Part 26 (1/2)

When I look back at this time, it feels like the end of an important chapter for me-in a good way. Coaching the Lakers was like having a wild, tempestuous fling with a beautiful woman. And now it was time to move on and try something new.

CHAPTER 19

CHOP WOOD, CARRY WATER

Forget mistakes, forget failures, forget everything, except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day.

WILL DURANT

I'd just started my sabbatical in Australia when I got a call from Jeanie. She said the situation with the Lakers was dire. The team had gone into a tailspin and the new coach, Rudy Tomjanovich, had resigned. Could I come back and save the team?

I can't say I was surprised. Rudy was a good coach who had won two champions.h.i.+ps with the Houston Rockets, but he had inherited a no-win situation in Los Angeles. What's more, Rudy had just completed treatment for cancer and just wasn't up to the job physically or emotionally.

The team wasn't up to the job either. The roster had been decimated in the off-season. Not only did the Lakers trade Shaq, but they also lost Karl Malone to retirement, Rick Fox to the Celtics (he retired a few months later), and Gary Payton and Fish to free agency. There were a few new players who came over from Miami in the Shaq trade-forward Lamar Odom, guard Caron Butler, and center/forward Brian Grant, who had knee issues. Kobe was trying to carry this as-yet-formless bunch all by himself but couldn't.

I told Jeanie that returning to L.A. was out of the question. I wasn't prepared to give up the rest of my trip, included a tour of New Zealand by motorcycle with my brothers. Nor did I have any interest in trying to rescue a team that was long past salvaging. ”How about next season?” Jeanie asked.

”I'll think about it,” I replied.

I suppose I might have felt a momentary flicker of schadenfreude, but, in fact, the demise of the Lakers didn't make me happy. I'd worked hard to transform the team into a champion, and it was painful to watch my former a.s.sistant coach, Frank Hamblen, try in vain to hold things together at the end of the 200405 season. This was the first time the Lakers had failed to make the playoffs since the early 1990s.

When I returned home, I talked to a number of other teams with open coaching positions, including New York, Cleveland, and Sacramento. But none of those jobs appealed to me as much as the idea of rebuilding the Lakers from the ground up-something I hadn't had the chance to do the first time around. But before I said yes, I needed to get a read on whether Kobe and I could work together again.

I hadn't talked to Kobe since our tense end-of-the-season meeting a year earlier. Since then, I'd published The Last Season, in which I revealed my frustrations about trying to coach him during the turbulent 200304 season. I had no idea what kind of reception I'd get from him, but when I called I didn't sense any hard feelings. Kobe's only request was for me to be more discreet with the media and not share personal information about him with reporters. That seemed reasonable.

I think we both realized that in order to succeed we needed each other's support and goodwill. Prior to the 200405 season, Kobe had boasted that as long as he played for the Lakers, the team would never fall below .500. But that's exactly what happened: The Lakers tied for last place in the Pacific Division with a 34-48 record. That turned out to be a real wake-up call for Kobe. He'd never known such failure before, and it forced him to acknowledge that he'd have to wholeheartedly join forces with others if he was going to win any more champions.h.i.+ps.

I knew that if I accepted the job, my first crucial task would be to restore the team's lost pride. To my mind the sports pundits and fans had turned on Kobe and blamed him-unfairly-for breaking up the Lakers' great champions.h.i.+p lineup. I thought my return might help put some of that noise to sleep. I was also intrigued by the possibility of building a new champions.h.i.+p team centered on Kobe instead of Shaq. But to make that happen, Kobe and I would have to forge a deeper, more collaborative relations.h.i.+p, and he'd have to grow into a different kind of leader than he'd been in the past. That would take time, I knew, but I didn't see any insurmountable obstacles in the way. Kobe seemed as eager as I was to bury the past and move on.

When I met with Dr. Buss to hammer out the details of a three-year deal, I needed his a.s.surance that I'd be given a bigger role in personnel decisions and not be kept in the dark, as had been the case during the Shaq-versus-Kobe stand-off in 200304. Dr. Buss agreed but turned down my other request-getting part owners.h.i.+p of the team. Instead he offered me a salary increase and explained that he planned to hand over control of the Lakers to his six children. As part of that move, he'd brought in his son, Jim, to learn the business so that he could eventually take over the basketball side of the Lakers. Meanwhile, Jeanie would continue overseeing sales, marketing, and finance.

Jim Buss had been promoted to VP of player personnel when I returned in the 2005 postseason. He was eager to draft Andrew Bynum, a talented high-school center from New Jersey, and asked me to take a look at him when he came to L.A. for a tryout. My only reservation about Andrew was his running gait, which would lead to serious knee problems later on. But otherwise I thought he had the potential to develop into a formidable big man. I gave the deal my okay, and we made him the tenth pick overall. At seventeen, he was the youngest player ever to be drafted by the NBA.

My biggest concern about recruiting players right out of high school has always been the temptations of the NBA life. Many young players get so seduced by the money and fame that they never develop into mature young men or live up to their promise as athletes. In my view, the key to becoming a successful NBA player is not learning the coolest highlight-reel moves. It's learning how to control your emotions and keep your mind focused on the game, how to play through pain, how to carve out your role on the team and perform it consistently, how to stay cool under pressure and maintain your equanimity after crus.h.i.+ng losses or ecstatic wins. In Chicago we had a phrase for this: going from a basketball player to a ”professional” NBA player.

For most rookies it takes three or four years to get there. But I told Andrew that we were going to fast-track him because of the key role we envisioned for him on the team. I explained that if he pledged to dedicate himself to the task, I'd pledge to support him all the way. Andrew a.s.sured me that I didn't need to worry about his maturity; he was serious about stepping up. And he stayed true to his word. By the next season he would be the Lakers' new starting center.

Andrew wasn't the only player on the team who required this kind of training. We had several young players who needed to be schooled in the basics-including Smush Parker, Luke Walton, Brian Cook, Sasha Vujacic, Von Wafer, Devin Green, and Ronny Turiaf. Instead of a deficit, I saw this as an opportunity to build the new team from the bottom up, with a core group of young players who could learn the system together and provide us with a lot of energy off the bench. Given the team's makeup, I found myself being less authoritarian and a more patient father figure than usual. This was a team that was crawling its way up from infancy-a new experience for me-and I had to nurture the players' confidence with care.

One major hurdle to get over with my new team was the lack of consistent scoring options beyond Kobe. I'd originally hoped that Lamar Odom would fill that bill. A former number-four pick overall who averaged 15-plus points a game, Lamar was a graceful six-ten forward with a freewheeling style of play that reminded me of Scottie Pippen. He was great at pulling down rebounds and pus.h.i.+ng the ball up court to break down the defense in the open floor. With his size, agility, and playmaking skill, Lamar created matchup problems for a lot of teams, and I thought we might be able to turn him into a strong ”point forward” a la Pippen. But Lamar had trouble learning the intricacies of the system and his game often fell apart when we needed him the most. I found that the best way to use Lamar was to give him the freedom to react spontaneously to whatever was happening on the floor. Whenever I tried to box him in to a set role, his spirit seemed to deflate.

There were others whose performance didn't quite match my expectations. Shortly after I returned, we picked up Kwame Brown in a trade with Was.h.i.+ngton, hoping to add some muscle to our front line. We knew that Kwame had been a disappointing number-one pick overall for the Wizards, but, at six feet eleven and 270 pounds, he had a good one-on-one game and the strength and quickness to defend the top big men in the league. What we didn't know until much later was that he didn't have any confidence in his outside shot. At one point during a game against Detroit, Kobe came over to the bench, laughing. ”You might as well take Kwame out of the game, Phil,” he said. ”He just told me not to pa.s.s him the ball because he might get fouled and have to shoot a free throw.”

Another player who had looked promising at first but lacked mental toughness was Smush Parker. Although on paper veteran Aaron McKie and European newcomer Sasha Vujacic looked stronger than Smush, he outplayed them both in training camp and scored 20 points in three of the first four regular-season games, so we anointed him starting point guard. Smush was a slight, crafty player who was good at slipping through defenses to attack the basket and playing tough, full-court defense. His shooting was erratic, but his spirited play helped energize the offense and get us off to a strong start that season.