Part 30 (2/2)
I turned the projector off and said, ”Well, what do you think, guys? Our defense looks totally confused. We don't know what we're trying to do. And that's playing right into his hands.”
Fish spoke up first. ”I think there's something wrong here. I know we've been through a lot, and some of our guys have been out. Maybe it's our att.i.tude or our lack of focus. But something's not right.”
After hearing that, I took a seat facing the players and told them of a personal problem I'd been struggling with for the past two months-something that they'd obviously been picking up on a nonverbal, energetic level. In March I'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer. For weeks afterward I grappled with how best to proceed. Ultimately, I decided to wait until after the playoffs to have surgery; my doctor had a.s.sured me that we could control the growth of the cancer, at least temporarily, with drugs.
”This has been a tough period for me,” I explained. ”And I don't know if it has affected my ability to give 100 percent of what I normally give you guys. But I know there've been times when I've been more withdrawn than usual.”
I began to tear up while I was talking, and the players seemed genuinely moved. Still, looking back, I'm not sure this was the right decision. Although telling the truth is never a mistake, there can be serious repercussions. And timing matters. I wondered if my confession would help unify the team or just make the players feel sorry for me. They'd never seen me before in such a vulnerable state. I was supposed to be the ”Zen guy,” the man they could always count on to be cool under pressure. Now what were they supposed to think?
In retrospect, I should have antic.i.p.ated what would come next. But I'd never had one of my teams fall apart in such a strange and spooky way before. After all, the team was finally returning to champions.h.i.+p form as we polished off the Hornets in the next two games. In fact, I was so impressed by the team's performance in game 6, I told reporters that I thought this squad had ”the potential to be as good as any team I've coached with the Lakers.”
Needless to say, I spoke too soon.
It wasn't that our next opponent, Dallas, was such a huge threat. The Mavericks were a talented veteran team that had finished the year with the same record as ours (57-25). But we'd always dominated the Mavs in the past and had beaten them handily in March to win our regular season three-game series, 21, and home-court advantage against them in the playoffs.
However, Dallas created some serious matchup problems for us. First, we didn't have anyone who could keep pace with the Mavs' quick diminutive point guard, Jose Juan Barea, who, like Chris Paul, was surprisingly good at breaking down our new defense. We'd hoped that Steve Blake, who is quicker and more nimble than Fish, could be our defensive stopper in the backcourt, but he wasn't back up to speed after his bout with chicken pox. Second, the Mavs were able to wear Kobe down with DeShawn Stevenson, a tough, muscular guard, and virtually neutralize Andrew Bynum with the bigman tag team of Tyson Chandler and Brendan Haywood. What's more, with Barnes and Blake not 100 percent, our bench had a tough time keeping up with Dallas's second unit, especially sixth man Jason Terry, who was devastating from the three-point line.
One of the biggest disappointments was the performance of Pau, who'd played well against the Mavs in the past. But the refs allowed Dallas forward Dirk Nowitski to push Pau and prevent him from establis.h.i.+ng a solid post-up position, which hurt us badly on offense. I urged Pau repeatedly to fight back, but he was grappling with a serious family issue and was distracted. True to form, the media made up stories to explain Pau's less-than-stellar performance, including gossip that he'd broken up with his girlfriend and had had a falling out with Kobe, neither of which was true. Still, the rumors disturbed Pau and compromised his focus.
Game 1 was a mystery to me. We established dominance early and built up what looked like a solid 16-point lead in the third quarter. Then, for no obvious reason, we stopped playing on both ends of the floor and the energy s.h.i.+fted to the Mavs. By the end of the fourth quarter, we still had a chance to win, but we uncharacteristically flubbed several opportunities to put the game away. With five seconds left and the Mavs up by 1, Kobe stumbled trying to get around Jason Kidd and bobbled a pa.s.s from Pau. Next, after Kidd was fouled and hit one of his free throws, Kobe missed an open three at the buzzer to give the Mavs the win, 9694.
The plot took a more ominous turn in game 2. We came out with fire in our eyes, but that feeling quickly dissipated. Not because the Mavs' performance was so spectacular-it wasn't-but because they trumped us on aggressiveness and were able to capitalize on our slow-acting defensive game. The big surprise was Barea, who was virtually unstoppable, weaving his way effortlessly through defenders to pick up 12 points (which equaled the output of our entire bench) and 4 a.s.sists. Nowitski also had an easy time outmaneuvering Pau and scored 24 points to lead the Mavs to a 9381 victory. In the closing seconds of the game, Artest was so frustrated he clothes-lined Barea, who was trying to put pressure in the backcourt, and was suspended for the next game. Not one of Ron's proudest moments.
Losing Artest hurt but it wasn't catastrophic. We replaced him in game 3 with Lamar and made a concerted effort to move the ball inside to take advantage of our bigger front line. That worked for most of the game and helped us to build a 7-point lead with five minutes remaining. But then Dallas, which was loaded with good three-point shooters, started exploiting our weakness in guarding the perimeter, particularly when we were using a big lineup. Led by Nowitski, who scored 32 points and 4 of 5 threes, the Mavs waltzed to victory, 9892.
After that loss, my son Charley called to tell me that he and his siblings, Chelsea, Brooke, and Ben, were planning to fly to Dallas to see the next game. ”Are you guys crazy?” I asked.
”No, we're not missing your final game,” he replied.
”What do you mean my final game? We're going to win on Sunday.”
Ever since I was a coach in the Continental Basketball a.s.sociation, my kids had been in the stands for my big games. In those days we could drive to many of the games from our house in Woodstock, and June would turn the trips into family adventures. After I joined the Bulls, the kids, then in middle school and high school, would travel to away games during the finals, courtesy of the team. The ritual continued when I moved to L.A., by which time they were old enough to enjoy the parties connected to the series. By 2011, they'd been to so many finals-thirteen, to be exact-that they liked to say the NBA threw a big party for them every June.
My favorite moment was when they showed up in Orlando for the 2009 finals and presented me with a Lakers yellow basketball cap embroidered with the Roman numeral X to commemorate my tenth champions.h.i.+p. Would there be an XII cap?
The vultures were already circling. When I saw my friend, NBA photographer Andy Bernstein, arrive in Dallas, I greeted him half-jokingly as ”dead man walking.” Still, even though it may seem like magical thinking now, I really believed that we were going to win game 4 and take the series back to L.A. To be honest, I hadn't given much thought to how I wanted my career to end or what I was going to do next. I was just trying to stay in the moment and get through the next game.
That was the message I delivered to the players: Win the game, get the series back to our house, then put the pressure on the Mavs to win. Maybe I was missing something, but I didn't have the sense that the players had given up or thought the series was already over. Nor did I think that they'd tired of playing together as a team.
Of course, when you're a coach, you don't have the same kind of apprehension you do as a player. When you're a player, you obsess about not s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up and making a mistake that will blow the game. But when you're the coach, you think, how can I get these guys keyed up and on their game? What kind of insight can I offer them so that they can play more spontaneously? And what kind of coaching change can I make to give them an edge?
My concern in game 4 was trying to get Pau to push back against Nowitski and stake out a better position in the post. Our key to victory was a strong inside game, and that began with Pau. In game 3 I got so tired of watching him get shoved around that I thumped him on the chest as he walked off the floor just to get a rise out of him. The media had fun with that, but Pau understood what I was trying to do. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough.
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