Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant by Lazenby Roland

Author:Lazenby, Roland [Lazenby, Roland]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2016-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

The Lakers defeated Houston in the first round of the play-offs that season, then were swept by San Antonio in the next round. As things turned sour, Derek Harper was heard to murmur under his breath at the silly young stars around him, “Overrated motherfuckers.”

San Antonio’s fine coach, Gregg Popovich, was among those in the league who found it advantageous to foul O’Neal and face his sketchy free-throw shooting rather than allow him to dunk time after time. This strategy was on its way to becoming known as Hack-a-Shaq.

It pointed to the center’s Achilles’ heel. He couldn’t consistently finish games as the primary option for the Lakers because he couldn’t make free throws. Even Jordan had boldly declared it before the 1998 season.

The Lakers needed a finisher exactly like Bryant to play alongside him. It was obvious that the two stars needed each other, that they each prevented double teams from swarming the other. Everyone around them had tired of pointing it out.

Some in the media were observing a pattern about O’Neal’s teams that long preceded Bryant. Each season, the center’s teams ultimately collapsed and were swept by opponents.

“Remember,” J. A. Adande recalled, “that at that time Shaq had been swept. He got swept his first play-off trip. The first series he got swept. Then he went to the NBA Finals the next year and got swept again, and the next year after that he got swept in the conference semifinals by the Bulls. He won one game in ’97, then they got swept in ’98, and he got swept again in ’99 by the Spurs.”

The pressure made the normally gregarious O’Neal sink into frustration.

“His frustration with losing grew, and the pressure to win grew,” Rick Fox observed.

“What surprised me about Shaquille during his early days in Los Angeles was how frustrated he got,” West said later. “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 he won.”

Given the media onslaught after the Lakers were swept out of the play-offs, along with the roller-coaster drama of the short season, Jerry Buss knew he needed an exceptional coach to make his collection of young talent work together. Phil Jackson, the man who had led the Chicago Bulls to six NBA titles, was a name that had frequently been discussed as the season played out. Getting the legendary coach to L.A. was something that both Kobe and Shaq could agree on.

A writer mentioned it to West one quiet afternoon in the Forum as the Lakers were getting swept by San Antonio.

“Fuck Phil Jackson,” West had responded, flashing his anger over what he perceived as Jackson’s criticism of the Lakers during the season.

Yet a month later, Jerry Buss and Shaq and Kobe got their wish, and it was Jerry West introducing the new coach at the press conference.

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