Part 30 (1/2)
For me, this was the most gratifying victory of my career. It had been a trying season marred by inconsistency and troublesome injuries, but in the end the players were a study in courage and teamwork. I was moved to see Pau overcome the ”softie” stigma that had haunted him for two years and Fish fight back after being torched by Ray Allen. It was also endearing to watch Ron mature and play a key role in containing Pierce, then make all the right shots just when we needed them. ”I didn't think that winning that trophy was going to feel as good as it feels,” he said later. ”But now I feel like somebody.”
Beyond the thrill of capturing another ring, there was something deeply satisfying about putting the Celtics' curse behind us with a triumphant victory in our own house. Indeed, the fans played a big part in this win. Lakers fans are often mocked for their laid-back approach to the game, but on this day they were more engaged than I'd ever seen them.
It was as if they, too, understood instinctively the symbolic importance of this moment-not just to the team but to the L.A. community as a whole. In the city of dreams, this was the only real reality show in town.
CHAPTER 22
THIS GAME'S IN THE REFRIGERATOR
We are all failures-at least the best of us.
J. M. BARRIE
Maybe I should have ended it there, with the crowd roaring and confetti raining down. But life is never quite so well scripted.
I had reservations about coming back for the 201011 season. For one thing, I was having trouble with my right knee and I was eager to get on with replacement surgery. Second, although most of the core team would be returning, we were likely to lose some key players to free agency, notably guards Jordan Farmar and Sasha Vujacic, both of whom would be hard to replace. Third, I had a secret longing to escape the grueling NBA travel schedule and the pressure of constantly being in the public eye.
During the Western Conference finals, I had lunch with Dr. Buss in Phoenix to discuss the upcoming season. He said that contract negotiations with the players' union weren't going well and he expected the owners to inst.i.tute a lockout when the 201011 season was over. That meant that the Lakers needed to take some measures right away to trim expenses. He also confided that other owners were giving him grief about my salary, claiming that the terms of my contract forced them to pay their own coaches more. Bottom line: If I decided to come back, it would be at a reduced salary.
I told him I would give him an answer in July. Of course, I knew when I said it that it would be hard for me to say no to Kobe and Fish if we won the finals. And sure enough, not long after our victory over the Celtics, they both started pleading with me via text to stick around and ”win a 3P again.”
So I negotiated a one-year deal with Dr. Buss and began working with Mitch Kupchak on a.s.sembling a new roster. I dubbed the campaign the ”Last Stand,” which, alas, turned out to be a pretty accurate way to describe this snake-bitten season.
We were faced with replacing nearly 40 percent of the last season's roster. In addition to Jordan and Sasha-who would be traded to the Nets in mid-December-we were losing backup center Didier Ilunga-Mbenga as well as forwards Adam Morrison and Josh Powell. We replaced the outgoing players with a mixed group of veterans and young players, the most promising of whom were forward Matt Barnes and guard Steve Blake. But Barnes injured his knee and missed about a third of the season, and Blake caught the chicken pox at the end of the season, which diminshed his playing time in the playoffs. What's more, Theo Ratliff, the thirty-seven-year-old center we brought in to back up Andrew Bynum was injured and didn't get much playing time. Still, I wasn't worried about our front line. The team's lack of youth and energy was a bigger concern. Jordan, Sasha, and Josh were always challenging the veterans to rise to their level of energy. Losing them meant that our practices weren't going to be as intense as before-not a good thing.
Another problem, of course, was Kobe's right knee. He'd had another round of arthroscopic surgery in the off-season and later said that his knee had lost so much cartilage that the doctors told him it was ”almost bone on bone.” Kobe continued to have trouble recuperating after games and hard practices. So we reduced the amount of time he spent practicing the day before games, with the hope that the additional rest would allow his knee to recover faster. That diminished the intensity of the practices, as well, but, more important, it isolated Kobe from the team, which created a leaders.h.i.+p vacuum late in the season.
Despite all these issues, the team got off to a healthy 13-2 start and looked pretty strong until the new LeBron James-led Miami Heat picked us apart, 9680, in the Staples Center on Christmas Day. Then we went on a road trip just before the All-Star game that ended with three disturbing losses to Orlando, Charlotte, and Cleveland.
During the game against the Cavaliers-the team with the worst record in the NBA at that point-Kobe got into foul trouble battling guard Anthony Parker, and Ron Artest tried to save the day but made a series of mistakes instead that put us down by 5 going into the half. Kobe and Fish were not pleased. They said that n.o.body could figure out what Ron was trying to do on the court, particularly on defense, which made it hard to stage a cohesive attack.
I called a team meeting during the All-Star break and we talked about ways to get the team back on track. Chuck Person, a new a.s.sistant coach, suggested that we try a system of defense that he claimed would help us guard against our old bugaboo-screen-rolls-and, in the process, tighten up the way we worked together as a team. The system was counterintuitive and required players to unlearn many of the defensive moves they'd been using since high school. Some of the other a.s.sistant coaches thought it was risky to introduce such a radically different approach in the middle of the season, but I thought it was worth the gamble.
The main downside was that Kobe wouldn't have enough time to practice the new system with the team because of his b.u.m knee. I thought that would be a minor obstacle. Kobe was a quick study and good at adapting to challenging situations. But as we began to roll out the system in games, he often got frustrated with his teammates and started giving them directions that contradicted what they'd been learning in practice. This disconnect would haunt us later.
Nevertheless, the new system worked well at first and we went on a 17-1 streak after the break. But in early April we lost five games in a row, including one to arguably the best screen-roll team in the league: the Denver Nuggets. And to hang on to second place in the conference, we had to win the last game of the season-against Sacramento in overtime. We'd gone into late-season slides before and still triumphed, but this time felt different. We shouldn't have been struggling so hard at this point in the season.
It didn't help that our opponent in the first round of the playoffs was the New Orleans Hornets, whose star point guard, Chris Paul, had little difficulty penetrating our new defensive system and creating havoc all over the floor. The Hornets also had former Laker Trevor Ariza, who was determined to show us that we'd made a mistake letting him go. He did a good job of it, giving Kobe trouble on defense and knocking down several key three-pointers. Before we knew it, the Hornets had stolen the first game in L.A., 109100, and we had to fight hard to scratch out a lead in the series, 21.
The Hornets weren't our only obstacle. After practice on the Sat.u.r.day before game 4, Mitch met individually with the members of my staff and informed them that their contracts, which ran out on July 1, weren't going to be renewed for the next season. This included all the a.s.sistant coaches, trainers, ma.s.sage therapists, weight and conditioning instructors, and the equipment manager-everyone except athletic trainer Gary Vitti, who had a two-year contract. Mitch's intention was to give the staffers time to find new jobs, in light of the expected NBA lockout. But the timing of the announcement-in the middle of a tight first-round series-had a disruptive impact on the players as well as the staff.
As if that weren't enough, later that night rookie Derrick Caracter was arrested for allegedly grabbing and shoving a female cas.h.i.+er at an International House of Pancakes and was charged with battery, public drunkenness, and resisting arrest. He was released on bail on Sunday and no charges were filed, but he didn't get to play in game 4, which the Hornets won to tie the series, 22.
Earlier in the series, we were studying the game videos as a group and observed that Chris Paul was sliding through the defense and forcing one of our big men to switch off and cover him, which was exactly what he wanted.