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Slipping into a limo, Phil Jackson looks the part of the mogul
on the move with his trim gray beard, dapper suit, granny glasses
and laptop computer powered up so he can punch in stock trades as
the chauffeur whisks him from the airport.
The image in the TV commercial is not so different from his
image at courtside, except that here Jackson reverts a bit to the
kid in him, sticking his fingers in his mouth and letting loose
shrill whistles to get his players' attention.
These days Jackson is whistling more often than he used to in
Chicago, while his new team, the Los Angeles Lakers, tries to learn
the system the Bulls perfected to win six NBA championships in his
nine years.
Gone from the game for a year after the acrimonious and, he
says, premature breakup of the Bulls, Jackson is back with a
5-year, $30-million deal and aiming to prove he can win a title
without Michael Jordan.
Jackson's challenge with the Lakers is to turn soloists into a
tight, harmonious band, to create a dynamic unit out of a motley
collection of underachieving stars who often seemed leaderless and
chaotic under coaches Del Harris and Kurt Rambis.
Jackson hasn't found it easy so far. Kobe Bryant broke his right
hand a couple of weeks ago and will miss the first month of the
season. Travis Knight sprained his right ankle and will miss at
least the first week of the season. The Lakers are still looking
for a solid power forward to allow 36-year-old A.C. Green to slide
into a backup role.
From his first no-nonsense practice, Jackson let the Lakers know
he would work them hard but give them a winning plan.
"It's like being at a boot camp with this general guy that you
always see on TV beating people up," Shaquille O'Neal said. "You
know if you don't want to get in trouble, just keep your mouth
quiet."
And O'Neal kept quiet, except to say "everybody was focused,
everybody is willing to learn."
Even as Jackson watched his players run around as if they had
blindfolds on, trying to figure out where they should be in his
triangle offense, he showed his patience and humor and began
winning the respect of the players.
"He's a funny guy," Bryant said. "He'll be serious, then all
of a sudden he'll just say something weird. If you mess it up,
he'll definitely tell you. If you're doing a good job, he'll pat
you on the butt."
Maybe it was the offense, maybe it was Jackson's presence, but
Derek Fisher quickly saw better chemistry among his teammates.
"I don't think it was that guys on our team didn't want to
commit to being on the same page, but I don't think we ever really
had a page to follow," Fisher said. "Our coaching staff has
presented something for us to follow and everybody's following it
right now."
In an interview with The Associated Press on the brink of the
season-opener, Jackson spoke about his belief that he could have
taken the Bulls to another championship last year if they hadn't
been busted up. He talked about how long he thinks the Lakers will
take to jell this year, how Bryant's early absence will affect the
team, and the not-so-farfetched possibility that the Lakers might
even sign Dennis Rodman again.
Jackson spoke slowly and softly, reflecting in his tone the
insight and intelligence that Jordan and the Bulls came to respect
throughout their championship years.
AP: The hardest thing to do in sports is to build a winning team
and keep it going. It seemed so dumb that the problems in Chicago
between the owner, the general manager and you led to your
departure and then, ultimately, Michael's and Scottie's and
everybody else. Did it strike you that way, that there was
something lost that should have been saved?
Jackson: We always wondered how long we could keep it going. We
kind of put a limitation on the numbers of years that we thought we
could keep this juggernaut afloat, and I think maybe we mistimed
it. We thought maybe they couldn't play past 35, 36. That maybe
Scottie, with a couple of back surgeries, at age 33 would be in
decline. And Rodman couldn't play past 36. And we put an age
limitation on the capabilities of what those players in this day
and age could do. And from that standpoint I think that the
organization, and the coaching staff included in that, didn't push
hard enough to keep it going. In the overall concept of what
dynasties are, this was a dynasty that was very unusual.
AP: Did you feel you could have won at least another year?
Jackson: In a 50-game season last year? It would have been easy.
That was kind of a no-brainer last year, because there wasn't a
whole lot of training camp for anybody. It was just like, if we've
got a good team, stick with it. I do think, given the team totally
intact that we had before, it would have been real easy for them to
come back and play well.
AP: Would you have liked to see that team stay together until it
was obvious that they couldn't win anymore? Why not take it to the
end?
Jackson: Well we thought we had, basically. The enthusiasm for
management to start rebuilding, getting the right temperament in
rebuilding, kind of skewed our notion of where we had to go with
it. The owner two, three times in the offseason asked me if I would
return. But I thought we had done too much to destroy our team and
relationship at that time so it wasn't a possibility for me to go
on back and continue it. And then given the year that the NBA had
last year, it was the right thing and it happened the right way. We
can look back at that team as a unique team, a special team of the
'90s, and enjoy what it was, maybe bemoan the fact that it didn't
have a natural death. But even so, I think everybody was able to
move on with their lives and really be proud of what they had done.
AP: Were you close to going to the New York Knicks?
Jackson: No, we had just one preliminary talk. New York was in
ninth place, or tied for eighth place at that particular juncture
of the season with a week and a half left. It was just an
introductory talk and we tabled it until their season was over. So
there wasn't anything substantial.
AP: What impact will Kobe's injury have on him and the rest of
the Lakers as you introduce a new offense?
Jackson: One of the good things about it is it's going to give
Kobe an opportunity to learn in a different format. He's going to
have to sit and watch. We're going to have to be able to nurture
his growth as a guard and the way he fits into the offense.
Physically he's going to be in fine shape. So we don't anticipate
it's going to delay him.
As a team it's put us under some duress because we don't have a
legitimately experienced backup two-guard. We have some players who
are adjustable in Rick Fox, and a young kid in Sam Jacobson.
Obviously, acquiring Ron Harper helps us right now in getting
someone who can play that two-guard spot, know the position and
know the offense. But at this point in his career, Ron's not a 35-
or 40-minute man. He's a guy I think of as averaging 25, maybe 30
minutes. So we've got real gap there that's going to hurt us for a
while.
AP: How long does it take for a team to learn the triangle
offense, and why would it take longer for that than other systems?
Jackson: It's an offense that requires a knowledgeable sense of
where you are on the court at all times. It's very easy in most NBA
offenses to designate a screen and roll, an isolation, a post-up, a
two-man type game, possibly three-man type game that are generic to
the game of NBA basketball that players are familiar with. But this
game provides that all five players have to participate in the
offense all the time. There's never a down period in this offense.
And it just takes one person not functioning to really create a bit
of havoc on the court.
AP: So would you say it will take half a season or a full season
for them to really learn it?
Jackson: There's a lot of learning that goes on. The players
play in this learning mode, which means that they're thinking and
playing instead of reacting. That's the critical mass there, to
really play inside the system. The familiarity takes perhaps a
month or two, and then you begin to see the nuances and the
subtleties of it. By January this team should be functioning pretty
well.
AP:Is there a risk in trying to recreate the same style that
the Bulls played in, because the Lakers are center-oriented more
than guard- and forward-oriented like the Bulls?
Jackson:The offense takes on the personality of the players
that are in it, like any offense will. The offense really is a
system that is designated for a post-up player. A guy like Shaq
really helps this kind of an offense. His ability to pass is going
to be very good. It's going to be exciting to see this offense with
a different look.
What we did a lot of times with this offense was we created
spacing for guys like Michael and Scottie Pippen, so that they had
operating room on the weak side on the back side of the offense. It
created a lot of different types of operations for those guys
because our center was in and out of the post, rather than being
positioned in the post-up. To get their type of game going was
really critical to scoring points with the Bulls.
This offense works best with a post-up player on the court. In
talking with Shaq about it I told him the premier player in this
offense was Wilt Chamberlain with the '66-'67 Philadelphia 76ers
when he averaged close to nine assists a game and led the league in
assists. That's what this offense did for that team, which won 68
games that year. It really benefits the whole team being able to
place the ball into the enemy's territory, which is the post in the
heart of the defense.
AP:That was the year Chamberlain really made the switch from
offensive scorer to passer and rebounder. Do you look for that kind
of change from Shaq as well?
Jackson:No, I don't see that dramatic a change. You have to
remember that Chamberlain was coming down from 40-50 points to 35
and then to 25. Maybe 24.5 that year. That's what we'd like to see
Shaq doing, scoring 25 points a game and getting six assists.
That's the kind of thing we'd like to see in this offense.
AP:What else do you expect from Shaq as far as his contribution
on the floor and off the floor?
Jackson:I think that the leadership role will come to him
naturally. That's one of the things maybe he's going to have to
provide with Kobe out. Because the two of them together give you a
certain sense of dynamics, power, the inside-outside threat, the
driver and the post-up power player. And without Kobe, we're going
to be relying upon Shaq to provide that kind of leadership. That's
going to be interesting for him because he's going to have to get
things done in a critical part of the game if we're going to be
successful early on in the season.
AP:Have you seen that kind of receptiveness there?
Jackson:Yeah. He's really willing. He really wants to flesh out
the best part of his game. I think he's come a long ways. The next
scenario for him is to become a somewhat reliable free throw
shooter so that he can be the guy the team can go to down the
stretch without having the fear of loss of points because he might
make one or might not make any free throws. That's where he's got
to make a change.
AP:And Kobe, when he comes back, what are you looking for from
him?
Jackson:Kobe shows that ability to find his way into a game and
to have an impact on the game and find a way to score. But really
we see him as a player who's going to be not just an individual
player but a person who really opens up the team game. The
opportunity this type of game gives to him is he can really become
that type of player that's not just a scoring threat, not just a
dramatic one-on-one player, but also a player that can bring the
level of play up by assisting his teammates, organizing the
offense, reading the defense, doing the things that give a team a
really dramatic impact as only a star can.
AP:He's still so young (21), yet he's been compared with Jordan
and with other great players. Do you see him developing into that
level of ballplayer?
Jackson:Well, the jury's still out on that. This is Kobe's
fourth year. He's had some great years even as a young player in
this league. He's shown that he'll be a star. He's an attractive
player for people to watch. The next aspect is to bring in his
all-around game as a defensive player. Of course, Kobe's active,
and he does things that are exciting, going for steals. But now
he's got to learn how to be kind of a stopper player, a player that
people don't want to go at because of his ability to change the
course of the game with his defense. To help his teammates with
defensive abilities and all those other things are going to be
earmarks as to whether he's going to enlarge his career.
AP:What are your biggest challenges for this team, for
individual players, and for yourself?
Jackson:The challenge is to give this team a basis on which to
play around. The offense itself is a confidence builder, an
organizer for players out on the floor. The coach is the one who
gets them to a place where they can take the bit in their mouth and
kind of take it upon themselves to run the game. That is why it is
so important for a team to have the confidence that they can be out
on the court themselves, figure out what the problem is, find the
solution and execute without the push and pull of a coach that has
to make calls and has to do things that create an intrusion into
the flow of a game. That's one of the things that they have to
find. They have to find their own lead and their own leaders out
there. I think they were a team that really didn't have a leader on
the court during critical parts of the game, and it was obvious in
the last two playoffs. This is their growth point.
AP:You still have a hole at power forward, as opposed to having
that as a strength as you did in Chicago. What are your plans
there?
Jackson:We've got a real good guy in A.C. Green. He's a good
player, he's been in a championship mode, he's got that kind of
drive and hustle and spirit that we need. He's also a good worker.
I don't know how many minutes that we can rely on A.C. at age 36.
But he's in great shape, and I think that he can do a lot of things
for this team.
But we're in a conference with great power forwards, (Vin) Baker
and (Karl) Malone and (Chris) Webber and (Kevin) Garnett, more than
a handful that stand out in this Western Conference. It's obvious
we don't have that kind of a name or dramatic player in that
position. But we think if we get defense out of that position
that'll be enough.
AP:Are you and Jerry West still trying to make a deal for that
spot?
Jackson:We're just going to stay tuned to what can possibly be.
AP:You're not going for Dennis Rodman again, are you?
Jackson:Haven't talked to Dennis, but I'm not ruling out that
it's never going to happen.
AP:So if it worked out and he ready to play, you would see no
problem taking him back?
Jackson:We're a team that needs to develop our own roles in
leadership, need to kind of settle into a lot of things that go
along with a new offense, a new coach, new team players, new
system, new building -- there's a lot of newness here for the Lakers
this year. And once things settle in and we try to get a rhythm and
the roles become defined for the players, then we'll assess how we
are and what our potential is with the personnel we have.
AP:How do you think the team has responded to your personal
style so far? Have you made any reading suggestions for them yet?
Jackson:No, really, we're just beginning as far as chemistry
and the relationship between coaches and players. So that's
interesting right now, to just kind of watch and see what happens,
get to know the players, learn who they are, be able to make some
kind of suggestions. I definitely want to try to get to these
players as people. | |
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