Part 25 (1/2)
A few days later Kobe hit back with a searing critique of Shaq's leaders.h.i.+p in an interview with Jim Gray on ESPN. If this was going to be Shaq's team, Kobe said, he needed to set an example. That meant not coming to camp fat and out of shape and not blaming others for the team's failures. ”'My team' doesn't mean only when we win,” Kobe said. ”It means carrying the burden of defeat just as gracefully as you carry a champions.h.i.+p trophy.” Kobe also said that if he decided to leave the Lakers at the end of the season, a major reason would be ”Shaq's childlike selfishness and jealousy.”
Shaq was furious and told Mitch Kupchak that he was going to mess Kobe up the next time he saw him. So Mitch and I decided to separate Shaq and Kobe when they arrived at the training facility the following day to prevent one of them from doing something stupid. I took Shaq and Mitch took Kobe. Later when I spoke to Kobe, he revealed that what really angered him about Shaq was his decision to have toe surgery too close to the start of the previous season, which Kobe believed had put our chances of winning a fourth ring in jeopardy. I'd never heard Kobe mention that before.
Fortunately, after the last round of heated exchanges, things quieted down for a while. It helped to have on the team veteran players like Karl and Gary who had little or no patience for this kind of juvenile one-upmans.h.i.+p. It also helped that we got off to a brilliant 19-5 start. Alas, our success was short lived. In December Karl injured his right knee in a home game against the Suns and was out for most of the season. We didn't have a strong backup for Karl, and we went into a period of malaise until we rebounded late in the season.
My strategy of giving Kobe s.p.a.ce didn't seem to be working. The more liberty I gave him, the more belligerent he became. Much of his anger was directed at me. In the past Kobe had been pa.s.sive-aggressive when he didn't want to do something I asked of him. Now he was aggressive-aggressive. He made sarcastic cracks in practice and challenged my authority in front of the other players.
I consulted a psychotherapist, who suggested that the best way to deal with someone like Kobe was to (1) dial back the criticism and give him a lot of positive feedback, (2) not do anything that might embarra.s.s him in front of his peers, and (3) allow him to think that what I wanted him to do was his idea. I tried some of these tactics and they helped somewhat. But Kobe was in heavy-duty survival mode, and when the pressure became unbearable, his instinctive reaction was to lash out.
I realized there wasn't much I could do to change his behavior. But what I could do was change the way I reacted to his angry outbursts. This was an important lesson for me.
Managing anger is every coach's most difficult task. It requires a great deal of patience and finesse because the line between the aggressive intensity needed to win games and destructive anger is often razor thin.
In some Native American tribes, the elders used to identify the angriest braves in the village and teach them to transform their wild, uncontrolled energy into a source of creative power and strength. Those braves often became the most effective tribal leaders. That's what I've tried to do with the young players on my teams.
In Western culture we tend to view anger as a flaw that needs to be eliminated. That's how I was raised. As devout Christians, my parents felt that anger was a sin and should be dispelled. But trying to eliminate anger never works. The more you try to suppress it, the more likely it is to erupt later in a more virulent form. A better approach is to become as intimate as possible with how anger works on your mind and body so that you can transform its underlying energy into something productive. As Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman writes, ”Our goal surely is to conquer anger, but not to destroy the fire it has misappropriated. We will wield that fire with wisdom and turn it to creative ends.”
In fact, two recent studies published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology demonstrate a link between anger and creativity. In one study, researchers discovered that feelings of anger initially improved the partic.i.p.ants' ability to brainstorm creatively. In another study, the same researchers found that subjects who were prompted to feel angry generated more creative ideas than those who experienced sadness or a nonemotional state. The conclusion: Anger is an energizing emotion that enhances the sustained attention needed to solve problems and leads to more flexible ”big picture” thinking.
No question, anger focuses the mind. It's an advance-warning system alerting us to threats to our well-being. When viewed this way, anger can be a powerful force for bringing about positive change. But it takes practice-and no small amount of courage-to be present with such uncomfortable feelings and yet not be swept away by them.
My practice when anger arises is to sit with it in meditation. I simply observe it come and go, come and go. Slowly, incrementally, over time I've learned that if I can stay with the anger, which often manifests itself as anxiety, and resist my conditioned response to suppress it, the intensity of the feeling dissipates and I'm able to hear the wisdom it has to impart.
Sitting with your anger doesn't mean being pa.s.sive. It means becoming more conscious and intimate with your inner experience so that you can act more mindfully and compa.s.sionately than is possible in the heat of the moment.
This is hardly easy, but acting mindfully is key to building strong, trusting relations.h.i.+ps, especially when you're in a leaders.h.i.+p role. Says Buddhist meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein, ”An unexpressed anger creates a breach in relations.h.i.+ps that no amount of smiling can cross. It's a secret. A lie. The compa.s.sionate response is one that keeps connections alive. It requires telling the truth. And telling the truth can be difficult, especially when the mind is stirred up by anger.”
From the moment of Kobe's arrest, I had a lot of practice working with my anger that year, and Kobe was my main teacher. In late January he showed up at the training facility with a bandaged hand and announced that he'd have to miss that night's game. It seems he'd accidentally put his hand through a gla.s.s window while moving boxes in his garage and required ten st.i.tches in his index finger. I asked him to do some running during practice and he agreed but never did it. Afterward I asked him why he'd lied to me, and he said he was being sarcastic.
I wasn't laughing. What kind of adolescent game was this guy playing? Whatever it was, I didn't want any part of it.
After practice I went upstairs and told Mitch Kupchak we needed to talk about trading Kobe before the mid-February deadline. ”I can't coach Kobe,” I said. ”He won't listen to anyone. I can't get through to him.” It was a futile appeal. Kobe was Dr. Buss's wunderkind, and he was unlikely to trade him, even if it meant jeopardizing our shot at another ring.
A few days later Dr. Buss, who worried that his young star might jump to another team, visited Kobe in Newport Beach and tried to persuade him to remain with the Lakers. Obviously, I wasn't party to the meeting, but shortly thereafter, while we were riding on the team bus, Kobe told Derek Fisher, ”Your man's not coming back next year.” The ”man” he was talking about was me.
I felt completely blindsided. Clearly, Dr. Buss had shared information with Kobe about the team-and my future-before consulting me. It was a harsh blow, and Kobe seemed to be reveling in it. Deep down, this turn of events made me question whether I could trust Kobe or Dr. Buss.
Later that day I called Mitch and told him I thought that he and Dr. Buss were making a big mistake. If they had to choose between Shaq and Kobe, I advised going with Shaq because Kobe was impossible to coach. And, I added, ”You can take that to the owner.”
A few days later my agent called to tell me that the Lakers were suspending contract negotiations with me. When the Lakers announced the news on February 11, reporters asked Kobe if my departure would affect his free-agency plans and he replied coldly, ”I don't care.” Shaq was stunned. He couldn't fathom how after all we'd been through, Kobe could throw me under the bus. I asked Shaq to refrain from stirring things up. The last thing the team needed was another verbal shooting match between the two players.
Jeanie was convinced that the Lakers were deliberately trying to undermine me, and she was probably right. Still, I found the announcement strangely liberating. Now I could focus on the task at hand-winning one more champions.h.i.+p-without having to worry about the future. The die had been cast.
After the All-Star break, I met with Kobe to clear the air. Obviously, my laissez-faire approach with him had backfired and was having a negative effect on the team. Kobe had interpreted my efforts to give him a wide berth as indifference. So I decided to take another tack and work much more actively with him. My intention was to help him focus his attention on basketball so that the game would become a refuge for him in the way that it had been for Michael Jordan when he was being hounded by the media over his gambling problems.