Part 29 (1/2)
Fall down seven times. Stand up eight.
CHINESE PROVERB
This was the moment we'd all been waiting for. After nine months and 104 games, the 200910 season came down to this: a rematch with the Boston Celtics in game 7 of the champions.h.i.+p finals. As we arrived at the Staples Center that afternoon, there was no doubt that the players were plotting revenge for the debacle that had taken place two years earlier in the TD Garden.
It was bad enough that the Celtics had humiliated us on the court in the final game of the 2008 finals. They'd done it in cla.s.sic Boston style, dunking coach Doc Rivers with Gatorade before the clock ran out so that we had to sit on the bench in misery while workers mopped the floor and a stadium full of besotted hometown fans screamed invectives at us. Then, when we thought it was all over, we had to endure a postgame ride from h.e.l.l through an unruly mob determined to upend our team bus. This was the nightmare that had stuck in our minds for two years.
If it had been any other team, we might have been able to laugh it off. But this was the Celtics, the team that had haunted the Lakers ever since 1959 when Boston swept the then-Minneapolis Lakers in four games to win the NBA champions.h.i.+p. The Celtics were so dominant in the 1960s that Jerry West stopped wearing anything green because it reminded him of the frustration the Lakers had endured during that decade.
The most embarra.s.sing defeat came in 1969 when an aging Celtics team, led by Bill Russell in his final year as player-coach, bounced back from a 32 deficit to s.n.a.t.c.h victory from the Lakers on their home court. The Lakers had been so confident going into game 7 that owner Jack Kent Cooke had thousands of purple and gold balloons hung from the ceiling of the Forum, ready to be released during the postgame celebration. Alas, that was not to be. With less than a minute to go, West knocked the ball away on defense, right into the hands of Don Nelson, who tossed up a shot from the free-throw line that hit the back of the rim, bounced high into the air and fell miraculously back into the hoop to put the Celtics ahead for good, 108106.
West, who played brilliantly throughout the series and was the first and only player from a losing team ever to be named finals MVP, was sh.e.l.lshocked. ”I didn't think it was fair that you could give so much and maybe play until there was nothing left in your body to give, and you couldn't win,” he told author Roland Lazenby years later. ”I don't think people really understand that trauma a.s.sociated with losing. I don't think people realize how miserable you can be, and me in particular. I was terrible. It got to the point with me that I wanted to quit basketball.”
West didn't quit, though. Three years later he finally won a champions.h.i.+p ring, not against the Celtics, but against my team, the Knicks. Still, the Celtics' curse hovered over the franchise like an undropped balloon until the mid-'80s, when the ”Showtime” Lakers beat Boston two out of three times in the finals. The rivalry between the two teams was such an important part of Lakers lore that Magic Johnson once revealed that he cheered for Boston when the team wasn't playing against L.A. because, as writer Michael Wilbon wrote, ”only the Celtics know how it feels to sit atop the basketball world for the franchise's entire existence.”
History was not on our side going into game 7 in 2010. Over the decades the Lakers had faced the Celtics four times in finals series that came down to seven games and had lost every time. But on this go-round we were playing at home, and we'd beaten the Celtics decisively, 8967, two days earlier in game 6. We also had a few more weapons in our a.r.s.enal than in 2008, notably center Andrew Bynum, who had been sidelined with a knee injury that year. And we'd acquired forward Ron Artest, one of the best defensive players in the league. My main worry was Boston's Rasheed Wallace, who was filling in for injured center Kendrick Perkins. Wallace wasn't as strong as Perkins on defense, but he was a formidable offensive threat who had done serious damage to us in the past. I wasn't taking anything for granted.
By Lakers' standards, 200910 had been a fairly uneventful season. The biggest setback took place before the season began when Trevor Ariza, who had played a big role in the 2009 champions.h.i.+p run, left the team to become a free agent. Trevor was a quick, daring defender who often ignited our fast-breaking offense by making steals or forcing turnovers. He also was a clutch outside shooter from the corners and other points on the floor. But during the off-season, negotiations between Trevor's agent and the Lakers stalled, and Mitch Kupchak started talking seriously with Artest, whose contract with the Rockets was ending. Before the deal was complete, however, Ron announced on Twitter that he was joining the Lakers. Baffled by this turn of events, Trevor signed with Houston as a free agent and was later traded to New Orleans.
What I liked about Artest was his size (six feet seven inches, 260 pounds), his strength, and his lockdown defensive play. Ron, who had recently been voted the ”toughest” player in the NBA in a survey of general managers, was forceful and crafty enough to neutralize strong, mobile forwards such as Boston's Paul Pierce. But Ron could be erratic on offense and wasn't as speedy as Trevor, which meant we'd have to s.h.i.+ft our quick, fast-breaking attack into a slower, half-court offense.
I also had concerns about Ron's unpredictability. He was best known for the wild brouhaha he took part in as a Pacer during a 2004 game against the Pistons at Auburn Hills. The fight broke out after Ron fouled Ben Wallace as he was driving to the basket, and Wallace retaliated by shoving him in the chest. Midway through the brawl, a Detroit fan threw a cup at Ron and he charged into the stands and started whaling away, which resulted in a seventy-three-game suspension, the longest in NBA history not related to drugs or gambling. (Wallace and other players were also penalized, but not as severely as Ron.)
During our series against Houston in the 2008 playoffs, Ron, then playing for the Rockets, got ejected from game 2 after getting into a clash with Kobe over a rebound. He also missed two team buses en route to the Staples Center for game 7, and caught a third bus-transporting Houston management-wearing only his sweats.
Ron grew up in New York's rough Queensbridge projects, and sports tattoos of a Q on his right leg and a B on his left to remind him of his roots. He remembers hearing gun shots while playing at the Twelfth Street courts. And he once witnessed a young man getting killed during a game at a local recreation center when a brawl broke out and one of the players tore off a leg of the scorer's table and stabbed him with it. ”I'm still ghetto,” Ron once told the Houston Chronicle. ”That's not going to change. I'm never going to change my culture.”
Basketball was Ron's salvation. When he was twelve, he was good enough to play AAU ball. He joined Lamar Odom and another future NBA star, Elton Brand, on the Brooklyn Queens Express, a team that went 67-1 one summer. All three players went on to success in high school and college, and were selected in the first round of the 1999 draft. The Bulls chose Brand and Ron, as the first and sixteenth picks overall, respectively, and the Clippers took Lamar as the fourth pick overall. Since 1999 Artest had played for four other teams-the Bulls, Pacers, the Kings, and the Rockets-but now he was going to be playing with his childhood buddy, Lamar. For Ron, it was like coming home.
Despite his background and his proclivity for playing rough, Ron is a good-natured soul off the court who does a lot of unpublicized charity work for children. Once, when he was in China, he met a young fan who couldn't afford to pay for his textbooks, let alone a pair of Ron's signature basketball shoes. So Ron took his $45,000 watch and auctioned it off to pay for the boy's education.
Ron has a flair for the outlandish. During his stint with the Kings, he offered-unsuccessfully-to forgo his entire salary in order to keep his friend, guard Bonzi Wells, from jumping to another team. And in 2011 he changed his name to Metta World Peace, as he said, ”to inspire and bring youth together all around the world.” The word ”metta” means ”loving kindness” in Pali, and refers to a key tenet of Buddhist teaching: cultivating universal love. Clearly, Ron has come a long way since his first days at the Lakers when he told San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Mark Ziegler, ”I don't know what Zen means, but I'm looking forward to being a Zen man. I hope it makes me float. I always wanted to float.”
My major concern about Ron was whether he could learn the triangle offense fast enough. Like Dennis Rodman, Ron had a hard time staying focused. Dennis's solution was to work out in the gym day and night to burn off restless energy. But Ron had trouble sticking to a workout regimen, so he practiced jump shots instead. The only problem was that every day he would shoot with a different style. And that affected the way he performed in games. Sometimes he was blessed and everything dropped in. Other times there was no way of telling what was going to happen.
During a practice session I suggested to Ron that he select one style of shooting and stick with it, but he took it the wrong way. ”Why are you always picking on me?” he said.
”I didn't know I was picking on you,” I replied. ”I'm just trying to help you along.”
Neither of us was speaking in anger, but a.s.sistant coach Brian Shaw pulled me aside and said, ”You're walking a dangerous line there, Phil.” I was stunned. I thought I was trying to be supportive. However, Brian worried that Ron might misinterpret my body language-moving in closer and talking in a low tone of voice-as a form of aggression.
After that incident, I realized that the best way to communicate with Ron was to couch everything in a positive way-not just with the words I used, but with my gestures and facial expressions as well. Eventually, he figured out the system and, with the help of Kobe and others, began integrating himself into the team's DNA.
Ron wasn't the only question mark in 200910. Another concern was Kobe's physical decline over the course of the season. In December he broke the index finger on his shooting hand during a game against the Timberwolves, but he decided to skip surgery and tough it out, a decision he later regretted. Not surprisingly, the injury had a negative impact on his shooting percentage; his numbers were down in several categories.