the cutters is important for the post in the triangle. They realize it, and they’re trying to do the right thing. Both of them are pretty good passers. So they’re supposed to be feeders first. But right now they’re looking to score and struggling to score as opposed to being feeders first. If help is needed for this team, it’s there. We really don’t know when Mihm could help us. Or what’s going to happen there.”
The other critical area for the team is guard play, specifically getting help for Bryant in the backcourt. And Winter says both Smush Parker and Sasha Vujacic have shown strong improvement and good play. “Smush has had a very good camp, and Sasha has too. He's shooting better,” Winter said. “We’ve got a lot of guys vying for those guard spots. Some good looking players — (J.R.) Pinnock and (Shammond) Williams — but they’re still learning what we’re doing.
“I think Mo (newcomer Maurice) Evans is gonna help us. I like what I see in him. We’ve been playing him at the two and three. I’m not sure where he’ll end up playing. The problem is, he’s really a three, with his work on the boards and along the baseline. He’s very effective crashing the boards, and he’s a great jumper. We’re looking at him as a two, but the guard spot takes him away from what he does best.”
A big issue for the Lakers is how the guards will play defensively. Traditionally, Jackson’s teams have featured lots of ball pressure. But the league last season began a new policy of calling touch fouls on the perimeter to help free up offensive players. Thus, Miami’s Dwyane Wade’s big performance in the NBA Finals last June.
That means the Lakers’ pressure style has to shift.
“I think you have to play more of a containing defense,” explained Winter, a critic of the NBA’s new guidelines for officiating the game. “You can still put some pressure on the offense. You can contain them and slow the ball up.”
But the new guidelines “change how you force turnovers,” Winter explained. “You can’t be as aggressive as you’d like to be with your hands. You can’t be ‘into’ the guy as much.”
As a result, defense now becomes a matter of waiting for the offensive player to make a mistake, rather than forcing a turnover, Winter said.
The Lakers would like to exert the kind of ball pressure they used to deploy when Derek Fisher wore the Forum Blue and Gold.
But the new guidelines are still murky, Winter said.
Before games, officials have visited with teams to explain the new approach, Winter said. “They come in and tell us all this stuff. Then the first four or five plays of the game, you see them doing just the opposite from what they said. You don’t know what they’re going to call. So you have to adjust accordingly, depending what’s going on from game to game, even half to half.”
As for the league’s new ball, the old school coach says, “My personal opinion, from what I’ve seen of it, I don’t like it. Maybe the players will get used to it. I don’t know. It’s got a funny feel to it.”

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, The Inside Story of The Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers In The Words Of Those Who Lived It, released by McGraw-Hill.

T-Mac Says He's Not Like Kobe

2006-09-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

Tracy McGrady became the NBA’s Scoring Champ in ’02-’03.
He was named to the All NBA First Team in ’01-’02 and ’02-’03 seasons, plus T-Mac is a five-time NBA All Star.
He spent much of a very frustrating season last year on the sideline with an injured back. However, he has found health in the offseason and regained his hunger for basketball. In August and early September, he made a four-country whirlwind tour of Asia for Adidas, to promote his new, individually numbered all-white Limited-Edition T-Mac Ones, of which there are only 1,650 pairs available. He is the first athlete to sign a lifetime contract with Adidas.
He phoned Roland Lazenby from Hong Kong during the final days of his tour to talk about his life and the upcoming season.

Q: You have experienced some special things in Asia. What has that been like?

McGrady: Coming over here and experiencing the passion that these people have for the game of basketball is unbelievable. You wouldn’t know it until you come over here to Asia. Just to see the fans that I have in the different countries, to see the love, the respect, that they show, it’s really crazy. It makes me feel like a rock star.

Q: Has touring Asia changed your life in some way?
McGrady: It has. It changes your perspective to see all of the fans in Asia. It makes you realize that you can’t take things for granted. It makes you realize just how many people do know what you do and respect what you do and love what you do. It makes you realize that you’re an inspiration to a lot of people you really didn’t know about. I’m now starting to realize that, that I’m really an icon. A lot of these kids over here in Asia really look up to me and watch my every move. They can tell me stories of things I’ve done, and I don’t even remember it. But it is true. Those things really happened. I just didn’t remember them. So this response was a lot more than I expected. So that’s a great feeling, for them to really be following my every move.

Q: Was there any one stop in Asia that brought an unusual experience?
McGrady: It really wasn’t one stop in Asia, it was literally every single place I went. From the time I got off the airplane, as I walked through the airports, to meeting all the people. It was just a hell of an experience, man. I would do it all over again. It was just that much fun. I really got a kick out of it, just the way they treated me, from the hotels, all the hospitality, to the actual events that adidas set up, it was pretty much the funnest thing that I’ve done in my career.

Q: Will a trip like this have an impact on the season ahead?
McGrady: It does have an impact on the upcoming season. It really does. With Yao being Asian, we’re on TV a lot over here. There are millions of people tuning in to watch us play. I didn’t realize just how many fans I have over here. To know that now has me really excited. They know I’m healthy now. After having gone through the injuries that I had last year, it’s just motivating to me to get back on the court and really do well. They’re really expecting a lot out of myself and Yao. It’s just that time. Last year was a frustrating season and we couldn’t get it done. But I think this season will be different.

Q: Speaking of the upcoming season, what do you think of the moves made by the Rockets?
McGrady: I think we made an important move with the addition of Shane Battier. This is a guy who’s a very smart, competitive basketball player. His presence is going to be important, with all the extra attention, all the double-teams, that Yao and I receive. We’re confident in his ability to knock down open jumpers. Also on the defensive end, Shane can hold his own with a variety of types of players. There are a lot of good players in the Western Conference at the 4 position, and Shane can match up with those guys. His versatility is amazing. He can play multiple positions and fit in a lot of places where we need him. We have to play Dallas four times a year in our division. Shane’s the kind of guy who can match up with Dirk Nowitzki at the 4 position, even though Dirk’s a seven-footer. Shane doesn’t do everything great. But he’s the kind of guy who does a lot of things well.

Q: The Rockets also picked up a couple of young guys in the draft. What are your thoughts there?
McGrady: We have a rookie Steve Novak who can really knock down the outside shot. I haven’t seen him play, but our coaches tell me he can really shoot the ball. I asked to compare him to somebody in the NBA, and they said he’s a lot like a Pat Garrity in terms of shooting the ball. In Orlando, I played well with Pat Garrity. He was one of our equalizers, standing out there shooting the ball. A guy like Novak can do that for us. He can open the court up for when I try to penetrate. And he can open things up for Yao as well.
And we got a guy from Greece, Vanoulis Spanoulis. I was just watching him play in the WBC. He looks like a point guard who really likes to push the ball. I think that he could help us if the coaches let us get out and run.

Q: Do you think their presence will help open up Houston’s offense?
McGrady: (laughs) I sure hope the offense opens up some this year. Down in Orlando we opened it up some and that was a lot of fun.
In Houston, we’re going to be a great defensive team, because that’s what Jeff (Van Gundy) likes to do as a coach. That’s what he brings. He’s a genius at defensive execution. So if we can open up our offense this year, we’ll definitely have the best of both worlds.

Q: Last year was pretty much a nightmare with your and Yao’s injuries. Injuries put a mental strain on athlete’s too. How’s your health now?
McGrady: I had never really been injured in my career before. It really set me back. I missed 35 games, played in 47. It was one of the most frustrating seasons in my career. A back injury can really play on your mind. But now I’m healthy, so my back isn’t really on my mind this season. I’m excited about playing again, and I can’t wait to get out there.

Q: There was a huge change in the NBA last season. New rules interpretation meant that defenders were no longer allowed to touch guards on the perimeter, which meant that a guy like Dwyane Wade could drive to the basket again and again during the playoffs. Are you eager to play under the new rules interpretation?
McGrady: In my nine years in the NBA, the rules have constantly changed. And I’ve had to change with them. They’ve added zones and other changes. I know how to make adjustments, so the new rules interpretations won’t bother me. I’ll make the adjustment. I’m excited to get back to competing. The rules changes don’t motivate me. I’m motivated by the opportunity to play with my team. I’m motivated just by the thought of getting out on the floor again. I’m in the best shape of my career, so rules changes really don’t bother me.

Q: There have been reports that your conditioning is now exceptional. How have you been able to do that with such a busy summer?
McGrady: Being away and on the road has made it kind of hard (to keep up with conditioning). I’ve just had to push myself to get it done on the road no matter how tired I am. I’ve just had to push myself to be very dedicated. Seeing all the fans in Asia has certainly helped motivate me. Right now I am ready to go and begin the season.

Q: Are you ready to make another run at a scoring title? How about a run at Kobe’s single game scoring record?
McGrady: I’m not in Orlando. I HAD to score when I was in Orlando. Kobe has to score in L.A. in order for those guys to win. His team needs him. I don’t take that many shots in Houston. That’s not needed for us to win. Maybe one of these nights I’ll try to make a run maybe sometime at my career high of 62 points, but that’s not my focus.

Q: Have you been amazed to learn how much Asian fans love shoes?
McGrady: It really is amazing. My shoes sales are crazy. Asian crowds are really into shoes. We have video clips of guys lining up a couple of hours early just to get my shoes. That’s a great sight.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, The Inside Story of the Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers In The Words Of Those Who Lived It, released earlier this year by McGraw-Hill. Lazenby also edits Lindy's Pro Basketball Annual, just out on news stands this month.

The Revolution Wasn't Televised

2006-09-17T09:49:00.000-07:00

From Lindy's Pro Basketball Annual, available in stores now.

By Roland Lazenby

The upcoming NBA season marks the 50th anniversary of the Boston Celtics’ first title, won by an amazing mix of rookies and grizzled veterans.
A look back reveals how times have changed. Changed financially. Changed racially. Changed in virtually every way.
For example, the Celtics won 11 NBA championships between 1957 and 1969 (seven of those victories came at the expense of the Lakers). Yet throughout that great run, the Celtics seldom sold out Boston Garden. Year in, year out, they drew average crowds in the range 8,000, leaving more than 5,000 empty seats most nights. Those numbers seem to confirm the notion that sometimes legends aren't a very big deal while they're being made. It's only with the passage of time that they become larger than life.
That's certainly the case with the Celtics of Red Auerbach and Bill Russell. The ensuing decades have done nothing but confirm the magnitude of their accomplishments. Between 1959 and 1966, Auerbach's Celtics won eight straight titles, a run unequalled by any professional team in any major sport. Yet each fall after winning a championship, the Celtics never had a sell-out for their home opener. They didn't achieve a full house for their first game until November 1966, the season their streak ended.
"We were real fortunate from '57 on in winning championships," Auerbach once told me. "People in this area never realized what we did in those days. They would sort of say, 'Big deal.' Where if we were in any other area of the country, the accolades would have been tremendous. I'm talking about New York or New Jersey or Washington, wherever, Chicago, anyplace."
Over time, the Celtics mystique would become oppressive in dank, smelly Boston Garden, with the championship banners hanging in the rafters above the chipped and aged parquet floor. But back then, the Celtics were just another struggling team in a struggling league. The setting was the quirky fifties, when modern American society was in its pimply stage. Eisenhower had just offered the nation a balanced budget and won his second term in the White House. The civil rights fight had yet to turn nasty down South. And the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and revealed it was also testing ICBMs. With his first LP and movie ("Love Me Tender"), Elvis Presley was steering the Baby Boom toward puberty. Ford was cranking Edsels off the assembly line. Zenith introduced its first 21" TV screen, but viewers still saw the world in black and white. The airwaves offered “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Honeymooners” and “Ozzie and Harriet.” The cost of a first-class stamp ran four cents, and the average family of four needed about $60 a week to pay the bills.
But most of these developments mattered little to Auerbach as he neared his 40th birthday. He was almost wholly consumed with winning basketball games, so much so that he left his wife and two daughters in Washington, D.C., eight months out of each year and lived in an efficiency apartment in Boston while he coached the Celtics.
"He was flamboyant, gutsy, on top of everything. And fiery. I mean really fiery, " legendary Celtics radio announcer Johnny Most once told me of the young Auerbach in his early years in Boston. "But the important thing about him was that he knew the rules better than the officials. And he pulled the rule book on the officials all the time because he knew them. And he had the bite of intimidation. Like when his team was not playing well or playing lethargically, he'd go out there and start to scream at the fans or the referee and get them on him."
The National Basketball Association was a league of eight to 10 teams in the 1950s and hardly national. With franchises in Minneapolis, Fort Wayne, Rochester, and Syracuse, the focus was the Northeast and Great Lakes. It was a life of long train rides, chilly, dimly lit gyms, lop-sided balls, fickle fans and fight-marred games. It was so rough that around the league, opponents disliked anyone doing any flashy leaping, Slater Martin, who played for the Hawks and Lakers, once said. "In those days, you couldn't leave your feet. They'd just knock you into a wall."
Auerbach believed deeply in the running game as a strategy for out-distancing the madness. That was perfect, because he had Bob Cousy, the Houdini of the Hardwood, running the point on that first great team.
"He was the greatest innovator of the game," Most said of Cousy. "He had such a fabulous imagination. I think the greatest passer who ever lived. He could throw any kind of pass. The minute he touched the ball his head was up and he was looking down court looking for the open man. It was his philosophy to do it with the pass rather than the dribble. But if he had to dribble, if they forced the dribble, he could make you look like a fool. He really could. He had all the moves of a Globetrotter. And he never was lacking in confidence."
In 1954-55, the NBA adopted its 24-second shot clock, and to Auerbach's liking, the game became much speedier. Yet the new tempo made the Celtics' weaknesses even more glaring. Boston had the greyhound guards in Cousy and Bill Sharman to run other teams off the floor, but they didn't have a powerful rebounding center who could pull the ball off the defensive boards and throw the outlet pass to start the fast break.
Auerbach had begun looking for that special inside player, when his old college coach at George Washington, Bill Reinhart, told him of Bill Russell, then a sophomore center for the University of San Francisco. College basketball received little publicity in those days. There was no national television, no basketball poop sheets, no cable connection, no Dick Vitale touting the stars. Because he competed on the West Coast, Russell was largely unknown to the Eastern basketball establishment. Plus he was an unusual package. He was 6'9" and exceptionally athletic (he could run the 440 in 49 seconds). His sense of timing made him an excellent rebounder and shotblocker. Yet his offensive skills were unrefined to the point that much of his scoring came from guiding his teammate's missed shots into the basket. His knack for this "guiding" led to the development of offensive goal tending rules in college basketball.
Russell's reputation improved in 1955 as he and guard K.C. Jones led San Francisco to the first of consecutive NCAA championships. Still, his lack of offensive polish left most pro teams skeptical of his potential. Auerbach, however, knew Russell was just the player he was looking for.
"I had to have somebody who could get me the ball," Auerbach recalled. "I'd been tipped off about Russell by my college coach, Bill Reinhart. Bill said Russell was the greatest defensive player and greatest rebounder he'd ever seen."
The Minneapolis Lakers (run behind the scenes by a young sportswriter named Sid Hartman) also had their eye on Russell and almost had him, Hartman says. But, with more than a bit of maneuvering, the Celtics managed to snatch Russell in the 1956 draft, thus shifting the balance of power between two teams that would define NBA competition in the 1960s.
The only hitch for the Celtics was that Russell had made clear his intentions to play with the U.S. Olympic team in the Summer games in Australia. He wouldn't join Boston until late December, and because of Olympic rules in effect then, he wouldn't be able to sign a contract until after the games were over. The Celtics, however, weren't exactly shorthanded. A year earlier, they had drafted Jungle Jim Loscutoff, a muscled, 6'5" forward out of Oregon. And Frank Ramsey, a 6'3" forward drafted out of Kentucky in 1954, was returning from a year in the service.
In addition, Auerbach had picked up two other jewels in the 1956 draft: Tom Heinsohn, a 6'7" forward out of Holy Cross, and K.C. Jones, Russell's teammate at San Francisco. Jones, a third-round pick, would do a stint in the Army and try pro football before joining the Celtics in 1958. But Heinsohn would become an immediate factor, and all three from that 1956 draft would eventually wind up in the Hall of Fame.
With Loscutoff and Heinsohn working the defensive boards, the Celtics got the ball out on the fast break that fall of 1956 and ran their way to a 16-8 record, three games ahead of the NBA's defending champions, the Philadelphia Warriors. Then that December 22, after having helped the U.S. win the Olympic gold, Russell joined the Celtics. (The young center had been offered $35,000 by the Globetrotters but turned that down to accept a $20,000 contract with Boston.) After getting stuck in his first Boston traffic jam and arriving late for the game, Russell scored only six points but pulled down 16 rebounds to help Boston beat St. Louis. Maybe it wasn't obvious that first night, but the NBA would never be the same.
The impact on the Celtics was almost immediate. Russell struggled a bit the first few games, but his presence unshackled the rest of the team. The rookie center was such an awesome defensive rebounder that Heinsohn's and Loscutoff's roles shifted from battling on the boards. The forwards merely boxed out their men, then released quickly for the fast break while Russell was snaring the rebound and whipping the outlet pass to Cousy.
Sharman and Cousy, meanwhile, were ecstatic with this development, after having spent the previous seasons frustrated by the team's lack of inside power. Plus Russell's intimidating presence at center allowed them to gamble on defense. If they made a mistake, more often than not, Russell's intimidating presence covered for them.
But the most pleased was Auerbach, who considered Russell's shot-blocking to be one of the major innovations in the evolution of pro basketball. The young center exuded a confidence that bordered on arrogance. But as he later revealed in his book, “Second Wind,” Russell was far more insecure about his offensive skills than he let on. He was aware of his detractors. Across pro basketball, the coaches, the players, the writers all believed that the ideal big man was an offensive force.
But when Russell arrived, Auerbach called him in and told him not to worry about offense, that his primary responsibilities were rebounding and defense. The coach also promised that statistics, particularly scoring averages, would never be a part of contract discussions. Auerbach's understanding of Russell's unique skills was the single important element in the genesis of this dynasty.
Like Auerbach, Russell really cared only about winning. Player and coach didn't have to spend much time together to sense this in each other. "He was the ultimate team player," Cousy said of Russell. "Without him there would have been no dynasty, no Celtic mystique."
Beginning in his college days (he received little playing time until his senior year in high school) Russell had made shot-blocking a science. By the time he reached the pros, he possessed a very special skill. He never swatted the ball so that it went out of bounds. Instead he brushed it, or caught it, or knocked it away, so that most times it remained in play and became a turnover, sparking the Celtics' fastbreak the other way. Such a defensive presence sent shock waves across the league.
"Nobody had ever blocked shots on the pros before Russell came along," Auerbach said. "He upset everybody."
The often-cited example is that of Neil Johnston, the Philadelphia center who dominated NBA scoring with his rather flat hook shot. Russell was so effective in blocking Johnston's shot that the three-time NBA scoring champion became ineffective and tentative on offense. Because he was basically a one-dimensional player, Johnston was unable to adjust. It was said that Russell's presence drove Johnston from the league, a claim that the Philadelphia center vehemently denied. Yet after the 1956-57 season, Johnston ceased to be a dominant offensive power.
Two weeks after Russell began play, Philadelphia owner Eddie Gottlieb protested that Boston's center was playing a one-man zone and goaltending. Other coaches and owners around the league joined the chorus. But Auerbach fended them off. "When we made the deal for Russell nobody thought he was going to be good," the Boston coach told reporters. "He has far exceeded everybody's expectations. None of his blocks of shots have been on the downward flight. He has marvelous timing. He catches the ball on the upward flight."
When the league supervisor of officials said Russell's play was clearly within the rules, Gottlieb dropped his beef. The age of a new athleticism had dawned, and everywhere coaches looked for a way to counter it. Mostly, other teams tried to muscle and bang Russell. But as tough and proud as he was, Boston's new weapon wasn't about to back down.
In other ways, Russell was not an average NBA rookie. A Celtics' tradition called for first-year players to haul the bag of practice balls from game to game. Heinsohn had been doing this chore and hoped he could pass it over to Russell when the center joined the team. But Russell's fierce frown made his teammates think better of asking. So Heinsohn carried on.
The Celtics finished the regular season 44-28, six games ahead of Syracuse in the Eastern Division, as Russell averaged 19.6 rebounds. Cousy led the league in assists and was voted the NBA's MVP. As the playoffs began, Heinsohn was selected the Rookie of the Year. In the lockerroom before the first playoff game, he opened the envelope containing the $250 rookie prize. Always a needler, Russell eyed the money and said that half of it should be his.
Boston pushed Syracuse out of the way rather easily in the first round of the playoffs, but St. Louis, the Western Division champions with only a 34-38 regular season record, made the 1957 NBA finals a series to remember. With Bob Pettit at forward, Macauley at center and Jack McMahon and Slater Martin at guards, the Hawks were talented and ready to play. Sharman scored 36 for the Celtics in the first game at the Garden, but Pettit scored 37 and the Hawks won the opener on a last second shot by Jack Coleman. Boston took the second game to tie the series at one. Then the Hawks won on their floor for a 2-1 lead. Boston came right back to win the fourth game, in St. Louis, to tie the series again. Then the Celts zipped St. Louis 124-109 in game five for a 3-2 Boston lead. The series returned to St. Louis, where the Hawks tied it at 3-3 with another last-second victory.
Game 7 was a classic, except for the performance of the Boston backcourt. Cousy shot 2 for 20 and Sharman 3 for 20. Combined they made only 12.5 percent of their field goals. The championship load fell on the rookies, Russell (19 points and 32 rebounds) and Heinsohn (37 points and 23 rebounds).
With the Celtics leading 103-101, Pettit sank two free throws in the closing seconds to send the game into overtime. As the first extra period ended, Boston again held a lead, 113-111, but Coleman, who had won game one for St. Louis, hit another clutch jumper for another overtime. With just seconds to go in the second extra period, Loscutoff hit two free throws for a 125-123 Boston lead. With just seconds on the clock, the Hawks had to inbounds the ball with a full-court pass to Pettit. Player-coach Alex Hannum planned to bank the pass off the backboard and hope that Pettit could tip it in. Incredibly, Hannum banked the pass off the board to Pettit, but the final shot rolled off the rim.
The Celtics celebrated by shaving Russell's beard in the locker room, downing a few cold ones and going out to dinner. It was the first of 11 titles for Boston. Cousy remembers it as the most satisfying of all.
About the only thing undermining the glorious beginning of Boston's dynasty was the undercurrent of race. The NBA and the Celtics were integrating ahead of society. There were few, if any, problems on the team. But Boston was a racially troubled town, as was all of America. A couple of sportswriters in Boston made little effort to mask their contempt for Russell. And road games were sometimes rough, particularly in St. Louis where the fans weren't averse to shouting racial epithets. As with the rough play on the court, Russell wasn't about to back down. "Russ has always been extremely militant, and he is to this day," Cousy said. "He came into Boston with the proverbial chip on his shoulder. His militancy had been honed before he arrived. Of course, there were good reasons for the way he reacted, and I've said many times I would have been far more radical than he was. He couldn't play golf at the local courses. At one point, vandals broke into his house and defecated in his bed."
Russell's anger was justified, Johnny Most agreed. "I knew where he was coming from deep down. And for a lot of it, I didn't blame him. He faced a lot of irritating, irritating prejudice."
But his private manner with his teammates was as playful as his public face was scowling. In Auerbach's system, winning was the only priority. For that system, the coach sought players who wanted to win as badly as he did. They weren't about to let racial differences interfere with that. Russell has said many times that above all, he knew he could trust his coach not to be petty. That's not to say there weren't problems. The white press had no sophisticated knowledge of basketball in those early years, and the reporters fawned over Cousy, the local hero, while virtually ignoring Russell's brilliance. Auerbach, however, sensed these injustices and constantly raved about Russell and other unrecognized players to reporters.
It was in this spirit that Frank Ramsey, the first of the Celtics' sixth men, grew in the public mind. Auerbach didn't invent the idea of the sixth man, but he tirelessly touted and promoted it to the writers covering Boston's games. In so doing, the coach wrapped his athletes in the ever increasing aura of team. After a time, it would become nearly impenetrable.

Who's Not On Tex's All-Winter Team For The NBA's 60th Anniversary

2006-09-12T11:42:00.001-07:00

Lindy's Pro Basketball Annual (which I have edited for the past 14 years) hits the newstands this week, and once again it features the All-Winter team, selected by none other than Tex Winter himself.
This year's edition has a special feature in that it also includes an NBA 60th anniversary team. The 60 years of the NBA almost perfectly coincides with Tex's own coaching career, in college and the pros. So I talked him into selecting the All-Time All-Winter team. It's not made up of the "game's greatest players."
Instead I encouraged him to select the great players that he would like to coach.
It's worth noting that Winter left former Lakers center Shaquille O'Neal off his list. Winter said he did so because O'Neal was not someone he would care to coach.
Many Lakers fans are aware that the 84-year-old Winter has long coached superstars and high-salaried NBA players without coddling them. A younger assistant coach, with less stature, might have never considered fussing at Michael Jordan about throwing correct chest passes, but Winter has always been rather fearless in his coaching.
Unfortunately, he and O'Neal never got off to a good start in Los Angeles, where Winter played a major role in organizing coach Phil Jackson and the triangle offense the Lakers used to win three straight championships.
Winter tried to correct O'Neal on certain facets of the game, but the supersensitive center always seemed to recoil from those efforts.
The serious breech between the assistant coach and Shaq didn't come until the 2004 season when O'Neal out of nowhere told Winter to "shut the f*** up" during a team film session.
A stunned Winter said that never in lengthy coaching career had a player been so extremely disrespectful. In fact, Winter has long been known for earning the respect and allegiance of an array of players, from the most difficult (Dennis Rodman) to the most hard-headed (Kobe Bryant).
O'Neal's behavior in the 2004 incident is noteworthy for several reasons. First, O'Neal always describes himself as someone who respects his elders. That's pretty much a self-promoting crock.
Second, Phil Jackson wrote a supposed "inside" book on the season, which was really a document aimed at cementing Jackson's political position with the team. Strange that Jackson devoted so much ink to his allegation that Kobe Bryant was "uncoachable," yet somehow he managed to avoid telling his readers the details of the major incident involving O'Neal. Yes, Jackson discussed the incident in "The Last Season," but you have to wonder about his emphasizing far and wide that Bryant was "uncoachable" while giving Shaq a veritable free pass on the issue.
Winter said Jackson did visit with his center about apologizing for his shocking behavior. And the next day at practice, O'Neal dutifully gave Winter a half-hearted hug and apology.
It's a shame Jackson didn't attempt to present a fair and balanced picture of the team when he wrote his book.
Winter has enjoyed affiliations with some of the game's greatest stars. Others, he has admired from afar. His choices created some interest in a recent post when I pointed out that Tex had included Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade.
Winter said Wade was selected because of his amazing efficiency as a scorer.
"I love Dwyane Wade," Winter told me. "All-around, he's probably the best guard in the league. Individually, he's not as good as Kobe, as far as quickness and skills, etc. But I've never seen a player score the way he does, with such efficiency."
Winter went on to point out that players such as Wade and Bryant have a distinct advantage under the NBA's new rules interpretations that have officials whistling touch fouls on the perimeter.

Winter's criticism prompted me to write another article for LIndy's called "The Death of Defense?"

Here's the intro to that story, which involves a discussion of the new way officials are now calling the game.

THE DEATH OF DEFENSE

It remains one of the enduring images of NBA lore—Joe Dumars guarding a determined young Michael Jordan in the 1990 Eastern Conference playoffs.
Dumars of the “Bad Boy” Detroit Pistons, the league’s two-time defending champs, looked like a gaucho corralling the ultimate toro, his feet moving furiously (maybe the best defensive slide in the history of the game), one forearm firmly barred into Jordan to keep contact, the other bent arm thrust into the air, giving Dumars his only hope of keeping his balance while trying to ride the Jordan whirlwind.
Jerry West watched the performance and remarked privately that most people considered Isiah Thomas the Pistons’ superstar, but West pointed out that it was Dumars who was the supreme talent.
Why?
Well, West said, both Thomas and Dumars could push the envelope offensively, “but Joe’s defense sets him apart.”
Just how good was that defense?
It left a supremely disappointed Jordan sobbing at the back of the team bus when the series was over (it’s also probably the only NBA defense ever to spawn a best-selling book: Sam Smith’s ‘The Jordan Rules’).
Indeed, it was a formative moment in pro basketball history because it brought Jordan the ultimate challenge and propelled him toward a greatness that fascinated a global audience. Whether they liked pro basketball or not, people felt compelled to watch “His Airness” grow up against the Pistons’ physical challenge.
“I think that ‘Jordan Rules’ defense, as much as anything else, played a part in the making of Michael Jordan,” said Tex Winter, who was an assistant coach for that Chicago team. The 1990 loss forced Jordan and the Bulls to find an answer to Detroit’s muscle.
“Those Jordan Rules were murder,” Winter explained. “The fact that we could win the next year even though they were playing that defense says everything about Jordan as a competitor. Any lesser player would have folded his tent.”
Jordan had to dig deeper to respond to the Pistons, and his effort pushed his Bulls to six championships over the next eight seasons.
The unfortunate footnote to this legacy is that under an interpretation of the rules adopted by the NBA last season, if Dumars were playing today he would not be allowed to guard Jordan so physically, or perhaps even guard him at all.
Today Dumars is the chief basketball executive of the team he once led as a player. He’s an honest man, which means he chooses his words carefully.
Asked in July if he could defend Jordan under today’s interpretation of the rules, Dumars first laughed, then offered a long pause before replying, “It would have been virtually impossible to defend Michael Jordan based on the way the game’s being called right now.”

If you're so inclined, pick up a copy of Lindy's and join the debate over the NBA's decision to change its foul rules interpretations. That decision made a dramatic impact on the game and perhaps even decided the league championship last June.
"I think it hurts the game," Winter said of the changes. "It's pretty hard to guard someone on the outside — especially a player with a lot of quickness — if you can't even touch them."

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, an oral history of the Los Angeles Lakers published by McGraw-Hill.

Another Bloody Nose In International Play

2006-09-02T05:58:00.000-07:00

I had hustled all week to work out an interview with Tracy McGrady, who has been touring Asia to promote his adidas shoes. He finally called early Thursday from Hong Kong, and one of the topics of our discussion was the new rookie headed to McGrady’s Houston Rockets, Greek guard Vassilis Spanoulis.
McGrady had made a point of tuning in and watching Spanoulis in the world championships in Japan. What he saw made McGrady smile.
“I really like how he pushes the ball,” McGrady said. “He’s going to help us right away.”
Now that Spanoulis has scored 22 points and led Greece to an astounding 101-95 win over Team USA in the FIBA world championships in Japan, the rest of the NBA has an idea of what McGrady is talking about.
Spanoulis is no fluke. Neither is Mihalis Kakiouzis, who scored 15 for the Greeks against the Americans, or 6-foot-10 Sofoklis Schortsianitis --"Baby Shaq" – who made 6 of 7 shots from the field and finished with 14.
The veteran Greek team played hard and smart, and they executed extremely well. After it was over, they got nothing but praise from Team USA head coach Mike Krzyzewski and his players.
"The Greek team is a great team," Elton Brand said. "Not just in this tournament, if they played in the NBA or whatever, they'd be a good team. They have shooters, they have guys who can defend, they have guys who can do decent things in the paint. They should be proud of themselves. We take our hats off to them."
Which is how it should have been. The were no ugly Americans this time in international competition. They lost with class, despite being devastated by the sight of the Greeks dancing in celebration afterward at mid court.
The Greeks will go on to meet the Spanish team, without Pau Gasol (who broke his foot, a development with severe consequences for Jerry West's Memphis Grizzlies), for the gold medal Sunday. Behind Dwyane Wade, the Americans dispatched a dominant, veteran Argentinian team Saturday that had lost by a point to Spain.
The immediate questions facing the Americans, meanwhile, are why and how did they lose to the Greeks?
The quick answer is that the Americans got forced into too many bad 3-pointers, missed too many free throws (they shot 32 percent from 3-point range and 59 percent from the foul line) and couldn’t seem to play any solid defense down the stretch.
The Greeks executed well on offense, used the screen and roll expertly and relied on their tough-and-tested defense when it mattered most.
The Americans continued to be plagued by chemistry problems, not brought on by any particular selfishness or ego problems, but by the nature of their hastily assembled team. This time around, the Americans took more effort with the process and worked harder, but the outcome revealed that they were trying to make too much happen too soon.
They need more time.
"This is the biggest thing we've ever done," former Greek star Panayiotis Fasoulas said. "The Americans are the most talented players but we have a better team. Right now we're the best in the world. ... Beating the U.S. is more important than the final."
"I don't think people understand how good these teams are," Dwyane Wade told reporters.
As the head of Team USA, Jerry Colangelo, pointed out, the American players were hurting after the outcome. It’s the third straight failure in international competition for the Americans, dating back through the 2002 World Championships.
But that’s also where the consolation comes in for the Americans. They put this team together with the idea that the players would form a nucleus that would work over the next two years to prepare for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
As much as this loss hurts and embarrasses a U.S. team that once dominated international basketball, it may actually serve a greater purpose — to remind the American stars how much they must work to build team chemistry and to reinforce the idea that there will be no more cakewalks for American teams in international competition.
The Dream Team is just that, a distant dream in the rearview mirror of American basketball.
Now, every major international competition will be a dogfight. The Greeks, Argentines and Spaniards all showed that they are all quite capable of running with the USA’s best athletes.
It may also spur Team USA to drag out even bigger guns for the fight in Beijing. The Lakers’ Kobe Bryant and the Phoenix Suns' Amare Stoudemire, both coming off knee surgery and unable to compete, come to mind immediately. But so do the likes of Shaquille O’Neal and Tim Duncan. And certainly Gilbert Arenas has a beef. Maybe the American coaches did need to take a longer look at what he had to offer.
Colangelo, however, predicts few changes to Team USA other than adding Bryant, Stoudemire and Chauncey Billups, who had previous commitments and could not play in the World Championships. "Of course they'll all be together next summer," Colangelo told reporters. "If there's a change or two, that's all I see. We're not throwing the baby out with the bath water. We love all our guys. They played hard. Nobody quit. We just lost."
Spanoulis, meanwhile, has shown that he has bright prospects for an NBA career. McGrady and Yao Ming have top flight help on the way for Houston (Spanoulis has reportedly signed a three-year deal with the Rockets).
The rest of the NBA is now officially on notice, too. The Europeans keep getting better and better, not to mention tougher and tougher. Ignorance of that is no excuse.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, an oral history of the Los Angeles Lakers recently published by McGraw-Hill.

The Wilt They Knew

2006-08-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

In honor of Wilt Chamberlain's 70th birthday this month, the following excerpt is from Roland Lazenby's book The Show, The Inside Story Of The Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers In The Words Of Those Who Lived It.
This part of the book talks about Chamberlain's upbringing and his rocking introduction to the Lakers.

Big Norman

His close friends called him "Big Norman." But to the basketball public, he was "Wilt the Stilt." He disliked that name, of course. He was a person, not a stilt. The name, as much as anything, defined his tenuous relationship with the fans and the writers. After all, he was a giant, and they expected giant things of him. That certainly was no more than he expected of himself. Unfortunately, the task was never up to him alone. Basketball is a five-man game. And that seemed to be the crux of the problem for Wilton Norman Chamberlain.
Wilt Chamberlain: "I felt that I was gifted enough to do some things on the basketball floor. I couldn't do everything I wanted to do, because if that was the case, I'd have won every game."
As big and talented as he was, Chamberlain's career progress had often been frustrated by the presence of Boston's Bill Russell. Where Chamberlain struggled most of his career out of context, Russell always seemed to have the right coach, the right teammates, and they got the right results. On the other hand, Chamberlain's career was a profound contradiction. For him, things were wonderfully easy and terribly difficult, all at the same time.
"The world is made up of Davids," he once explained, "and I am Goliath."
Bill Russell: "Wilt was my greatest opponent. It's not even close."
Wilt Chamberlain: "Basketball is a team game, played by positions, played in different times. I was fortunate to come along at time that was great basketball, a different kind of a game, played a little bit more technically. I was a different breed of athlete at that particular time."
Jerry West: "The ironic thing about Wilt was that he never seemed to be relaxed and fun. I think after he got out of basketball, he became much more relaxed. Much of it had to do with the fact he was Wilt Chamberlain, and no one pulled for him. I think those things really bothered him all his life. There's no question it was tough to be a giant."
As a 6-foot-11 ninth-grader in Philadelphia, he led his undefeated Overbrook High team against West Catholic High in the finals of the city championship, where a scenario developed that would become miserably familiar to Chamberlain over the years. West Catholic packed four players around him inside, but his teammates couldn't make the open shots. Overbrook lost its only game of the season.
Over the next three years, his teams won 58 games and lost just 3, while Chamberlain averaged 36.9 points (he scored 90 in one game). His junior and senior years provided a study in dominance, with Overbrook claiming consecutive city titles.
The pro scouts knew Chamberlain was ready then, but NBA rules forbade the drafting of a high schooler. So he chose the University of Kansas, where the Jayhawks' offense focused on his towering presence. Which meant that opposing defenses did the same.
Dick Harp, former Kansas coach: "That was always the problem when Wilt was playing. The defense was always going to concentrate on him. Teams would rig zone defenses around him with three and four men, making it impossible for him to move, particularly around the basket."
And defenders became quite physical with him.
Dick Harp: "It was difficult for the officials to be objective about Wilt. There were many opportunities for officials to call defensive fouls. Most of the time they didn't. Wilt, though, always managed to keep his composure and managed to power through our opponents."
But, as Chamberlain himself noted, his frustrations led to errors in his method. When he rebounded, he liked to take the ball in one hand and slam it against the other, making a gunshot of a sound that startled the smaller players around him. What he should have been doing was whipping a quick outlet pass downcourt. When he blocked shots, he liked to smack the ball loudly and violently and usually out of play. As a result, opponents retained the ball and had another chance to score. This habit would later hurt him when he faced Russell, who always brush-blocked the ball, often creating a Celtics fast break.
Dick Harp: "Wilt understood the game of basketball. He had an opinion about the game and was bright about it. He wanted to use his size in close proximity to the basket. But he didn't develop his skills beyond that. If he wanted to, he could have been a significant playmaker. Wilt had demonstrated he could have shot the ball and been an effective passer."
Jerry West: "One thing about him, he always thought he was the best at everything he did. That simply was not the case. If that was the case, he would have been an 80 percent free throw shooter."
Over his sophomore season, Chamberlain averaged 30 points, 19 rebounds, and 9 blocked shots. And Kansas was clearly the best team in college basketball. But in the finals of the NCAA tournament the Jayhawks lost in triple overtime to UNC, an outcome that set the cornerstone of Chamberlain's frustrations. He returned to Kansas the next season, but the Jayhawks lost in postseason play to rival Kansas State, a team coached by Tex Winter.
Disgusted, Chamberlain decided to leave the University of Kansas. Because his class had not graduated, he was still ineligible for the NBA draft. So he played a barnstorming season with the Harlem Globetrotters, made a good sum of money, and waited his turn. That arrived the following season, 1959{-}60, when he made a heralded return to Philadelphia to play for the Warriors. His presence had an immediate impact on the league's statistical races. He led the NBA in scoring (37.6 points per game) and rebounding (27 per game). The next season, he became the first player in league history to shoot better than 50 percent from the floor. For the 1961{-}62 season, Chamberlain maximized man's potential for 48 minutes of basketball by averaging 50.4 points per game.
Bill Russell: "For accumulating numbers, there's not anybody to even come close to that. I'll just say that he played 49 minutes a game or something like that. I think that's absolutely incredible. And we won the Eastern Conference by eight games that season."
The next season, Chamberlain scored a mere 44.8 points per game and won the league rebounding title for the fourth straight season. He made each season his statistical fiefdom, and yet they all ended in bitter disappointment. The reason, of course, was the Boston Celtics. Quite often Chamberlain would dominate Russell statistically, but he could never vanquish the Boston center and his teammates in the big games. Chamberlain was actually taller than his listed height of seven-foot-one and towered over the six-foot-nine Russell, which caused the public to marvel at the smaller man's success.
Bill Russell: "Most people couldn't relate to what an imposing physical thing Wilt was. The first time you see him, it's like you're standing in his shadow. He's so big. Then he was really smart and a great athlete. The only saving thing is that he was not me. He was not me."
Bob Cousy: "A lot of people over the years have said that Bill Russell had more heart and desire than Wilt. That wasn't it. Russ was simply quicker than Wilt, and he knew how to use that quickness. That was obvious from the first time I ever saw the two of them on the court together. This is a tremendous advantage Russell had on Wilt. He didn't give him the offensive position he wanted. Russell kept him from overpowering him and going to the basket. Russell had better speed and quickness, so he could always beat Wilt to the spot. He pushed Chamberlain out a little further from the basket, forcing him to put the ball on the floor once or twice. We always felt Russell could handle him one-on-one."
As a result, Chamberlain was forced to develop and shoot a fallaway jumper that was far less effective than his dunks and short bank shot. His critics, meanwhile, saw Chamberlain as a giant fascinated by his own statistics.
Jerry West: "I've always felt that that part of him people misinterpreted. They would say, 'He's a selfish guy, he doesn't care, he's not a team player.' That's simply not the truth. It bothered him all the negative publicity he received, which frankly was not justified. It was really pretty ugly. He's like all of us. No athlete wants to fail. Chamberlain certainly didn't want to."
The Warriors moved to San Francisco for 1963{-}64, and Chamberlain again led the league in scoring. He also broadened the scope of his game by finishing fifth in assists. It didn't matter. The Warriors lost in the NBA Finals that year to Russell and the Celtics.
San Francisco traded Chamberlain to the Philadelphia 76ers in the middle of the next season. "Chamberlain is not an easy man to love," Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli later said of the trade. "I don't mean that I personally dislike him. He's a good friend of mine. But the fans in San Francisco never learned to love him. I guess most fans are for the little man and the underdog, and Wilt is neither. He's easy to hate, and we were the best draw in the NBA on the road, when people came to see him lose."
Chamberlain quickly made the 76ers into a title contender, but that spring they lost a seven-game series to the Celtics again. The following year, Philadelphia actually beat out Boston for the Eastern Division's regular-season crown but got caught flat-footed in the Eastern playoffs and lost to the Celtics 4{-}1.
Chamberlain's frustrations were no deeper than those felt by West, Baylor, and the Lakers. Bill Russell had simply built a wall around the NBA title. He had made it his personal property, or so it seemed until 1967, when Chamberlain finally led the 76ers to a 68{-}13 record and the league title, leading many observers to call them the greatest team of all time.
Jack Ramsay, former 76er general manager: "I think Wilt's best season was in {'}67 when the Sixers won it and Alex Hannum was his coach. He became more of a team player that year than ever before. Wilt was very stats conscious. He wanted to lead the league in scoring, rebounding; lead the league in everything. And he was capable of doing that."
But Boston's comeback victory over the Sixers in the 1968 Eastern Finals soon quieted all the "greatest team ever" talk, and Wilt decided he wanted out of Philadelphia. Jack Kent Cooke was only happy to help him find a ticket.
Jack Ramsay: "Wilt demanded a trade and we gave in to him, which is how he got to the Lakers. A powerhouse guy. Could do everything. Shoot, rebound, block shots, passes. He led the league in assists one year. That's the incredible stat. No center's ever done that."
Jack Kent Cooke: "We held our talks in June in the library of my Bel Air mansion. Things got off to a very good start. We talked about the fact that we each owned a 1962 Bentley Continental. We talked about antique furniture, art, even the English language."
Finally they talked about money, a five-year deal at $250,000 per season, making Chamberlain what was believed to be the highest paid athlete in any pro sport. The Lakers shipped Archie Clark, Darrell Imhoff, and Jerry Chambers to Philadelphia for Chamberlain. The deal was announced in early July, setting off immediate speculation about Chamberlain, West, and Baylor on the same team. Could they share one ball?
"We'll simply have the best team in basketball history," Chamberlain replied.
Seeing an opportunity to tweak the Lakers, Red Auerbach told reporters, "I wonder if Jerry West and Elgin Baylor are going to be willing to be underlings to Wilt Chamberlain?"
Cooke and Chamberlain were infuriated. "A statement like that is typical of Mr. Genius," Cooke shot back. "It's preposterous."
Bill Bertka: "Butch van Breda Kolff was at a party at my house in Santa Barbara when he heard that Chamberlain was being traded. He was upset. Butch didn't have anything against Chamberlain or his effectiveness. But you had to have Chamberlain in the post, and that dictated a style of offense that Butch didn't particularly like. He'd rather have all five men moving, all five men interchangeable and sharing the ball. Van Breda Kolff had had the great Princeton team. Schaus coached fast-break basketball. When Van Breda Kolff came in, he had a great first year, the second year was even better, and then they acquired Wilt. He wasn't an admirer of Wilt's game and how he could fit in."
Within hours, the trouble started. First Chamberlain read in news accounts that van Breda Kolff said he "could handle" his new center, who'd make a great rebounder for the Lakers. Who needs "handling"? Chamberlain wondered. Then at the Maurice Stokes Game that summer at Kutsher's Club, van Breda Kolff asked Chamberlain to don a Lakers T-shirt and pose with him for a photo. When Chamberlain refused, the coach fumed.
In training camp, the tension increased a notch. Van Breda Kolff thought the center gave him one good day's practice, then began slacking off. Chamberlain thought the coach was trying to run a pro team with college rules.
Then came a season-opening loss to the 76ers where Chamberlain concentrated on defense and rebounding. The next game, Chamberlain scored big points and they beat New York. "Tell the coach," Wilt told the writers afterward when they asked about the difference in the two games.
A few games later, van Breda Kolff angrily benched Chamberlain when rookie Wes Unseld of the Washington Bullets out-rebounded him, 27 to 21. The newspapers enjoyed the proceedings immensely, questioning Chamberlain's $250,000 salary and his sinking scoring average (20.5 points per game). "There are certain deficiencies with every club," Chamberlain replied. "Here with the Lakers I've tried to blend in, lend myself to the deficiencies, try to help overcome them. Here with the likes of Jerry and Elgin we have people who can score. So I've simply tried to get the rebounds, get the ball to one of them so we can score."
The questions about Chamberlain's salary were pointless, Hawks general manager Marty Blake told reporters. "There's no athlete in the world worth $250,000, or even $200,000, unless you can take it in at the gate. In L.A., they take it in at the gate."
Amid the turmoil, Chamberlain still managed to impress.
Bill Walton: "The first time I met Wilt I was in high school, and Wilt had just come to the Lakers. Our high school team played the preliminary game to a Lakers/San Diego Rocket game in the San Diego Sports Arena. I'm 16 years old and stuttered so badly that I was painfully shy. I'm walking off the court with my head down, and the Lakers are standing there ready to go onto the court. As I walk by, Wilt reaches out his arm and stops me. He steps out of their line and stands in front of me and puts his hand out and says, 'Hey, Bill, I'm Wilt. You're doing really well. Keep it up.' I was like blown away."
Bill Bertka: "Wilt was always the villain. Wherever Wilt went in those days he was always booed and unappreciated. But, in tribute to the Lakers fans, from the day he stepped on the Forum floor he was never booed, never shown disrespect. He was only appreciated. But it took him about a year here to realize that."
Some observers, however, questioned whether Chamberlain's presence hadn't weakened the team. He often set up on the left low post, dead smack in the way of Baylor's drives.
Bill Bertka: "Wilt was in the post, so it shut the lane down. That somewhat affected West's game, too, although West was one of the greatest pull-up shooters to ever play the game. Elgin liked to take it all the way to the basket, so it affected Baylor more than West or Goodrich. It certainly didn't affect their scoring. If Wilt was never acquired, the Lakers wouldn't have won that {'}72 world championship."
Van Breda Kolff sought to move the center to a high post, but Chamberlain figured that only took him away from rebounding. Privately, Chamberlain told friends that the coach favored West and Baylor and blamed him for the losses.
Fred Schaus: "I finally had to call the two of them in for a peacemaking session, and I tried to lay down some new rules. No more bashing each other in the press. Van Breda Kolff is the boss. I like both of them, but those two guys just couldn't agree on anything. Six weeks later, I had to fly to Atlanta for another meeting. After that meeting, I told the players to have their own meeting. Baylor was the captain, so he ran it. Wilt was told to stop frowning at his teammates on the court when things went wrong. The players told him to stop being so aloof, that he needed to socialize more."
That helped, but after a February 3 loss to Seattle, van Breda Kolff and Chamberlain screamed at each other for 20 minutes and would have come to blows in the locker room if Baylor hadn't stepped in. "It was embarrassing for everyone to hear them screaming like animals," one Laker confided to a writer. "It was ridiculous. The guys wanted to hide."
Bill Bertka: "Wilt being the dominant personality that he was and Bill being the dominant personality that he was, there were sparks. Wilt had definite opinions about how the game should be played and how he should be used. So did Butch. Yet they both wanted to win in the worst possible way."
Fred Schaus: "After that Seattle blowup, we had yet another meeting and another truce. Wilt asked Butch, 'What do you want me to do?' Butch told him, 'Play defense and rebound.'"
Chamberlain complied, and the Lakers won the conference title.
{I}Jack Ramsay: "Wilt's skills had diminished by the time he got to L.A. They were on the downside. By that time, I don't think he was capable of scoring at the same level that he once did."
By the 1969 playoffs, the Lakers were a picture of team defense, giving up just 94.7 points a game. Baylor, Chamberlain, and West were the heart of the lineup. But there was more. There was Keith Erickson out of UCLA, recently acquired from Chicago, as sixth man. There were John Egan, the veteran guard, to boost the backcourt, and Mel Counts, the seven-footer and former Celtic, to do the same up front. With Counts playing alongside Chamberlain, Los Angeles could close the lane and make opponents live off of jump shots.
On the strength of their defense, the Lakers advanced to the most disappointing of their Finals meetings with the Celtics. L.A. had taken the top seed in the Western with a 55{-}27 record and thus had home-court advantage for the Finals with the Celtics, who had finished fourth in the Eastern.
Jerry West:"Most of the years we played they were better than we were. But in {'}69 they were not better. Period. I don't care how many times we played it; they weren't better. We were better. Period. And we didn't win. And that was the toughest one."

A Window To The Triangle

2006-08-19T12:27:00.000-07:00

If you’re thinking that Lakers coach Phil Jackson would ever move away from the triangle offense, think again.
Jackson is showing off his fabulous new home on Flathead Lake, Montana, for guests at his daughter Chelsea’s wedding this weekend (August 19).
“It’s a museum, it’s a classic, it’s a showplace,” said Tex Winter, Jackson’s longtime mentor and basketball guru, searching for words to describe the place that Jackson has built.
One touch is stained glass on a variety of windows. In the stained glass is a decided triangle motif that riffs on the major geometric karma in Jackson’s life — Winter’s triangle offense. In places, the windows take on such a decided triangle basketball motif that they almost resemble play diagrams. Certainly you can see basketball lines emerging from the art.
The touch obviously delights the 84-year-old Winter, who has spent his life developing and innovating the triangle offense, with its structured-but-free-flowing approach to the game.
“It’s some place,” Winter said of Jackson’s new diggs.
Jackson’s extensive collection of Native American memorabilia (Jackson has frequently beat a tom-tom and chanted to motivate his players during his unusual career) is on display. Jackson spent part of his life growing up near Native American reservations where his parents, both ordained fundamentalist ministers, worked at times with the Native American community. Thus, Jackson’s interest in all things Native American is far from contrived.
His basketball collection — all the primo items and pelts from the 10 championships as an NBA and CBA coach — is mostly displayed in the new house’s snazzy game room.
Another awe-inspiring touch throughout is Jackson’s use of distinctive wood sent from Australia by former Bulls center (and Jackson friend) Luc Longley.
Jackson built the home on the Flathead lot that once held his late mother’s home. Jackson tore down that home to build his masterpiece.
He also owns another home nearby, which has been particularly convenient this weekend. He, girlfriend Jeanie Buss and some family members are staying in the new place, while former wife June and other family members are staying in the second home nearby.
The weekend brings other great news. Nancy, Winter’s wife of many years, has been ill for months. But her condition has improved recently, so much so that she and Tex loaded and drove cross-country from their home in Oregon to the event. Blessed with remarkable youth, Winter has always loved driving, touring the countryside, while thinking about the Lakers and his offense.
For those interested, the upcoming NBA season marks the 60th anniversary of the league. Those six decades coincide with Winter’s own coaching career, so he has marked the occasion by selecting his All-Time, All-Winter team for Lindy’s Pro Basketball Annual, due on newsstands Sept. 15. (It should be divulged here that I have been the senior editor of the pre-season magazine for the past 14 years).
Winter made some interesting selections for his team, old and news players, not so much selected for their greatness as for their combination of skills and coachability.
Of course, the intriguing question is, who among the modern players would make Tex’s all-time team?
How about Shaq and Kobe?
Here’s one tidbit: Miami’s Dwyane Wade is on the list. “I think he’s shown at a very early stage that he’s one of the top guards in basketball history,” Winter said. “He’s got all that talent, but what I really like about him is that he’s one of the most efficient guards to ever play the game.”
Efficient?
There have been a lot of adjectives used to describe Wade since his extraordinary NBA Finals performance, but only Winter breaks the game down in that way.

BYNUM NOTE
When Winter questioned the “fire in the belly,” the intensity and the reaction time of young Lakers center Andrew Bynum during summer league play, he wasn’t questioning his character. He was commenting on Bynum’s on-court intensity at times during games.
This is a developmental issue for a young player, not a character flaw. Bynum will have to learn how to jumpstart his energy and reaction time, but those are things that young NBA millionaires, especially 7-1 centers, have to develop, if they aspire to greatness.
I make that clarification in the wake of an email question about the evaluation.
There’s no question that the Lakers badly need Bynum’s contribution, but it is Winter’s opinion that it is unwise to rush the young guy. This, in turn, sets up some difficult questions for the franchise in terms of finding players ready to compete now.
Winter is likewise circumspect on the development of first round pick Jordan Farmar. The young guard out of UCLA has really impressed Winter. But Farmar is a young rookie who left college early, and Winter doesn’t want to see too much pressure on him, either. He will be ready to help the team when he’s ready.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, an oral history of the Lakers featuring 18 years of interviews he’s done with players, coaches, opponents, fans and media personnel covering the team. Lazenby also edits Lindy’s Pro Basketball Annual.

Summer’s Over: Time For Phil Jackson And The Lakers To Face Reality

2006-08-06T19:57:00.000-07:00

By Roland Lazenby

Once the Lakers finished their summer league play, Phil Jackson packed up the game tapes and sent them to Tex Winter, his longtime mentor and assistant coach who now serves as a team consultant.
Jackson wanted from Winter what he has always wanted — that perfect set of basketball eyes to look over the games, break them down in detail and determine if the team has found any players who can help once the games get serious this fall.
It’s something that Winter has done for Jackson since the days when they were assistant coaches and Winter was assigned to teach Jackson how to be a head coach.
Winter has always broken down the tape of each Laker game and gone over it with Jackson, taking the time to point out players’ strengths and weaknesses as well as team strengths and weaknesses.
“I go over the tape with him,” Winter said. “He’s always liked that.”
This time around, Jackson and his coaching staff wanted to see what Winter thought of the play of the team’s young players, especially teen-aged center Andrew Bynum.
“We all were in hopes that he would really arrive,” Winter explained.
However, after studying the tape, Winter offered the truth. The 7-1 Bynum had “a couple of really good games,” Winter said, but the 84-year-old guru came away with questions about Bynum’s intensity, his lack of “fire in the belly."
"His energy is a question,” Winter said.
Winter also raised questions about Bynum’s quickness, his reaction to the ball, to events on the floor.
Part of that lack of reaction time is due to his size, Winter said. “He seems to still be getting bigger. He is huge, but the bottom line, in my opinion, is that we can’t rush him.”
Because Bynum is so big, and a true center, his development is going to take longer, Winter predicted.
And that means bigger questions for the Lakers in terms of the upcoming season, Winter said. “The organization has to make some tough decisions. You bet. From what I saw of the summer league tapes, there’s just not a whole lot of players there on the roster who can make a difference."
Winter said rookie first-round pick Jordan Farmar could possibly help. “He’s tough, but he’s still probably not ready. I also liked J.R. Pinnock. He could be some help as a reserve. He’s a keeper. He has enough talent.”
Winter also liked the play of Devin Green. Beyond that, though, he said there’s not much in the way of talent ready to help.
Which means the Jackson and the Lakers must toss back a stiff dose of reality — life without Shaquille O'Neal means thin opportunity.
Unfortunately, it’s not just a question of players learning the offense. “As far as execution, I thought our summer league team did an excellent job. It’s just a question of how good the talent is,” Winter offered. “The people on the floor can execute the offense, but do they have the skills to make the offense function?”
Winter says he’s pretty sure that Jackson is concerned about the situation. “Phil’s got the attitude that he’s gonna do the best he possibly can do with the players available,” Winter explained. “He’s back to the point of knowing that he’s not putting an NBA championship team on the floor but of having the best team he can have with the talent available.
“I think Phil is pretty realistic about things. He’s not a dreamer.”
What makes this reality so problematic is that this is the Lakers, Winter said. “The expectations are always so high. They won’t go away. That’s part of the franchise.”
Although Winter has said often that the Lakers had little choice but to trade O’Neal because of his huge contract demands (he wanted roughly $30 mil per season to play for the Lakers but agreed to a $20 mil per season extension with Miami), the reality of the center’s absence will likely set in this season as the team struggles not to be locked into the middle of the league.
This brings immediate questions about Kobe Bryant’s patience as the guard watches the best years of his career slip away in a rebuilding situation.
“His patience might be wearing a little thin,” Winter said of Bryant. “On the other hand, he seems okay with things. I think he likes the idea of it being his team. That’s what he wanted and that’s what he’s got. He’s like Phil. He’s a realist.”
On the other hand, Winter said, a realist also has to look at last season and realize the Lakers exceeded expectations. “We could still wind up being a pretty good team this season,” he said. “It wouldn’t take a whole lot more for us to win 55 or 60 games. Actually it would take people continuing to get better like they did last year. You would hope we could duplicate last season and improve on that. But each year is a new situation.”
In other words, for the Lakers to have a good season, they’ll have to hope for very good fortune, because the talent level is good but not overwhelming.
Jackson has always done better with overwhelming talent, although many observers thought he did some of the best coaching of his career last season.
Other observations from Winter’s tale of the tape:
• If the team can find guard help (if Jordan Farmar or one of the veterans can play well), the Bryant can move to the 3 and that frees up Lamar Odom to play more at the 4, or power forward. “I think Odom will end up playing quite a bit of 4 depending on who fills those guard spots,” Winter said.
• As badly as the team needs players with experience in the triangle offense, it was time to cut loose Devean George. “He couldn’t develop the kind of consistency it takes to help us,” Winter said. “In his defense, he was hurt an awful lot and that hurt his efficiency. (Brian) Cook is another one in that situation. Can he show he’s more than just a shooter?”
• The Lakers staff is divided on free agent Kareem Rush. Some want to sign him (likely Jackson and Winter), while others (assistant GM Ronnie Lester) don’t think Rush is the answer. “Some say he might help us a lot,” Winter said.
• Luke Walton has tremendous value as the team’s sixth man. “He’s versatile. He can do a lot to help us. He can play both forward spots, plus he can even help us in the backcourt.”
It all adds up to the question upon which reputations will rest: Will it all be good enough?

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, an oral history of the Lakers based on his 18 years of interviews with the team’s players, coaches, owners, fans, media, and opponents. In a review, Booklist called The Show “the best book about the NBA since The Jordan Rules.”

Where The Bodies Are Buried

2006-07-20T06:50:00.000-07:00

Note: This is an excerpt from my Phil Jackson biography Mindgames (originally published by McGraw-Hill in hardcover and trade paperback), which is scheduled to be released in an updated paperback in 2007 by the University of Nebraska Press, a publisher that has republished a long series of classic sports books. Although Mindgames focuses much on Jackson's great success and the reasons for it, it also explores Jackson's dark side. This excerpt deals with that dark side.

MIND BENDERS

Not everyone, of course, enjoys Phil Jackson's unique approach. In particular, many Bulls staff members who had to endure his personality quirks were left harboring a long-burning resentment. Jackson’s battles with team vice president Jerry Krause spilled over into an ugly display in 1998, but he also had many less-public clashes with the team’s community services, marketing, and media relations departments. To many of these people, his mind games seemed unnecessary and sometimes cruel.
On more than one occasion, Jackson reduced staff assistants to tears with a good public upbraiding. Fans have often heard about his brilliant touch of canceling practice and instead taking the Bulls on a ferry ride in New York during the 1994 playoffs. What isn’t known is that Jackson stopped the team bus that day as it was about to depart for the trip and ordered a longtime team publicity assistant, the only female on the bus, to get off. According to team sources, the woman was devestated by the move and has never forgiven Jackson for an unexplained and seemingly unnecessary humiliation (she left the team's employment a few months later).
Other staff members simply learned to adjust to Jackson’s ways. They came to understand that for Jackson there were two groups, the players and immediate members of the team, and then the rest of the world. Staff members belonged in the rest of the world, and Jackson didn’t like them getting too close to the players and team. This, of course, is an attitude found among other NBA coaches. “Phil was a good guy,” recalled one Bulls staff member who worked with Jackson a lot. “Phil was Phil. He would bust your balls a lot, a lot of times for no other reason than to exert that attitude that ‘I’m the boss.’ He just liked flexing his muscles. He was unpredictable. A lot of it was to keep you off balance. If he saw you starting to feel comfortable at practice, in the locker room or on the team bus, he’d definitely put you in your place and let you know he was running the show. You always had to act subservient around him. He did that with the security guards, too. He had a way of saying things that would cut you to the bone.
“He wouldn’t let you get too comfortable. He liked to keep everybody on edge. It was his way of control. If you asked him about it, he would tell you that it was his way of fucking with you or playing mind games with you.
“He always used to say, ‘It’s like I tell my kids, always ask. Don’t assume things. Always ask.’”
This longtime Bulls employee said that as soon as he got comfortable around the team and forgot to ask if it was okay to make each move, then Jackson would cut him down to size. “Then, all of a sudden, you felt like a dick. He didn’t just do this to me, but to everybody. It was never personal. It was just his way.”
Another longtime Bulls employee said that Jackson had become increasingly difficult over the years in Chicago as the Bulls gained more and more notoriety and there were increasing demands on the coach. “You change a lot,” explained one staff member who worked closely with Jackson. “That’s because the landscape changes. We became the most popular sports team in the world. They all changed. The players. Phil. Everybody. Despite people thinking that he could be very, very arrogant, at times he could still be very funny. He could still take it all in stride and know that everything involving him was not the end of the world. But I can see where people would hate him. Those mind games after a while aren’t funny. Those games are easy to play when you got Michael Jordan on your side. When you got Michael, all your games are gonna work. All the dice come up sevens.
“Another thing you’ve got to remember,” the Bulls employee added, “is that Phil’s a former player. Just about all of those ex-players have this it’s-all-about-me syndrome. They’re taught to think that way and they never get over it. One other thing, Phil was the coach of the best basketball team in the world led by the greatest player in the history of the game. You have to have arrogance to coach a group like that. It’s gonna be tough day in and day out if you don’t. You do that job you better have some shit with you.”
Some Bulls employees saw Jackson’s approach as an outgrowth of his growing control battle with Jerry Krause. Anyone who held a private conversation with Krause over the course of the 1998 season heard his complaints that the Bulls’ success had gone to Jackson’s head, that he was an egomaniac hungry for power, that he had been disloyal to Krause, the one person who had allowed him back into the NBA, that the private Jackson was far different from the one admired by the public.
Tex Winter was a friend and counselor to both Jackson and Krause. He had witnessed their success, then watched as the relationship began falling apart in 1996, leaving Winter playing the middle over the next two years trying to keep the two men working together for the team’s sake. Winter acknowledged that there were things that Jackson could have done to make the situation more harmonious. But Winter privately pointed out that Krause had a difficult personality and that Jackson had spent years bending over backwards to accommodate that personality until Jackson finally wearied of that effort.
Krause, though, portrayed Jackson as a two-faced character who really had very little regard for his assistant coaches, a perception that certain Krause associates in the Bulls organization had sought to spread about Jackson. At the height of the hard feelings in the spring of 1998, one of Krause’s scouts went to press row in Chicago’s United Center to explain to a reporter the insidious nature of Jackson’s ego.
Perhaps no NBA general manager had a more investigative nature than Krause, nicknamed “The Sleuth” for his secretive approach to scouting and compiling information about players and coaches. A Chicago native, Krause had worked in an around the NBA for four decades, which meant that he had a voluminous knowledge of the league’s secrets. “I know where all the bodies are buried,” he had once bragged when asked about his own franchise.
It was Phil Jackson’s great misfortune that at the height of their discord Krause gained irrefutable evidence about one of Jackson’s own misdeeds involving the 1994 firing of assistant coach Johnny Bach.
Like Winter, Bach had been an elderly influence on Jackson when he joined the team. A spirited sort who was popular with Bulls players, Bach apparently fell into Jackson’s disfavor because he sometimes encouraged Jordan to follow his own inclinations and ignore the triangle offense. But Bach also was a strong supporter of Jackson’s, which leaves his dismissal as something of a mystery. There was something about Bach that annoyed Jackson. “We were very different people,” Bach acknowledged.
At the time and in later accounts, Jackson portrayed Bach’s firing as a result of Krause’s anger over the 1991 book “The Jordan Rules” by Chicago Tribune columnist Sam Smith. The text contained fascinating inside detail on the team’s drive to its first championship, detail that portrayed Krause as something of a buffoon and Jordan as somewhat ruthless and selfish. Both Jordan and Krause hated the book, and Jackson later joked that “The Jordan Rules” was one of the few things the team executive and star player could agree about.
Krause alleged later that Jackson deceived him into believing that Bach was the anonymous source for most of the inside detail. Krause learned in 1998 that it was Jackson himself, not Bach, who was the source for much of Smith’s book. How did Krause discover this? He learned it from Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, who was told of the situation in confidence by none other than Sam Smith himself. Smith had revealed his sources to Reinsdorf with the caveat that he not tell anyone. Reinsdorf was not supposed to give that information to Krause, but he did.
Smith independently confirmed those events and Jackson’s role in his book. “Phil and the players had much more of a role than Johnny Bach,” Smith said in acknowledging that he had told Reinsdorf of Jackson’s part in “The Jordan Rules.”
Jackson, though, had continued to explain Bach’s firing as a result of the elderly assistant coach’s involvement, clearly a prevarication on Jackson’s part.
"It was Jerry Krause’s relationship with Johnny Bach that created a very uncomfortable situation," Jackson said of the firing in a 1995 interview. "It made this have to happen eventually. It had gone all wrong. It was bad for the staff to have this kind of thing because we had to work together.
"Jerry basically blamed Johnny Bach for a lot of the things in the Jordan Rules. And there’s no doubt that Johnny did provide that information. Jerry felt that Johnny talked too much. And Johnny, in retrospect, felt that animonsity that Jerry gave back to him, the lack of respect, so Johnny refused to pay allegiance to Jerry just because he was the boss.
"It had gone on for too long a period of time," Jackson said. "I could have kept them apart, at bay from one another, I suppose for a while longer. But I didn’t like the fact that it wasn’t good teamwork. That was my staff and my area. I agreed to do it. I felt it was a good opportunity because Johnny had an opportunity to get another job in the league quickly. It worked out fine for Johnny, although I would just as soon have not put him through the disappointment, or have to go through the situation myself."
“Phil lied to me,” Krause said in a 1998 interview. “Phil actually got Johnny fired.”
“It was Phil’s idea to fire Bach,” Reinsdorf said in 1998. “Phil told me that the bad relationship between Krause and Bach had made things impossible. It was Phil’s idea. Nobody told him to do it.”
Contrary to Jackson’s later assertions that things worked out fine for Bach, Bach himself said the firing came at a terrible time in his life, after the 1994 playoffs, just weeks shy of his 70th birthday. The irony, Bach said, was that the coaching staff had probably never worked better together.
“At the end of that year I had every reason to think my contract would be renewed,” Bach recalled in a 1999 interview. “The first person that told me was Phil. He said, ‘We’re not gonna renew the contract.’ I was stunned. Before I could say much in defense, he said, ‘It’s really best for you that you do leave. The organization has made up its mind.’ I was disappointed. Shocked is a better way of saying it. I didn’t quarrel. I just couldn’t believe it. I went to see Krause and he said the same thing. I just got up and left. I had a lot of crisis in my life at that time. I was in the divorce courts ending a long-term marriage. I had to move. I thought everything was collapsing around me that summer. Then I had a heart attack. It was all a shock, and it took some time to believe and trust people again.”
An excellent coach, Bach was later hired by the Charlotte Hornets. He subsequently learned that he was supposedly fired for the inside information he provided to Smith. Bach said he went back and read the book three or four times looking for damaging information he might have provided. His quotes, though, were on the record and relatively basic.
“I didn’t see a single quote in that book that was out of order,” he said. “Sam is obviously a good investigative reporter. There was a portrait in there that Michael did not like, based on whoever gave it to Sam.”
The book “was quite an accurate portrayal,” Bach said. “I don’t think Sam painted someone as he wasn’t.”
Krause was supposedly distraught more than three years later to learn that he had been deceived into firing an innocent Bach. By then, Bach was working in Detroit as an assistant coach. One night when the Pistons were in Chicago to play the Bulls, Pistons executive Rick Sund told Bach that Krause would like a word with him. “I had mixed feelings,” Bach recalled. “You sort of protect yourself.”
He agreed to the meeting, however, and was more than a bit surprised. “When Jerry spoke to me he was emotional, and so was I. I always thought the organization had made that move, not Phil. I thought it was a huge concession on Jerry’s part to come up to me. I thought he meant it,” Bach said of Krause’s apology. “And I accepted that.”
Bach said he had continued to greet Jackson whenever he ran into him and even addressed the issue with Jackson when they had a chance to sit down man to man over a drink. What he told Jackson that night will remain between the two of them, Bach said. “I’d rather leave it be. Certainly he knew how I felt. I always thought we had a relationship that was strong enough. We had sat there on the bench together for five years. As an assistant coach you don’t always know about these things that are going on. It was always foolish, kind of an indictment that I could never defend myself. Now the whole thing is not important. Once it was.”
The incident, however, begged several questions. Jackson had coveted the opportunity to coach the Bulls, just as he had worked diligently to build a relationship with Michael Jordan. Why would he risk his job or that key relationship in his professional life by providing a reporter with unflattering information about his boss and his star player?
One longtime Bulls employee who worked with Jackson on a daily basis figured the coach provided the information to Smith because it helped him gain more control over his team. The end result of the book was that it served to further alienate Krause from the players, thus securing Jackson’s role as “the leader of the pack,” the team employee said.
As far as the negative portrayal of Jordan, it was the ultimate mind game, a matter of “ ‘Let’s get down on Michael. Let’s whip this guy and keep him in line for my purposes.’ It was his way of getting on Michael’s side by alienating him from the media,” the Bulls employee suggested. “That was why Phil always used it’s the Us-Against-The-Media approach, the Us-Against-The-Organization approach, because if he did that, then he could be the leader of the pack. That’s why I’ve got a lot of qualms with the Zenmaster. You’re not even smart enough to get along with your own bosses and your own fellow employees during the greatest run in basketball history. So how smart are you?”
These voices provide two distinctly different perspectives on Phil Jackson, of those who work for him and those who work with him. What emerges in both is his determination to control the competitive environment he inhabits. Some he cajoles and charms into line. For others he reserves harsher methods. Regardless, his purpose beats as insistently as his drum, moving them about for designs that only he sees. Yet even those who don’t like him marvel at his mastery, at how he can do what no one else can.
Part of the employees’ resentment stemmed from Jackson’s insistence on shutting out everyone except the immediate group of players and coaches and trainers, thus dividing the organization into those within the team and those without. Jackson did this to increase camraderie and group identification, but it led him to treat most approaching staff members as intruders. Regardless, the few staff members allowed a view of the team’s inner workings marveled at what they saw.
“He really did love his team, really deeply” explained a Bulls staff member who worked around the team daily. “And the team trusted him totally. He included every player, top to bottom. You really knew he cared about them, about the whole group on the deepest level.”

Roland Lazenby is also the author of The Show, an oral history of the Lakers.

TEX’S WISH LIST FOR LAKER IMPROVEMENT

2006-07-10T10:31:00.000-07:00

Note to readers: Thanks for your kind comments and suggestions. Your questions led me to interview Tex Winter on the upcoming season, the signing of Vlade Radmanovic and the challenge ahead.

Many of the teams in the Western Conference have made moves to get better over the off-season. That, in turn, has put pressure on the Lakers.
“I don’t think we can be sure of making the playoffs without considerable improvement,” Laker consultant and longtime Phil Jackson assistant Tex Winter offered in a phone interview.
Specifically, Winter calls for four areas of improvement that will be key for 2006-07 success.
• Guard improvement. “We have to find some leadership in the backcourt,” he explained. This is not a dig at Kobe Bryant. Rather, Winter says the team needs a strong guard, which can take some of the pressure off Bryant and allow him to move to small forward. “That’s where he can be more effective,” Winter said. That’s because working at the 3 spot allows Bryant to operate behind the defense on the underside of the triangle. It could create more opportunities for quick-opening isolation looks like the Bulls used to get for Jordan.
With Bryant at the 3 spot, the Lakers will have an open-floor look that allows them to use more of the options from the triangle.
Bryant at the 3 also might make Phil Jackson more comfortable with the running game. “Phil’s got a lot of confidence in our flow game,” Winter explained. The “flow game” allows the team to use a limited break to “flow” into the triangle sets.
Winter has encouraged Jackson to look for more pure running opportunities, something that owner Jerry Buss has wanted for years.
The running game would take advantage of what Lamar Odom does best, which is rebound on the defensive end and power out on the break with the ball (like Magic Johnson so often did for Showtime in the Laker days of yore), Winter said.
Rookie Jordan Farmar, of course, is perhaps a key to improved guard play. He knows the game and has shown a knack early in summer league play for the offense, Winter said. “Farmar will help because he’s got some savvy. He knows how to complement Odom on the break. The break will help because it will allow Kobe to get up the floor and attack the basket before the defense sets up. If Smush Parker learns how to utilize all that speed he has, he can be a factor in the running game, too.”
The running game, of course, requires tremendous defensive effort, rebounding the ball, forcing turnovers, etc. It might also be the format which allows Odom to realize his potential.
• Boost post depth and play. “I don’t know how much we can depend on (Andrew) Bynum,” Winter said. He pointed out that the young center’s play in summer league’s first game is extremely encouraging. “He’s got great potential. If he gets fire in his belly and learns to compete, he could help us tremendously,” the coach added.
The coaching staff likes Chris Mihm as well. Winter has envisioned Mihm as having great potential at power forward, but both Mihm and Kwame Brown seem to prefer the center position.
Regardless, Bynum’s improvement will be a big factor in how the Lakers do. And that’s a lot of pressure to put on an 18-year-old with no college experience. “That’s why I think the summer league is important. Very important,” Winter said. If it can advance the play of Bynum and Farmar, the summer league will pay dividends this upcoming season. That, however, is a huge IF. Is it realistic?
Winter likes the fact that assistant Kurt Rambis wound up coaching the summer league team with help from Brian Shaw and Craig Hodges. All three have a solid understanding of the offense, not to mention great teaching ability, he said.
• Much better shooting. All of last season, Winter bemoaned the Lakers’ lack of consistent perimeter shooting. Bryant’s presence creates so many open looks for teammates in the triangle offense. The Lakers needed someone to take advantage. Their acquisition of free agent Vladimir Radmanovic, the 6-10 perimeter threat (and Clipper free agent), has him excited.
“In this offense, he’s gonna get some shots,” Winter said of Radmanovic. “He’ll get more open shots than he’s ever had in his life. That’s if we get the ball movement we need. Radmanovic can do other things besides just shoot. He has an ability to go to the hole off the dribble. Yes, he’s more of a perimeter player, but that will open the floor for Kobe and our other players to drive.”
• Improvement from Bryant. “Kobe has got to continue to lift his game, particularly from the standpoint of team play,” Winter said, repeating a refrain that he sends Bryant’s way on a constant basis. Bryant’s play on Team USA in the World Championships in Japan in late August will help tremendously, Winter said. “He won’t feel he’ll have to go out there and dominate. He’ll have so many other good players on that team, he’ll be able to relax a bit and enjoy his teammates.
“He’ll play differently on that team than he’s ever played before,” Winter predicted.

PHIL'S QUESTION MARK

2006-07-05T07:36:00.000-07:00

WILL L.A.’S HIP LIFESTYLE ALLOW JACKSON TO KEEP COACHING?

By Roland Lazenby

Still aching after watching their three-games-to-one lead over the Phoenix Suns slip away in the playoffs, the Los Angeles Lakers now look ahead with a new urgency.
No one smarts more than the team’s two leaders — Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson. They both are eager to continue building the team to gain some measure of redemption after the playoff fold.
The biggest obstacle to that, though, may be Jackson’s health.
“The hip has really been bothering him,” said Tex Winter, a Lakers consultant and Jackson’s longtime assistant and mentor. “He doesn’t know what to do about it. His health is the big challenge for the team.”
The team’s trainers work regularly with Jackson to find ways to relieve his pain and to gain better mobility. The situation begs the question: If Jackson is still having trouble this offseason, how will he cope with two more years of NBA travel?
After watching Jackson on a recent trip to Los Angeles, Winter asked the Lakers coach if his health would allow him to fulfill the three-year contract Jackson signed last summer.
“He said he thought so, but it wouldn’t be easy,” Winter said.
After working in Los Angeles for the recent draft, Jackson headed north to Montana to the huge new home he has built on Flathead Lake. There, later this summer, Jackson’s daughter Chelsea will be married.
One person who doesn’t seem to share Jackson’s love of Montana is his girlfriend Jeanie Buss, a team executive and the daughter of Lakers owner Jerry Buss. Jeanie Buss is a very L.A./ Southern California kind of girl who needs to stay close to the city due to her work with the team.
Buss also plays a substantial role in Jackson’s health by helping him maintain a healthy diet. She has even taken charge of how he dresses, cuts his hair and trims his beard.

MIAMI DICE

A big part of the Lakers’ incentive for the upcoming season is the success of Shaquille O’Neal in winning another championship with the Miami Heat.
“I don’t think anybody regrets letting Shack go,” Winter said of the Lakers’ management team. “I don’t think they had any choice.”
Before leaving via a trade in 2004, O’Neal had been pushing the Lakers for a contract extension at approximately $30 million per season. He later signed a $20 million per season extension with the Heat, the kind of deal he wouldn’t even discuss with the Lakers.
If O’Neal had only asked $20 million per season from the Lakers (which would have been a pay cut), he and Bryant would likely be teammates today.
The irony, of course, is that Miami coach Pat Riley had come to Los Angeles in 2004 to talk with the Lakers about replacing Jackson. Riley had pitched himself as the ideal candidate to help Shaq and Kobe stay together.
However, Riley came away from his meetings with the Lakers with a key nugget—there was no way Jerry Buss was going to give Shaq the huge extension he wanted.
So Riley returned to Miami, where he was then an executive, and began working out the details of the trade that brought O’Neal to the Heat.
Riley later signed Shaq to the bargain price for four seasons, and in so doing set in motion the drive to the 2006 NBA championship.

DRAFT NOTES

Winter is quite pleased with the Lakers’ selection of UCLA guard Jordan Farmar in the draft.
In his physical tests with the team, Farmar “tested about as high as anyone ever has” in terms of speed, quickness, leaping, etc., Winter said.
However, there are other elements of Farmar’s game that please, the 84-year-old assistant coach, who has spent his life developing the triangle offense.
“He knows the game. He’ll be a good system player,” Winter said of Farmar. “I think he’s got a chance to be pretty good. I don’t know how long that will take.”
Winter was also pleased that the Lakers got journeyman guard Maurice Evans in a draft night trade. “I think he’s a lot better player than we could have gotten with the 51st pick of the draft,” he said. “Every team he’s been on, he’s been in a backup role, but when he did play, I was impressed.”
Evans could give the team some much-needed depth at guard, Winter said.
Winter said the recent draft results were clouded for many teams, except for Portland and Chicago who came out winners.
“I don’t know how much these other teams helped themselves,” he said. “Chicago did a good job. And I think Portland helped themselves. They did an awful lot of trading, but things ended up pretty good for them by the end of the night.”

DEVELOPMENT LEAGUE

Just how important will it be for the Lakers to own their own Development League team?
Well, all the details haven’t been worked out, but there are already plans for the Lakers’ D-League team to work out with the Lakers in their El Segundo training facility.
The Development League team offers the opportunity for the Lakers to teach players how to thrive in the triangle offense. Sometimes the Lakers have had trouble finding replacement parts for their offense. No other teams in the league run the triangle, and it often takes players a season or two to become familiar with the system that is based on the players making offensive reads rather than simply relying on set plays.
“It will be good to keep the group working out in our facility,” Winter said.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, The Inside Story Of The Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers In The Words Of Those Who Lived It, recently released by McGraw-Hill. He also has written Mindgames, a Phil Jackson biography.

On Draft Night Every GM Gives Himself a Gold Star

2006-06-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

by Roland Lazenby

Winners and losers in the NBA draft of 2006?

That’s supposed to be the assignment here. But it’s more a matter of gulpers and sippers.

This wasn’t so much a draft as it was a giant smoothie for the league’s executives.

Just dump all the draft picks and trades into the huge blender that was draft night and hit the HIGH button. Let it whir for a few hours, and like that, you have something that every general manager can digest, if not downright savor, and better yet, something they think they can sell to the fans.

Every general manager, that is, except Isiah Thomas of the New York Knicks. His selling days are mostly over. For the past two years, Thomas and Knicks/Madison Square Garden executive James Dolan have been acting as if they’re made men, as if they’re bullet proof, while throwing away tens of millions of dollars on one crazy decision after another.

Draft night may have been the final deed that gets them planted late some night in one of those deserted Jersey fields that the goombahs use for waste disposal.

Knicks fans are that frustrated.

You gotta give it to Zeke, though. If he’s gonna go down, it’s gonna be blazing, ghetto-style, doing it his way. So he takes the 20th overall pick and uses it to select Renaldo Balkman, that 6-5 forward out of South Carolina who is all raw passion with skills that make you grimace.

He’s an interesting pick, one that inspires some people to compare him to Dennis Rodman or Charles Barkley. Zeke’s gonna run and gun with his Knicks next season, and now he’s got a Rodman clone to introduce a little mayhem and a lot of energy into the proceedings each night.

“What? Is he nuts?” was the immediate chorus of ESPN broadcast analysts amidst the boos and hoots of the draft-night crowd at Madison Square Garden.

I have a little history with Zeke, so I’m not on that bandwagon just yet. Yes, he’s pulled some sneaky-stupid moves over the years. But he has always drafted well, he always pretty much knows what he wants, and Zeke can flat out lead a basketball team.

Yes, he may screw up a zillion things, but there’s a certain part of things he’s gotten straight over the years. His draft last year was primo with Channing Frye, David Lee and Nate Robinson.

Ditto for his days in Toronto with Damon Stoudamire and Marcus Camby. Isiah didn’t stay in Toronto very long, but the guys he picked proved themselves over the ensuing decade.

As a player, Zeke won two titles with Rodman, who hadn’t even played high school ball and couldn’t shoot a lick.
Thomas wants his team to get out and go next year. He’s got the talent to do that, and in Balkman he’s got a motor at the forward spot. Yes, he’s undersized, but a motor is a motor.

Then, just to throw fans another curve with the 29th pick, he added Mardy Collins, a big bulky, smart, skilled point guard who interned with John Chaney at Temple. Collins has got a big ole butt good for backing people down if the Knicks manage to slow it down long enough to run a half-court set or two.

Who’s to say the Knicks can’t play the way the Phoenix Suns do?

No, they don’t have Steve Nash, but their bloated payroll has purchased the talents of a lot of guys who can get out and go, unless Zeke happens to trade a few of them before the season starts.

I know Isiah has been acting like a pill lately, hiding from the New York media, etc., but I like the guy. I like his moxie. Always have. Hope he succeeds.

If he doesn’t, it’s still going to be among the most entertaining theater the NBA has to offer this upcoming season. There’s nothing quite like watching a train wreck.

Maybe Dolan and Isiah really are made men.

As for other screamers on draft night, ESPN’s Greg Anthony shook his head at the zany activity of the Portland Trail Blazers. There were trades that seemed to accomplish nothing, or worse yet, seemed to downgrade the roster.

The Blazers shipped a brilliant young talent like Sebastian Telfair (and a solid defender in Theo Ratliff plus a future second-round pick) to the Celtics for Raef LaFrentz (!), injured guard Dan Dickau, and the draft rights to Randy Foye (which they promptly spun off).

By the end of the night, though, Blazers executive Steve Patterson was smiling. He had acquired former University of Washington guard Brandon Roy and former University of Texas post LaMarcus Aldridge.

The Blazers also selected Joel Freeland (a project center from England) and James White (shooting guard from Cincinnati) with the 30th and 31st picks in 2006 NBA Draft. In addition to those picks the Blazers also acquired Sergio Rodriguez (PG from Spain) from Phoenix in exchange for cash.

They then traded James White to the Indiana Pacers for Alexander Johnson and second-round picks in 2007 and 2008.

Forgive their fans for being dazed and confused by all the moves. Yet it’s obvious more are to come for this bunch.

Patterson, though, sat back like a self-congratulatory Jerry Krause and pointed to all he had done. The young Blazers had gotten much younger and arguably more talented.

Will it all work out in the long run? Who knows, but at least the fans have something new to sip on.

Besides the Celtics and Blazers, who else came away with something good? Well, that depends on whom you ask. Here’s a list of candidates:

• Michael Jordan and the Charlotte Bobcats got the scorer they wanted in Gonzaga’s Adam Morrison.

• John Paxson and the Chicago Bulls loaded up while getting young and athletic by trading the second overall pick, Aldridge, to Portland for No. 4 pick Tyrus Thomas and forward Viktor Khryapa. Thomas was the SEC Freshman of the Year at LSU and averaged 12.3 ppg, 9.2 rpg and 3.1 bpg. The Bulls also acquired Swiss guard Thabo Sefolosha from Philadelphia for a future second-round pick, cash and Rodney Carney, who was taken with Chicago's 16th overall pick. Sefolosha averaged 12 ppg playing in Italy last season.

• Picking late, the Lakers still probably found a starter. They selected UCLA guard Jordan Farmar with the No. 26 overall pick in Wednesday's NBA Draft. The 6-foot-2 Farmar averaged 13.5 ppg and led the Pac-10 in assists with 5.1 as a sophomore. The Lakers also acquired guard Maurice Evans from the Pistons for Cheick Samb, their second-round pick.

• The Orlando Magic got just the shooter they needed to complement their core of young talent with Duke guard JJ Redick.

• Danny Ferry and the Cavaliers bolstered their backcourt by selecting Michigan State guard Shannon Brown at No. 25, Texas guard Daniel Gibson at No. 42 and Nigerian forward Ejike Ugboaja with the 55th pick.

• The Memphis Grizzlies and Jerry West, who always seem to come away with something on draft night, selected Kyle Lowry at 24th overall, then acquired draft rights to Alexander Johnson from Portland in exchange for a 2008 second-round draft pick.

And, oh, yeah, the Toronto Raptors, picking first, took Italian big man Andrea Bargnani, supposedly the hottest Euro of them all.

What does it all mean?

Well, each and every team website is hawking the news today. WE GOT THE GUYS WE WANTED. Right next to that is the season ticket form.

They’ve all had a great night. There’s new stuff to sell.

These guys will all be great, if Isiah and the other coaches around the league can get them to play hard and smart.

Here’s a fact to think about: Nearly a half of these kids who will get guaranteed salaries worth millions will be busts. Not worth a hoot. And NBA teams will lose tens of millions in wasted salaries for these players who don’t pan out.

Now you know why the NBA is so determined to push ahead with the Development League. It can buy an entire league of development players for $1 million, a mere fraction of what it costs for one first-rounder on draft night.

Go ahead, sip on that.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show: The Inside Story Of The Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers In The Words Of Those Who Lived It, recently released by McGraw-Hill

Get A T.O., Baby?

2006-06-19T05:03:00.000-07:00

The National Basketball Association has long created a competitive format that allows coaches and their teams to chisel the clock at the end of games into tenths of seconds.
That's one of the big reasons the NBA likes to boast that its game is "fantastic."
That's how you feel if your team manages its timeouts well and wins the game.
If your timeouts don't go well, you feel just the opposite of fantastic, which is a few notches short of suicide.
If you don't believe that, just ask Isiah Thomas—or Mark Cuban.
The Isiah Thomas timeout fiasco during Game 5 of the 1987 Eastern Conference finals (what is it about Game 5?) is part of NBA lore. With only ticks left on the clock, the Detroit Pistons had a one point lead in Boston Garden and faced inbounding the ball under their own basket.
An antsy Thomas signaled to official Jess Kersey that he wanted the ball to throw it in.
"Don't you want a timeout?" Kersey asked.
"Gimme the f**kin' ball," Thomas demanded.
Kersey gave him the ball, and Thomas made the inbounds pass that was famously stolen by Larry Bird, who then famously whipped it to teammate Dennis Johnson, who then famously scored a layup to give the Celtics a one-point lead with only a second or two to go.
The crowd went nuts. Boston Garden may have never been louder.
With the ball in his hands, Kersey then walked up a crestfallen Thomas and asked, "NOW do you want a timeout?"
Mark Cuban, of course, is the Mr. Moneybags Owner who has revived the Dallas Mavericks franchise. A former fan, Cuban likes to sit right behind his team during games and fuss about the refs. Cuban even jumps into huddles during timeouts to hear coach Avery Johnson's latest strategy and check on his team.
The only NBA owner who has ever been closer to his team during games was the late Les Harrison of the Rochester Royals. The only way that the irascible Harrison was closer was that he actually coached the team. Harrison, too, was the kind of guy who couldn't help but get into it with the refs.
And like Cuban, Harrison was not above using strange tactics to improve his team's fortunes. When the Royals struggled during the 1951 season, Harrison told me he took the team to a roadhouse and paid for his players to get uproariously drunk. He figured that would help them exorcise the demons and start playing the right way. Sure enough, the Royals made it all the way to the league chapionship series that year (George Mikan of the Minneapolis Lakers was injured) and actually won the thing despite Harrison's fussing with the officials.
Well, I don't believe Mark Cuban has taken his team out and gotten the guys drunk this season, but the Dallas owner is well known for bestowing every sort of gift and amenity on his players. Maybe that's why they don't complain when he pokes his nose in the huddle.
However, never mind his success in reversing the Mavs' fortunes. A lot of people in the NBA don't like Mark Cuban. They don't like the bully pulpit of his blog and the tactics he uses to try to influence officiating. Mark Cuban is the ultimate super fan, with a billion dollars or two in his pocket and a love for the sound of his own voice. Does NBA Commissioner David Stern dislike Cuban? He says not, although in the past he has levied huge fines on the owner for complaining about referees and officiating and other things about the NBA.
Do the officials dislike Cuban? Well, nobody's ever done a poll of the guys in the gray shirts, but at times like this you have to wonder.
After he made a hard foul on Heat center Shaquille O'Neal, the NBA decided to suspend Mavs' star sixth man Jerry Stackhouse for Game 5, leading to furious protests from both Avery Johnson and Cuban.
In the stands for the pivotal game in this Finals series was Cuban, wearing a Stackhouse jersey, and seemingly fussing about every single call the officials made.
The game, just like Game 3 in this classic series, came down to a "fantastic" finish.
The Mavericks' Dirk Nowitzki scored with 9.1 seconds in overtime to give Dallas a 100-99 lead. Then Miami's Dwyane Wade went to work, as he has all series. He was fouled (Cuban complained bitterly that he was not fouled, that he actually committed a backcourt violation before the final sequence) and went to the line to make both free throws with 1.9 seconds to go.
The standard play in pro basketball is for the team that is behind to take a timeout so that it can advance the ball to halfcourt, which allows for one final good shot if execution goes well.
However, official Joe DeRosa signaled the final Dallas timeout after the first free throw, which meant that the Mavericks would not be able to advance the ball to halfcourt, which in turn meant that they wouldn't get a last good shot. The timeout ignited a furious protest from the Mavs' bench, to no avail.
In fact, Cuban's team lost on a long heave by Devin Harris as time expired. Now, after having led the series two games to none, the Mavericks trail the Miami Heat, three games to two.
Immediately after that last heave came more loud protest from the Dallas bench. This timeout was a routine thing that officials negotiate hundreds, maybe thousands, of times during an NBA season, Johnson argued. Just as Kersey questioned Isiah's move in 1987, NBA officials have long consulted with players on game situations. As Johnson protested, this is a routine thing for officials.
But Joey Crawford, the crew chief for the officials, said that when young Maverick Josh Howard requested the timeout for the second time, DeRosa had no choice but to call the timeout.
Mavericks fans, and some observers, said it seemed like a very strange time for the officials suddenly to enforce the letter of the law after not having done so for years.
Johnson said his anger was also based on the fact that he believed Wade was not fouled by Nowitzki on the final drive. Johnson told reporters he signaled to Josh Howard to call a timeout after Wade’s second free throw.
“Pretty much most people who have ever been involved in the N.B.A. for 20, 30 years, we know we wouldn’t want one anyway,” Johnson said.
The referee crew chief, Crawford, said in a statement to a pool reporter: “Josh Howard goes to Joe DeRosa and not only once, but twice asks for a timeout. Forced to call it, simple as that.”
When time expired, Cuban ran onto the court and screamed at DeRosa. Next the Dallas owner went to the scorer's table and gave Stern a long, icy stare that said, "You guys just stole this." Cuban followed that up with more screaming and black looks as Stern and other league officials made their way out of the arena.
Boy, somebody better get a T.O. What kind of scenario does this set up for Game 6 back in Dallas? You have to wonder if Mark Cuban has ever considered being less of a spectacle, less of a lightning rod for the league's refs and officials.
Maybe he did get robbed. But now is probably the time where he goes to the Les Harrison playbook for super involved owners. Maybe he needs to take all his players to a roadhouse somewhere deep in the heart of Texas so they all can have a cold one and chill out a bit before Game 6.
Then again, maybe it's too late. Maybe Mark Cuban, for all the good he has done, has become his team's worst enemy.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, The Inside Story of the Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers In The Words Of Those Who Lived It, recently released by McGraw-Hill on audiotape, and as a book. He has also written The NBA Finals, A 50 Year Celebration, among his other sports books.

THE LAKERS ARE IN THE FINALS AGAIN!!!!

2006-06-07T06:42:00.000-07:00

They've been in the pro championship series 29 times over the years (if you include the old National League). And in 2006 the Lakers again take a commanding presence in the NBA's showcase event.
They're just not wearing the purple (Forum blue) and gold.
There's Shaquille O'Neal, MVP of three Laker championships, discarded by team owner Jerry Buss.
There's Pat Riley, the coach who directed the Lakers to four NBA titles and three other appearances in the championship series. Also discarded by Buss. In fact, that's a substantial part of the bond between Riley and his center, their ex-Buss employee status. Now they both work for the Miami Heat.
There's Del Harris, former Laker coach, now the primo assistant in Dallas, and, yes, you get the picture, also a former Buss employee. Harris says that Buss panicked in the late '90s, traded away Elden Campbell and Eddie Jones and broke up a team that was about to win a whole lot of championships. The reason? Buss didn't want to pay Campbell big money as a backup center, and he didn't want to give Jones a big pay raise.
Of course, it's hard to argue with what Buss did after he let Harris go (without health insurance, Harris says). He hired Phil Jackson and watched his Lakers win three straight titles.
Wait! There's more.
There's Gary Payton, who spent a year with the Lakers, struggling in Jackson's triangle offense, before seeing the team lose 4-1 to the Detroit Pistons in the 2004 championship series. He's now a Miami reserve and apparently reasonably contented.
And there's Bob McAdoo, the former league MVP who came to Los Angeles and agreed to come off the bench as one of the best sixth men in league history. Now he's a dutiful assistant to his old Laker boss Riley.
If Shaq ever should want a tip, or just a bit of consolation, he's got McAdoo. It's rare to get advice like that, Shaq told me after he had spent some time in Miami.
When I asked him about coaching Shaq, McAdoo just smiled. O'Neal is not known for accepting a lot of advice, unless it's packaged with sweet nothings.
Yes, Laker fans, you have some old sweethearts in the championship series, so it's not like there's no rooting interest with the Heat and Mavericks squaring off as two first-time championship contenders.
In fact, you face some tough questions:
Root for Shaq, who would love to show Buss up?
Some would rather drink cockroach piss.
But think about it. He's a good guy, his conflict with Kobe aside (and now supposedly buried). He's a funny guy. And without him, there would not be those three championship banners, there would be no Laker revival.
Instead, Laker fans would have spent life in recent seasons much like Boston Celtics fans. Wondering when the drought would end and trying to hold onto graying memories.
Instead, Laker pride is high these days. As are hopes. The team last won a championship in 2002. It's a recent memory.
For that, you have big ole Shaq to thank.
So let bygones be bygones and let out a rip for the big fella.
After all, one of these days in the not too distant future, you're gonna be retiring his number to hang high in Staples.
He may have changed uniforms, but when everything is said and done, he's still your guy.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, The Inside Story Of The Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers In The Words Of Those Who Lived It, recently released on DVD by McGraw-Hill. Booklist said The Show "is the best book about the NBA since The Jordan Rules."

Story from Christian Science Monitor

2006-06-07T06:29:00.001-07:00

How pro basketball got its groove back
By Daniel B. Wood | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
LOS ANGELES – The NBA is back.
In recent years, soporific play made fans more likely to watch infomercials than basketball playoff games. But a new generation of classy superstars - and a revival of inspired team play - has the game on the rebound.

And the buzz over Thursday's opening game of the NBA finals between the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat is proof positive that basketball has a future in the post-Michael Jordan era.

"There is the opportunity this year that the NBA could recapture some of the global imagination it hasn't seen since the years of Michael Jordan," says Roland Lazenby, who has written several books on the league, including "The NBA Finals."

This season's attendance levels were the highest in league history, and TV ratings for the playoffs - which have featured nine overtime games so far - are up 20 percent over last year. It's no mystery why.

Younger players, led by stars of the 2003 draft such as LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwyane Wade have captured the spotlight as charismatic athletes who excel as role models both on and off the court. The game itself, meanwhile, has restored the competitive artistry it lost when one-on-one play became the norm. Remember the 2004 Olympics, when the US hoops squad loaded with talent - and egos - got pummeled by foreign teams with balanced scoring?

"For a long time there has been the image of professional basketball stars, rooted somewhat in truth, as just a bunch of people cashing big checks they hadn't earned," says Mr. Lazenby. "Now we seem to have a younger generation of players that really cares. They are more mature, they are dedicated, and they care very much how they are viewed."

Exhibit "A," he and others say, is Miami's 6'4" Dwyane Wade - just three years into the league - who plays with the poise of many veterans. Turning on a dime, exploding high in the air, smoothly eluding the reach of taller defenders, Wade has the precocious flash and panache of a future Hall of Famer but none of the swagger of more egotistic players.

Exhibit "B" is Dallas's Dirk Nowitzki, a 7-footer who plays with such grace and élan that he could be mistaken for an agile point guard. Mild-mannered, and soft-spoken, Nowitzki displays a quiet confidence that draws teammates to his leadership. Where other stars have fostered division through bluster, Nowitzki has promoted unity through character.

Exhibit "C" is improving team play.

"I think this is a really important time in basketball history. We are starting to see the appreciation for the multiskilled player like the early days of Bob Cousy or the [Larry] Bird/Magic [Johnson] years of the [19]80s," says Peter Roby, director of the Center for the Study of Sports in Society at Boston's Northeastern University. "We are moving back to what the game is supposed to be about ... making teammates better, playing both ends of the court, creating opportunities to score, passing, rebounding, doing it all. The pendulum is swinging back."

The contest between the Heat and the Mavericks - two younger franchises both in the finals for the first time - reflects a growing economic parity in the NBA.

The diffusion of talent throughout the league helped create playoffs this year full of younger, up-and-coming teams playing nail-biting games, many ending in buzzer-beating plays.

The fast pace of play and appealing players on the Mavericks and Heat should sustain that playoff buzz well into Finals. "This is a great chance to see a contrasting battle of newer NBA styles with a new cast of players," says Stan McNeal, managing editor of Sporting News. But the championship also features as many storylines as an episode of "Lost."

"There are a host of really interesting subplots this year that are building all kinds of interest," says Adam Zimmerman, a senior vice president at Career Sports & Entertainment, a sports marketing agency based in Atlanta.

Some say that the Wade vs. Nowitzki matchup features two of the NBA's best players in a competition for who shines most under pressure. Some see Wade as the next Michael Jordan; others see Nowitzki as redefining the future of the power-forward/center position.

But a second subplot concerns Miami's aging superstar center, 7'1" Shaquille O'Neal. O'Neal has won three championship rings with the Los Angeles Lakers and is playing in his sixth finals. He is an old-style, inside center: Get the ball near the basket, back into the defense, turn, and stuff the ball. Fans wonder if he can win a championship without his old teammate, Kobe Bryant.

A third subplot is that of Miami's veteran coach, Pat Riley, who won four titles as coach of the Lakers in the 1980s, vs. newcomer Avery Johnson of Dallas, who won coach-of-the year overwhelmingly in his first full season with the Mavs.

"This is a tough one," says Andrew Feinstein, a veteran NBA-watcher who also syndicates a comic strip called "Girls and Sports." "You want to root for Riley to come back for another title, but Avery Johnson is universally considered the best guy in the NBA period."

Though he can be explosively tough on players, Johnson is popular among his team and fans alike. Despite being just 5'11", he became a longtime NBA player who scored the winning shot in the 1999 Finals. He earned further goodwill recently when he hired his high school coach as a Mavs assistant after the school was destroyed by hurricane Katrina.

The Show excerpt

2006-05-30T14:40:00.000-07:00

The Show
by Roland Lazenby

This excerpt is taken from the new book, The Show: The Inside Story of the Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers in the Words of Those Who Lived It (McGraw-Hill), written by Roland Lazenby. The book can now be found in bookstores around the United States. It is available online for $27.95 at mcgraw-hill.com or Amazon.com.

Even as their team won championships, Lakers fans came to tire of the circumstances. There was the game's overwhelmingly dominant center and the game's resplendent, high-flying, ultra-talented wing player, both seemingly caught in a constant snit over who should have the ball. And the newspapers were having a field day reporting their clashes.

Shaq versus Kobe, right?

Hardly.

We're talking about George Mikan, the pro game's first great center, and Jim Pollard, the original jumping jack, playmaking guard/forward. A half century before Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant chased their curious chemistry as Lakers teammates, Mikan and Pollard spent their careers with the old Minneapolis Lakers alternating between fighting over the ball and winning championships. They won six of them, in fact, including five NBA titles and one in the old National League. And they debated their chemistry every step of the way.

The bad news for O'Neal and Bryant is that four decades after Mikan and Pollard won their last title, they were still jawing over the issue in interviews for history books. It seems that these hoops conflicts run forever, or until the last sports talk radio show signs off.

As Tex Winter, the longtime observer of the game, explained, "That's basketball."

That's also the Lakers, the ultimate team in the history of the game. As the cover of this book declares, this is their story, told in their own words. Not surprisingly, it's a bit complicated.

There's a team plane crash in a snowstorm, at least two near financial failures, more than a few bewildering real estate transactions, a high-profile rape case, a low-profile indecent exposure case, an unsolved murder, the firings of several winning coaches, and enough sexual hijinks to qualify as a soap opera, all of it occasioned in and around the team's 29 championship battles. As with any Hollywood epic, there's a star-driven cast. The manic Jerry West. The ebullient yet insatiable Magic Johnson. The brooding Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The dandy Chick Hearn. The splendid Elgin Baylor. The arrogant Jack Kent Cooke. The cunning Jerry Buss. The preening Pat Riley. The lonely Wilt Chamberlain. The childlike Shaq. The ambitious Kobe. The manipulative Phil Jackson. The leering Jack Nicholson. They and a phalanx of splendid role players over the decades all populate the mythical panorama that is the Los Angeles Lakers.

Just which of these is the leading man?

That depends on whom you ask.

Bill Walton, Hall of Famer, former UCLA star: "It's all Chick Hearn. I started playing basketball when I was eight years old in 1960, and we didn't have a television. I bought a $9.95 transistor radio and listened to Chick Hearn on the radio. Chick Hearn taught me how to play basketball, how to think about basketball. He taught me how to love basketball. I lived for Chick Hearn on the radio every day. Jerry and Elgin and all the guys. Rudy LaRusso. The endless list of characters. But it was always Chick. The love affair with basketball in Los Angeles and the Lakers is all about Chick Hearn. He is the guy who convinced so many millions of people that this is the greatest thing in the world. Once we came and saw what he saw we could never leave. While Chick broadcast 3,300 games, or whatever the number is, I'm sure I listened to at least 2,500 of those games. I planned my life around Chick Hearn. I would sit there as a young boy and just be amazed. I would listen to this game, and I could see it all. I would laugh out loud at the things Chick would say. At the end, in his last year I was listening to a game. I still was laughing out loud."

Others say it's got to be the long-tortured Jerry West, who came to the team in 1960 as a rookie out of West Virginia, starred for 14 years through a blur of unfulfilling championship battles, then stayed on as coach, consultant, and general manager for years. It could well be West's story, except that he doesn't want it to be.

Mark Heisler, Los Angeles Times columnist: "The Lakers mystique is Jerry West. He's the one constant. He's the one guy who's been there from the beginning."

Jerry West: "I don't remember anything about my career. I choose not to. I really don't live in the past. I really don't care about the past."

Perhaps the largest of many ironies in West's life is that he is "the logo." His graceful, slashing silhouette is the centerpiece of the NBA's red, white, and blue logo, which means that, as much as he'd like to forget it, he and everyone else associated with the NBA is reminded of his playing career at virtually every turn. Quite simply, the NBA logo is plastered everywhere. And he's revered accordingly.

Mark Heisler: "They had a young PR guy who was just there for a year or so. And West was introducing himself. He said, 'I'm the logo.' And he was kidding. The thing is about West, in one way, he's tremendously humble and doesn't think he's done anything. There also another side of West where he knows he's Jerry Fuckin' West."

Jack McCallum, Sports Illustrated senior writer: "I told him, 'Growing up, you were the guy I sort of modeled myself after, like every white kid in America who had half a jump shot.' West, just totally without ego, looks at me and says, 'Yeah, a lot of guys have told me that.'"

J. A. Adande, Los Angeles Times columnist: "Before I moved back to L.A, I was working at the Washington Post and the Chicago Sun-Times. And I'd call him for stories I was working on. I'd get off the phone, and I'd think, 'I was talking to Jerry West.'"

For others, the leading man is clearly Earvin "Magic" Johnson, who wept the first time he donned a Lakers uniform in 1979. In many ways, the Lakers franchise would be defined once and for all by Johnson's prodigious emotional gift, a vast store of unbridled enthusiasm that washed over L.A. like a great tide during the '80s and drowned what was long thought to be the city's unconquerable cynicism. Johnson's tenure would soon come to be labeled the Showtime era. It didn't come until the team was already 30 years old, yet it proved to be the watershed for the franchise. His emotional energy, his performances, would connect the past and the future of the club, fusing the image of the Lakers across the decades. In so doing, he also managed to change the game itself.

Jim Hill, longtime L.A. sportscaster and Johnson confidant: "You could tell it was coming. You could see from the no-look passes, and you could see from Magic's enthusiasm. You could see when the Lakers would score and the opposition would call a time-out and the people were going crazy and Magic's hugging Jamaal Wilkes or somebody else. I remember the first time Jamaal did something and he called time-out. People were going crazy. Magic starts hugging and yelling at Jamaal and patting him on the back and giving high fives every place. Jamaal looked at him like he was crazy. Up to that point, if you were a professional, you were cool, calm, and collected. And you didn't show your emotions on the floor. And here was this 19-year-old kid running and laughing, just like he was on the playground."

Herb Williams, 17-year NBA veteran and former Lakers opponent: "Magic's thing was to get everybody else involved. And with him having the ball all the time, he would always be in rhythm. So his thing was always to pass the ball, looking for the open guy. And if he had to put a little flair behind it to get the crowd excited, he could do that also."

As the Showtime era progressed, it became clear that Los Angeles itself was donning a new image.

Jim Hill: "It was incredible. Going to watch the Lakers play became like going to watch a heavyweight fight 82 times a year. People dressed up. People were excited. People didn't know what was going to happen. Magic knew that when he went to the arena, he was going not only to win the game but to perform so that when people went to work the next day, they would say, 'Did you see what Earvin did last night?' He would always say that was what he wanted to do. He wanted make people talk about what he had done."

J. A. Adande: "He could walk into a restaurant and Warren Beatty or any other of the big Hollywood names would be in the restaurant, but all the eyes would turn to Magic. He had that magnetism that L.A. responds to. He also reveled in it. He loved being the center of attention. The reason he was so successful in L.A., L.A. is all about a show, and he provided the show."

Jerry West: "He played the game with a joy but still had this enormous sense of competitive drive with him, an absolutely incredible leader even at that early stage of his life. He was just one of these unique players that made people better. You could just see it. No one had to tell you about it. No one had to write about it. You didn't have to wonder about it. He was a damn thoroughbred. When he was born, somebody did sprinkle a little extra dust on him."

J. A. Adande: "Magic had a way of making everybody feel they were a part of it. When I was a kid, I used to go to the games, and I met Magic at his basketball camp. I went to his summer camp four years in a row, so he got to know me through that. I'd show up at the games, and he'd break out of the layup line and come over and say hi to me. I was in fourth, fifth, sixth grade. And I felt like the most important guy at the Forum. Magic came over to talk to me in the middle of the layup line and everybody saw it. Then I proceeded to go back up to my seat in the upper colonnade section, but all the way back up I knew that everyone had seen that happen. He recognized what he did. He knew that coming over, that was gonna make my day."

Mike Wise, longtime NBA writer: "All of a sudden Magic shows up, and Showtime happens. And it's real. You went into the Forum on a Friday night, and if you were a visiting team, you didn't come out of that building a winner. Everybody knew that's just how it was. It wasn't just about Magic. It wasn't just about Kareem. It was about Showtime. There was an aura around the team that was somewhat bigger than the franchise itself. It's why the stars came out, it's why the town started singing Randy Newman after every game: 'I Love L.A.' It's a corny song, but if you were in L.A. and you were visiting and that song was playing after the game, you were like, 'Yeah. This is a great town.' And then all of sudden you go through this time in Los Angeles when you got Rodney King and you got O.J. and you have this earthquake and the town is in this big funk [for] five, ten years. And you're like, 'Wow, L.A.'s lost it. It's gone.' And then all of a sudden Jerry West gets Shaq and Kobe. You hate to say that getting two guys to become part of a franchise can resurrect a city, but in a big way it was part of L.A.'s healing process. The Lakers then became part of something alive. You get a rental car at the airport, and the guy driving the Avis is like, 'Ah, the Lakers are playing tonight.' It's a communal thing. L.A. is like this big car culture where you don't know your neighbors and everybody is driving around. But the Lakers made it a town. A small town. In that way, it's a really connected history."

Central to it all is the setting, Hollywood itself, and the team's succession of playing venues – the L.A. Sports Arena, the Great Western Forum, Staples Center – the stages on which the drama has played out season after season, each building taking on the star-studded atmosphere that is a Lakers game.

Darryl Dawkins, a.k.a. Chocolate Thunder, former NBA player: "It's Showtime. When you come to a Lakers game, it's gonna be star-studded. You get a chance to play harder than you've ever played. It's all about a show. If you ain't got a show, then stay out. That's just the way it is."

Kevin Willis, longtime NBA player: "It was that Showtime thing. All the stars came out at night. And the opposing team wanted to be a part of that, wanted to be involved in trying to slow that fast break down and watching Magic do his thing out there. It presented a challenge every time you played the Lakers in the Forum. Guys just loved it. It was an unbelievable atmosphere. It was like being on a stage. The only difference was, the stars were sitting and watching the athletes. You just loved that two-plus hours out there, doing your thing in front of everybody. Showcasing in front of everybody."

John Salley, humorist and former Laker: "When you walk in Staples, you're enamored by the stars. Jack is one of 'em, but to see Gary Shandling and Dustin Hoffman. You see all these people who take these front row seats. There are the people who you watch on TV or on film, or who you listen to musically. You're like in awe of them. And then the Lakers come out, and you find out that the real stars in Los Angeles are the Lakers. Because all the Hollywood stars are standing and clapping and literally setting their schedules around the Lakers. These are people making literally $20 and $30 million setting their schedules around what the Lakers do. Magic's got a star in Hollywood, and they had no choice but to give it to him because he's the most famous star in all of Los Angeles. Period."

It's duly noted that the fans of Boston Celtics might want to raise a point of contention. The Lakers are the ultimate team? What about the Celtics' 16 NBA titles outclassing the 14 won by the Lakers?

That's certainly a consideration, but let's do some math. Over their long history, the Lakers have played in the league championship series a record 28 times. Over the Celtics' even longer history, they've reached the championship round 19 times, trailing the Lakers as a distant second.

Then there's the issue of winning percentages. The Lakers hold the NBA's all-time lead in winning a whopping 62.1 percent of their regular-season games.

And when it comes to the playoffs, the Lakers again hold a large lead, having won 60.4 percent of their postseason contests. In fact, they've won 71 percent of their playoff series, a league-leading 93 playoff series won.

The Celtics? Again a distant second with 66 playoff series won.

As for consistency, the Lakers have won at least one title or made an appearance in the league championship Finals in every decade of the NBA's existence. They won two titles in the '40s (including their National League title); three titles in the '50s while making four championship appearances; six championship appearances in the '60s; a title and three championship appearances in the '70s; five titles and eight championship appearances in the '80s; a championship appearance in 1991; and three titles and four championship appearances in the first five seasons of the 21st century.

Despite this edge in the numbers, the Lakers over the years have taken a back seat to the Celtics in the minds of many NBA fans. That's because it's about much more than mere numbers.

Jerry Sichting, former Celtic: "The first year I came to Boston, the Celtics and Lakers played each other four times in the preseason. The second game was in the Forum. During that game, Maurice Lucas and Robert Parish got into it. Both benches emptied. I remember that when they began breaking it up, KC Jones was at the bottom of the pile and had Michael Cooper in a headlock. That's the first time I had ever seen an NBA coach in a fight with one of the players. But that was the Celtics and Lakers."

Rick Telander, Chicago Sun-Times columnist: "The Lakers/Celtics – that might have been the rivalry that built the NBA. Russell/Chamberlain, Bird/Magic. The Lakers are also defined by their foes. Certainly that Celtics rivalry was something that put them in everybody's consciousness."

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: "I have a unique perspective on that. I've been going to NBA games since 1960 when I was in the eighth grade. I've seen a few things. The Lakers were always the noble opposition when I started going to see the games. And that was it. They couldn't beat the Celtics. I was a Celtics fan in those days. But the Lakers were always interesting to watch because of Jerry and Elgin. They went from being the loyal opposition to being a dominant team during the Showtime period. They're back being a dominant team now. Their history with George Mikan and Vern Mikkelsen and all those guys – that really gives them a cachet because before the Celtics started to dominate the Lakers were a dominant team."

Dr. Jack Ramsay, broadcaster and former NBA coach: "I don't think anybody can match the Celtics in terms of mystique. They won eight championships in a row. They won 11 out of 13. But if you go back to the original Lakers in Minnesota, they won five and one in the old National League. That was a great team. That was a team like the Celtics. Then when the Lakers moved to Los Angeles, they were good, but they couldn't win for a long time because they were always playing the Celtics."

The Lakers' failures against the Celtics became the standard for basketball futility, and the spell wasn't broken until 1985, when Pat Riley coached Los Angeles past the Celtics for the league championship.

Mark Heisler: "Pat Riley was the height of paranoia. When they were playing the Celtics in the '80s, one day he makes Gary Vitti dump the water because he's afraid that Red [Auerbach had] poisoned it. Riles gives the team a talk about what the Celtics really were – this ancient warlike race of subhumans. It was just incredibly demonizing. What it really is, it just goes to show how humiliated the Lakers felt by the Celtics over all those years. The Celtics were beating them every year, and the Lakers just felt terrible about it. It's hard to underestimate the damage done to the Lakers psyche by all those Celtics victories. The Celtics were incredibly good about rubbing it in. Everybody hated the Celtics. Every time you got into a series against the Celtics, nobody turned their noses up the way they did, with their mystique. They were so good and they won so much and they backed it up so much, it just really flipped people out."

Magic Johnson: "The good thing is, the Celtics did it their way, and we've done it our way. It's in a Hollywood style, showy, flashy, yet with a lot of substance. We wanted to run and put on a show. The Celtics and Larry did it their way to help shape and mold basketball. They did it their way, and it was different between the Lakers and the Celtics. That's why we're who we are and they're who they are."

Michael Cooper, former Laker: "What we established in the '80s – what we took over from Jerry West and Wilt in '72 – is that winning attitude. That's what L.A. is about. I'm pretty sure if you were to ask any Celtic, any former Celtic, that they would tell you it's about winning. You have to do that as a team. You can't come to a Lakers team thinking it's all about me. You can't think, 'I'm gonna score 30, and I'll be happy and get all the glitz.' No, it's about fitting into the system, understanding who the go-to people are and doing whatever you have to do to help win the championship. That's what people have to understand coming here."

As much as they were frustrated by the Celtics, the Lakers also established a dominance over other Western Conference teams that has become something of a status quo in its own way. Houston, Portland, San Antonio, Utah, Seattle, and Sacramento have all struggled to compete with the Lakers' superior lineups.

Steve "Snapper" Jones, Portland broadcaster and former NBA player: "As a Western Conference rival, every team in the West hates the Lakers. The Portland setbacks at the hands of the Lakers are almost legendary. Only Los Angeles has won, so it's a lopsided rivalry. But it is a rivalry, nonetheless."

The story, it seems, belongs to all of them, the Lakers, their stars, and role players and coaches and even their opponents. It's a long, gnarly tale. Sad. Funny. Twisted. Triumphant. Bittersweet. And full of the unexpected. Always the unexpected.

Roland Lazenby is a sportswriter and the author of numerous sports books, including Mindgames: Phil Jackson's Long Strange Journey and Mad Game: The NBA Education of Kobe Bryant. His work has been featured in such publications as Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many others.

2006-05-30T14:27:00.000-07:00