Part 20 (2/2)
With Kobe I took a different tack. I tried to be as direct as possible and show him in front of the other players how his selfish mistakes were hurting the team. During one film session, I said, ”Now I know why the guys don't like playing with you. You've got to play together.” I also indicated to him that if he didn't want to share the ball with his teammates, I would gladly work out a trade for him. I had no trouble being the bad cop in this situation. (See under: Sometimes you have to pull out the big stick.) I knew Harper would soften the blow later by explaining to Kobe-in far less strident terms-how to play more selflessly without sacrificing his creativity.
I also talked to Kobe about what it takes to be a leader. At one point I told him, ”I guess you'd like to be the captain of this team someday when you're older-maybe like twenty-five.” He replied that he wanted to be captain tomorrow. To which I said, ”You can't be captain if n.o.body follows you.”
Eventually it sank in. Kobe began looking for ways to fit himself into the system and play more collaboratively. He also made an effort to socialize more with his teammates, especially when we were on the road. And after the All-Star break, everything started to come together. We went on a 27-1 streak and finished the season with the best record in the league, 67-15.
The players seemed relieved that we'd put to sleep a problem that had haunted the team for the past three years. As Rick Fox put it, Kobe's me-first att.i.tude ”was a land mine that was about to explode. We all knew that somebody had to step on it, but n.o.body wanted to. So Phil did it, and we all walk a lot more freely now.”
As we prepared for the playoffs, I thought it might be useful for the players to have a refresher course on selfless basketball, but this time from a different perspective-that of the Buddha. So I devoted one of our practice sessions to talking about the Buddha's thinking and how it applies to basketball. I probably lost some of the players early on, but if nothing else, the discussion took their minds off the pressure of the upcoming postseason.
In a nutsh.e.l.l, the Buddha taught that life is suffering and that the primary cause of our suffering is our desire for things to be different from the way they actually are. One moment, things may be going our way, and in the next moment they're not. When we try to prolong pleasure or reject pain, we suffer. On the bright side, the Buddha also prescribed a practical way for eliminating craving and unhappiness by following what he called the n.o.ble Eightfold Path. The steps were right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
I thought the teachings might help explain what we were trying to do as a basketball team.
RIGHT VIEW-involves looking at the game as a whole and working together as a team, like five fingers on a hand.
RIGHT THINKING-means seeing yourself as part of a system rather than as your own one-man band. It also implies going into each game with the intention of being intimately involved with what's happening to the whole team because you're integrally connected to everyone on it.
RIGHT SPEECH-has two components. One is about talking positively to yourself throughout the game and not getting lost in aimless back talk (”I hate that ref,” ”I'm going to get back at that b.a.s.t.a.r.d”). The second is about controlling what you say when you're talking with others, especially your teammates, and focusing on giving them positive feedback.
RIGHT ACTION-suggests making moves that are appropriate to what's happening on the floor instead of repeatedly s...o...b..ating or acting in ways that disrupt team harmony.
RIGHT LIVELIHOOD-is about having respect for the work you do and using it to heal the community rather than simply to polish your ego. Be humble. You're getting paid a ridiculous amount of money to do something that's really simple. And fun.
RIGHT EFFORT-means being unselfish and exerting the right amount of energy to get the job done. Tex Winter says that there's no subst.i.tute for hustle, and my addendum is, if you don't hustle, you'll get benched.
RIGHT MINDFULNESS-involves coming to every game with a clear understanding of our plan of attack, including what to expect from our opponents. It also implies playing with precision, making the right moves at the right times, and maintaining constant awareness throughout the game, whether you're on the floor or on the bench.
RIGHT CONCENTRATION-is about staying focused on what you're doing at any given moment and not obsessing about mistakes you've made in the past or bad things that might happen in the future.
What worried me about this team was the ghosts of playoffs past. The players had a tendency to lose patience and panic when the pressure started building and they couldn't get by on talent alone. As one Buddhist teacher I know put it, they tended to put a head on top of a head when the game started going into a nosedive. In other words, they let their fear or anger persist and steal their focus from the task at hand.
With the Lakers I found that I had to be a model of calmness and patience, much more so than with the Bulls. I had to demonstrate that the key to inner peace is trusting in the essential interconnectedness of all things. One breath, one mind. That's what gives you strength and energy in the midst of chaos.
The first round of the playoffs against Sacramento was an enlightening experience. The Kings had a fast, explosive young team with a deft pa.s.sing attack that was hard to stop when the players were in full motion. The player I worried about most was Chris Webber, who was too strong and quick for our power forward duo of A.C. Green and Robert Horry. That meant he could break free and help out Vlade Divac on Shaq. I was also impressed with the Kings' bench, led by Predrag Stojakovic, a chilling outside shooter. Our best bet, I figured, was to slow the pace down and neutralize the Kings' running game.
That worked in the first two games, which we won handily, but when the five-game series moved to Sacramento's noisy bandbox stadium, the Kings capitalized on some generous officiating and Shaq's lackl.u.s.ter defense to pull the series even, 22. After the third game a Sacramento reporter asked me if these were the most energetic fans I'd ever seen, and I told him no. ”I coached basketball in Puerto Rico, where if you won on a visiting floor, your tires were slashed and you might be chased out of town with rocks breaking the windows of your car.” But here, I said, ”We're talking about semi-civilized in Sacramento. These people are just maybe redneck in some form or fas.h.i.+on.” I meant it tongue in cheek, but the remark launched a backlash in the state's capital that haunted us for years.
The final must-win game in the Staples Center was a trial by fire for the young Lakers. ”If you don't win this one,” I told the players, ”then you don't deserve to move into the next round. You've got to play to win, not play to avoid losing.” And they rose to the occasion. The refs finally started calling Webber for playing a zonelike defense on Shaq, which freed the big man to take over the game, hitting 7 of his first 8 field-goal attempts and finis.h.i.+ng with 32 points and 18 rebounds, as we went on to win, 11386. ”We knew if we didn't play our A game, we'd make history tonight,” Shaq said. ”And we didn't want to make that kind of history.”
In the next series we jumped to a relatively easy 30 lead over Phoenix, but we fell apart in game 4, allowing the Suns to score an embarra.s.sing 71 points in the first half.
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