Hey not much news going on so it's at least something to read 
PHIL & KOBE TOGETHER AGAIN
BY ROLAND LAZENBY
EXCERPTED FROM THE FORTHCOMING BOOK, THE SHOW, THE INSIDE STORY OF THE SPECTACULAR LOS ANGELES LAKERS IN THE WORDS OF THOSE WHO LIVED IT, SCHEDULED FOR DECEMBER RELEASE BY MCGRAW-HILL.
The telltale signs emerged way back in 1999 when the Los Angeles Lakers hired Phil Jackson for the first time. On the day the Zen Master was to be announced as the team’s new coach, 20-year-old Kobe Bryant slipped in the back door of Jackson’s hotel and made his way up to his room to greet him. In Bryant’s hand was a copy of Jackson’s book Sacred Hoops, which Bryant had read.
The Laker guard had long hoped that Jackson would be his coach and months earlier had taken the unusual step of initiating long-distance phone conversations with Jackson’s long-time assistant, Tex Winter.
Bryant wasn’t alone in his desire to greet his new coach.
Over the coming days, Laker center Shaquille O’Neal would travel to Montana to visit with Jackson at his home on Flathead Lake. Long known as a big kid, O’Neal took an immediate liking to his new coach, to the point of jumping in the lake and playing with the various water toys that belonged to the coach’s own children.
Obviously, both players were eager to please their new coach, and to curry favor with him.
Headed into his fourth NBAseason, Bryant had long been viewed as the annoying hid on the Laker block, always eager for more work, always ambitious, always running afoul of what his elder teammates thought he ought to be doing.
“ The other players on the team wanted to make sure the earned everything he got, that the coach didn’t just give him something just because the fans wanted to see this young phenom play,” recalled Del Harris, Bryant’s first coach with the Lakers.
That was especially true of Shaquille O’Neal, the game’s dominant young center who felt immense pressure to win championships. Each season his dislike of Bryant had grown.
“What surprised me about Shaquille during our early days in Los Angeles was how frustrated he got,” said former Lakers GM Jerry West. “He was not fun to be around. The shortcomings of our team and his teammates made him angry because he knew he was going to be judged on how much we won.”
How angry?
Just months before Jackson arrived, O’Neal had slapped Bryant during a pickup game at the Laker practice facility.
“It would not be forgotten,” former Laker guard Derek Fisher said of the incident.
When Jackson and his coaching staff began work in Los Angeles, they were caught off guard by O’Neal’s level of animosity toward Bryant.
“There was a lot of hatred in his heart,” Tex Winter said of O’Neal. “he would speak his mind in our team meetings. He was saying really hateful things. Kobe just took it and kept going.”
Jackson had long been known for building an outstanding personal relationship with Michael Jordan in Chicago. That had been his strategy from the start: A great relationship with Jordan meant that everyone else on the team would fall in line.
Jackson astutely read that he faced a more severe choice in Los Angeles. The situation dictated that he could not be close to both Laker stars. So he made a logical choice, according to Winter. “Very early in our time in Los Angeles, Phil made the decision to go with Shaq. And he made it clear to Kobe and the press and everyone else that it was Shaq’s team. He made it clear he was far more interested in accommodating Shaq than Kobe. And Kobe seemed to accept this.”
Winter, however, began to have concerns immediately. He said he told Jackson that he seemed intent on making Bryant his “whipping boy,” the player on which the coach traditionally takes out all of his frustration. Winter told Jackson that making a budding young superstar a whipping boy wasn’t a good idea.
“Phil was trying to figure me out a little bit,” Bryant recalled. “one of things I told him is, ‘There’s nothing to figure out. I’m just trying to play the game and learn the game the best I can.’ Once we got that established we started moving a little bit. But I didn’t get into his mind games. I had so many other things to think about with this game. I didn’t really have the time even to do that.”
Perhaps Bryant should have paid more attention.
His relationship with Jackson only worsened over their five years together in Los Angels. Winter said it was made worse by Jackson’s refusal to have any sort of in-depth meeting or relationship with the young guard.
At the same time, Jackson leveled a variety of public attacks at Bryant during those years. At one point, Jackson told reporters that Bryant had sabotaged his own high school games to make himself look like a star, a comment that brought howls of protest from Bryant’s high school coach.
Despite the situation, Bryant kept his anger under control, Winter said, until the 2003-04 NBA season. It was a contract year for both Bryant and Jackson, and the coach responded with a media campaign to discredit the guard. It culminated with Jackson’ book, The Last Season, that depicted Bryant as a selfish and uncoachable player.
Jackson had worked behind the secenses several times in not-so-subtle ways to get Bryant traded. But in January 2004, he decided on the direct approach, Jackson went to owner Jerry Buss and told him he could no longer coach the team if Bryant remained.
Having witnessed the unfolding behind-the-scenes drama over five years, Lakers owner Jerry Buss told Jackson that was fine; his services would no longer be needed.
Stunned, Jackson abruptly changed his approach with Bryant. Suddenly, the coach began trying to have a relationship with Bryant, Winter said. And Bryant responded in kind.
“But it was too late,” Winter said.
Buss had made up his mind. Jackson had to go. And the owner had no desire to meet O’Neal’s demands for a lengthy extension on his $30 million plus a year contract. So the Lakers traded him to Miami (where O’Neal would later meekly agree to play for $20 million a season).
As he was cleaning out his office, a jilted Jackson did his best to portray Bryant as the villain in the breakup of the team, and soon that perception became the reality, simply because so many people believed it. Jackson made sure of it, phoning reporters as he drove from Los Angeles to his summer home in Montana. He dialed up columnists and radio talk shows to offer his version of events. Sports columnists everywhere who had no idea why the Lakers had fallen apart simply began reporting as fact that Bryant had schemed to make it happen.
Despite the blame game Jackson was playing so deftly, he would later admit the truth. Despite all his success in Los Angeles, he had failed in his handling of Bryant. And that was one of several factors in the breakup of a very successful team.
“in the final analysis, it’s the coach’s responsibility to manage the team in the proper manner and not have those things happen,” Winter said.
It was simply a huge mistake to not keep Bryant in the loop, Winter said. “I think Phil realizes that now.”
The debate over the issue would play as a steady refrain through most of the 2004-05 NBA season. It grew louder as O’Neal’s Miami Heat charged out to be the best record in the Eastern Conference.
Jackson’s campaigning had helped sales of his new book tremendously.
And it seemed to be the final straw for Kobe Bryant. He had absolutely no trust in Phil Jackson.
On the other hand, it was a frustrating Laker team he played on in the wake of Jackson’s and O’Neal’s departure. They began losing in the spring and failed to make the playoffs.
As much as Winter thought of Bryant, the coach didn’t hesitate to scald him with criticism. “there’s no balance to his game right now,” Winter said of Bryant in April, 2005. “He still has to learn to hit the open man, that if he does, the ball will come back to him. In some ways, he listens to me. In other ways, he’s never really listened to anybody, has he?”
Bryant’s attempt at leading the Lakers failed miserably.
“Kobe had a tough time,” Winter said. “I think his teammates really got down on him. He tried too hard to be a leader.”
PHIL & KOBE TOGETHER AGAIN
BY ROLAND LAZENBY
EXCERPTED FROM THE FORTHCOMING BOOK, THE SHOW, THE INSIDE STORY OF THE SPECTACULAR LOS ANGELES LAKERS IN THE WORDS OF THOSE WHO LIVED IT, SCHEDULED FOR DECEMBER RELEASE BY MCGRAW-HILL.
The telltale signs emerged way back in 1999 when the Los Angeles Lakers hired Phil Jackson for the first time. On the day the Zen Master was to be announced as the team’s new coach, 20-year-old Kobe Bryant slipped in the back door of Jackson’s hotel and made his way up to his room to greet him. In Bryant’s hand was a copy of Jackson’s book Sacred Hoops, which Bryant had read.
The Laker guard had long hoped that Jackson would be his coach and months earlier had taken the unusual step of initiating long-distance phone conversations with Jackson’s long-time assistant, Tex Winter.
Bryant wasn’t alone in his desire to greet his new coach.
Over the coming days, Laker center Shaquille O’Neal would travel to Montana to visit with Jackson at his home on Flathead Lake. Long known as a big kid, O’Neal took an immediate liking to his new coach, to the point of jumping in the lake and playing with the various water toys that belonged to the coach’s own children.
Obviously, both players were eager to please their new coach, and to curry favor with him.
Headed into his fourth NBAseason, Bryant had long been viewed as the annoying hid on the Laker block, always eager for more work, always ambitious, always running afoul of what his elder teammates thought he ought to be doing.
“ The other players on the team wanted to make sure the earned everything he got, that the coach didn’t just give him something just because the fans wanted to see this young phenom play,” recalled Del Harris, Bryant’s first coach with the Lakers.
That was especially true of Shaquille O’Neal, the game’s dominant young center who felt immense pressure to win championships. Each season his dislike of Bryant had grown.
“What surprised me about Shaquille during our early days in Los Angeles was how frustrated he got,” said former Lakers GM Jerry West. “He was not fun to be around. The shortcomings of our team and his teammates made him angry because he knew he was going to be judged on how much we won.”
How angry?
Just months before Jackson arrived, O’Neal had slapped Bryant during a pickup game at the Laker practice facility.
“It would not be forgotten,” former Laker guard Derek Fisher said of the incident.
When Jackson and his coaching staff began work in Los Angeles, they were caught off guard by O’Neal’s level of animosity toward Bryant.
“There was a lot of hatred in his heart,” Tex Winter said of O’Neal. “he would speak his mind in our team meetings. He was saying really hateful things. Kobe just took it and kept going.”
Jackson had long been known for building an outstanding personal relationship with Michael Jordan in Chicago. That had been his strategy from the start: A great relationship with Jordan meant that everyone else on the team would fall in line.
Jackson astutely read that he faced a more severe choice in Los Angeles. The situation dictated that he could not be close to both Laker stars. So he made a logical choice, according to Winter. “Very early in our time in Los Angeles, Phil made the decision to go with Shaq. And he made it clear to Kobe and the press and everyone else that it was Shaq’s team. He made it clear he was far more interested in accommodating Shaq than Kobe. And Kobe seemed to accept this.”
Winter, however, began to have concerns immediately. He said he told Jackson that he seemed intent on making Bryant his “whipping boy,” the player on which the coach traditionally takes out all of his frustration. Winter told Jackson that making a budding young superstar a whipping boy wasn’t a good idea.
“Phil was trying to figure me out a little bit,” Bryant recalled. “one of things I told him is, ‘There’s nothing to figure out. I’m just trying to play the game and learn the game the best I can.’ Once we got that established we started moving a little bit. But I didn’t get into his mind games. I had so many other things to think about with this game. I didn’t really have the time even to do that.”
Perhaps Bryant should have paid more attention.
His relationship with Jackson only worsened over their five years together in Los Angels. Winter said it was made worse by Jackson’s refusal to have any sort of in-depth meeting or relationship with the young guard.
At the same time, Jackson leveled a variety of public attacks at Bryant during those years. At one point, Jackson told reporters that Bryant had sabotaged his own high school games to make himself look like a star, a comment that brought howls of protest from Bryant’s high school coach.
Despite the situation, Bryant kept his anger under control, Winter said, until the 2003-04 NBA season. It was a contract year for both Bryant and Jackson, and the coach responded with a media campaign to discredit the guard. It culminated with Jackson’ book, The Last Season, that depicted Bryant as a selfish and uncoachable player.
Jackson had worked behind the secenses several times in not-so-subtle ways to get Bryant traded. But in January 2004, he decided on the direct approach, Jackson went to owner Jerry Buss and told him he could no longer coach the team if Bryant remained.
Having witnessed the unfolding behind-the-scenes drama over five years, Lakers owner Jerry Buss told Jackson that was fine; his services would no longer be needed.
Stunned, Jackson abruptly changed his approach with Bryant. Suddenly, the coach began trying to have a relationship with Bryant, Winter said. And Bryant responded in kind.
“But it was too late,” Winter said.
Buss had made up his mind. Jackson had to go. And the owner had no desire to meet O’Neal’s demands for a lengthy extension on his $30 million plus a year contract. So the Lakers traded him to Miami (where O’Neal would later meekly agree to play for $20 million a season).
As he was cleaning out his office, a jilted Jackson did his best to portray Bryant as the villain in the breakup of the team, and soon that perception became the reality, simply because so many people believed it. Jackson made sure of it, phoning reporters as he drove from Los Angeles to his summer home in Montana. He dialed up columnists and radio talk shows to offer his version of events. Sports columnists everywhere who had no idea why the Lakers had fallen apart simply began reporting as fact that Bryant had schemed to make it happen.
Despite the blame game Jackson was playing so deftly, he would later admit the truth. Despite all his success in Los Angeles, he had failed in his handling of Bryant. And that was one of several factors in the breakup of a very successful team.
“in the final analysis, it’s the coach’s responsibility to manage the team in the proper manner and not have those things happen,” Winter said.
It was simply a huge mistake to not keep Bryant in the loop, Winter said. “I think Phil realizes that now.”
The debate over the issue would play as a steady refrain through most of the 2004-05 NBA season. It grew louder as O’Neal’s Miami Heat charged out to be the best record in the Eastern Conference.
Jackson’s campaigning had helped sales of his new book tremendously.
And it seemed to be the final straw for Kobe Bryant. He had absolutely no trust in Phil Jackson.
On the other hand, it was a frustrating Laker team he played on in the wake of Jackson’s and O’Neal’s departure. They began losing in the spring and failed to make the playoffs.
As much as Winter thought of Bryant, the coach didn’t hesitate to scald him with criticism. “there’s no balance to his game right now,” Winter said of Bryant in April, 2005. “He still has to learn to hit the open man, that if he does, the ball will come back to him. In some ways, he listens to me. In other ways, he’s never really listened to anybody, has he?”
Bryant’s attempt at leading the Lakers failed miserably.
“Kobe had a tough time,” Winter said. “I think his teammates really got down on him. He tried too hard to be a leader.”
