Part 23 (1/2)
As the playoffs began, the Lakers were riding that wave. I was struck by how poised and relaxed the players were in the closing minutes of games, compared to the previous year. Nothing seemed to faze them.
”The one thing people are starting to notice about our team now is how much composure we have,” Fish told the Los Angeles Times's Tim Brown. ”We're not playing out of control; we're not turning the basketball over a lot. I think those are trademarks of not only Phil, but our whole coaching staff. Their personality.” Fish was impressed by how the coaching staff continued to prepare the team meticulously for every game, no matter what was going on with Shaq and Kobe.
Clearly the players were beginning to internalize the coaching staff's chop-wood-carry-water att.i.tude. A key moment occurred during the second game of the Western Conference finals against the San Antonio Spurs when I was ejected in the third quarter of the second game for stepping into a ref's s.p.a.ce and supposedly impeding his ability to do his job. In the past, the team would have lost its bearings and gone into a slide, but this time the players turned up the defense and ended the game with a 135 surge to win, 8881. ”We've matured,” said Fox afterward, ”to the point where we maintained our composure. Outside of Phil.”
After sweeping the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round, we faced the Sacramento Kings, who tried several different tactics to stop Shaq without much success. In game 1 Vlade Divac played him straight up, and Shaq scored 44 points and grabbed 21 rebounds. Then they put Scot Pollard on him for most of game 2, but that reduced Shaq's numbers by just 1 point and 1 rebound. Finally in game 3 on their home court, the Kings upped the pressure even more, swarming Shaq and hacking him relentlessly in the fourth quarter. Happily, that created a world of opportunities for other players, especially Kobe, who scored 36 points as we mounted a 30 lead in the series.
Later that night Kobe flew back to L.A. to spend time with his wife, Vanessa, who had been hospitalized with excruciating pain. He stayed with her until she stabilized, then flew back to Sacramento for game 4, during which he erupted for 48 points and 16 rebounds to lead the team to another sweep. His wild enthusiasm inspired his teammates. ”I was prepared to do whatever,” he said. ”I was going to run and push myself to exhaustion. It doesn't matter.”
By the time we arrived in San Antonio for the conference finals, we had won fifteen straight (including regular-season games), and the pundits were already speculating about our becoming the first team to sweep the playoffs. Getting past San Antonio wasn't going to be easy, though. They had two of the best big men in the game-David Robinson and Tim Duncan-and the best record in the league that season, 58-24. The last time we'd faced them, they had beaten us on our home court. But that was in March, before Fish's comeback. Ancient history.
Robinson and Duncan did a respectable job on Shaq, holding him to 28 points. But n.o.body on the Spurs seemed to know what to do with Kobe, who put up 45 points, the highest total by anyone against the Spurs in playoff history. An exuberant Shaq fist-b.u.mped Kobe at the end of the game and gushed, ”You're my idol.” Later O'Neal told reporters, ”I think he's the best player in the league-by far. When he's playing like that, scoring, getting everybody involved, playing good defense, there's nothing you can say. That's where I've been trying to get him all year.”
When I'd first started working with Kobe, I'd tried to persuade him not to push so hard and to let the game flow more naturally. He'd resisted then, but not now. ”Personally, I just tried to feed off my teammates,” he said after that game. ”That's one way that I am improving: learning how to use my teammates to create opportunities, just playing solid and letting the game and the opportunities come to me.” He was sounding more and more like me.
When we returned to L.A. for game 3, we went on a 11172 romp during which Kobe and Shaq combined for 71 points, or one fewer than the entire Spurs lineup. Then two days later we closed out the series. This time the hero was Fish, who made 6 of 7 three-point shots and scored a career-high 28 points.
Although we tried to play it down, it was hard to ignore that something big was happening. ”It's become greater than Shaquille,” said Fox after the game 3 win. ”It's become greater than Kobe, greater than any effort by one or two people. I've never seen it before. It's as though we're starting to round into the team we thought we'd be.”
None of this talk about making history intimidated the Philadelphia 76ers, the team we faced in the champions.h.i.+p finals. They were a tough, fiery team led by guard Allen Iverson who that year at six feet, 165 pounds, became the smallest player ever to win the MVP award. Iverson dismissed talk of a sweep, pointing to his heart and saying, ”Champions.h.i.+ps are won here.”
After his whirlwind performance in the Staples Center in game 1, it looked as if he might be right. He scored 48 points, and the Sixers snuffed out our 5-point lead in overtime, ending our storied streak at 19. I was actually relieved when the media hoopla surrounding the streak died down. Now we could focus on beating the Sixers without distractions. Before the next game Iverson told reporters that the Sixers were going to ”spread the war,” hoping to intimidate Kobe and the rest of the team. But Kobe didn't back down when Iverson's jibes turned into a trash-talk shouting match at midcourt. And he silenced Iverson by scoring 31 points with 8 rebounds, as we banged out a 9889 win.
That was just the beginning. Game 3 in Philadelphia was another street fight, but this time Shaq and Fish fouled out with a little over two minutes left and the Lakers up by 2. No problem. In the closing minutes, Kobe and Fox gutted it out, while Horry appeared out of nowhere to nail the win with another one of his trademark three-pointers and four free throws. ”The 76ers have heart, but so what?” said Shaw. ”You can have heart and lose. We have heart and we have injuries and we just play through it.”
The rest of the series flew by. We won game 4 with ”a whole lotta Shaquille O'Neal,” as Iverson put it. Then we clinched the t.i.tle two days later in a game that few would call a work of art. As often was the case, Horry summed up the moment perfectly. ”It's closure,” he said, referring to the difficult season. ”So much turmoil. So many problems. So many people talking about what we weren't going to do. It's closure. That's what it boils down to.”
I was relieved that this crazy season was finally over. Yet when I reflect back on it, I realize that I learned an important lesson that year about transforming conflict into healing. Gandhi once said, ”Suffering cheerfully endured ceases to be suffering and is trans.m.u.ted into an ineffable joy.” If we had tried to squelch the strife instead of letting it play itself out naturally, this young, growing team might never have come together the way it did in the end. Without the pain, the Lakers would not have discovered their soul.
CHAPTER 17
ONE-TWO-THREE-LAKERS!
To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.
GEORGE MACDONALD
One day early in the 200102 season, Rick Fox told me he wasn't feeling high anymore, and it was driving him crazy. He wasn't talking about drugs; he was referring to the spiritual high he'd felt during our second champions.h.i.+p run. Rick grew up in a Pentecostal family in the Bahamas, and he understood right away when I talked about basketball as a spiritual game. He said that when everybody was playing with one mind, it was a beautiful experience that made him feel higher than anything else he'd ever done. Then, all of a sudden, the feeling evaporated like a dream, and he longed to get it back.
I knew what he was talking about. I'd been there myself. The feeling Rick described is sometimes referred to as ”spiritual addiction”-a sense of connectedness so powerful, so joyful, you never want it to stop. Trouble is, the more you try to hang on to the feeling, the more elusive it becomes. I tried to explain to Rick that his experience during the previous season, though profound, was just one moment in time; it was a losing battle to try to re-create it because everything had changed, including Rick himself. Sometimes basketball can be a joyride, as it was for us at the end of 200001, and sometimes it can be a long, hard slog. But if you look at each season as an adventure, it takes on a beauty all its own.
I knew on day one that 200102 wasn't going to be easy. Three-peats never are. The good news was that Kobe and Shaq were getting along. They weren't taking potshots at each other, and I often saw them laughing together at practice and after games. During a road trip to Philadelphia, Shaq and several other players attended a jersey-retiring ceremony for Kobe at Lower Merion High School, and Shaq hugged Kobe on stage afterward.
Not all the changes were so welcome; the team was in a state of flux again. In general, the Lakers' rosters were much more fluid than the Bulls' had been. There's a group portrait in Jeanie's office of the players who took part in all three champions.h.i.+ps during my first run as the Lakers' coach. The painting includes just seven players: O'Neal, Bryant, Horry, Fox, Fisher, Shaw, and Devean George. The rest of the roster was filled with an ever-changing rotation of players, some who played critical roles, others who never quite found their niche. This musical-chairs environment made it challenging to sustain a strong sense of team unity from one season to the next.