by Phil Jackson
Fish was the perfect leadership partner for Kobe. They had come up together as rookies and trusted each other implicitly. Derek was more patient than Kobe and more balanced in his approach to problem solving. While Kobe infused the team with his drive to win, Fish had a gift for inspiring players with his words and keeping them grounded and focused. “Every time Derek gave a speech,” says Luke Walton, “I felt that there should be music playing in the background, like one of those epic sports movies. When he talked, I wanted to write it down because nobody could have said it better.”
Sometimes Fish acted as a mediator between Kobe and me. Once when I got on Kobe in a team meeting for shooting too much and disrupting the offense, he stormed off in a rage, saying he wouldn’t take part in the day’s shootaround. But Fish skillfully intervened, talking privately with Kobe and getting him to cool down.
When he returned to the Lakers, Fish quickly realized that he and Kobe had to adopt a different style of leadership from the one that had worked for us during our first run. There were no other championship veterans on this team, no Ron Harpers or John Salleys or Horace Grants. So Fish realized that if they wanted to get through to our roster of young, inexperienced players, he and Kobe would have to put themselves in their shoes. “We couldn’t lead this team from 10,000 feet,” he says now. “We had to come back to sea level and try to grow with our guys. And as that process took place, we started to feel a real connectivity and brotherhood.”
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January was a turning point for the team. Midway through the month Bynum dislocated his left kneecap in a game against Memphis—a tough blow that put him out of commission for the rest of the season. But the next day, in a radio interview, Kobe paid a tribute to Andrew that put an end to speculation that Kobe might be traded. During the off-season Kobe had poked fun at Bynum’s inexperience, but now he sounded like his biggest fan, claiming that the Lakers were “a championship caliber team with him in the lineup.”
Two weeks later I learned from Kupchak that he’d worked out a deal with the Grizzlies to bring All-Star center Pau Gasol to Los Angeles. (In return, Memphis got Kwame Brown, Aaron McKie, Javaris Crittenton, and the rights to Pau’s brother Mark, currently an All-Star center with the Grizzlies.) The Pau deal reminded me of the moment in 1968 when the Knicks acquired Dave DeBusschere in a trade with Detroit, a deal one writer called “the basketball equivalent of the Louisiana Purchase.” Like DeBusschere, Pau was mature and intelligent with a deep understanding of the game and a willingness to take on a diminished role, if necessary, to improve the team’s chances of winning. He was the right personality at the right time. As soon as he arrived, we transformed from a team struggling to eke out 100 points a game to a fast-paced scoring machine, averaging 110-plus and having a lot more fun doing it.
A star on Spain’s national team, Pau grew up immersed in a more collaborative European style of basketball, which made it easy for him to adapt quickly to the triangle offense. Pau’s game was ideally suited for the triangle: Not only was he a solid seven-foot, 250-pound post player with a wide range of midrange jumpers, hook shots, and strong up-and-under moves, but he also was an excellent passer and rebounder who was quick enough to ignite fast breaks. His main weakness was his lower-body strength. He often got pushed off the block by some of the stronger, more aggressive big men.
Before Pau came on the scene, we were going through a minor losing streak, and some of the younger players were starting to act out in ways that were having a negative effect on morale. But all those issues disappeared as soon as Pau showed up. For one thing, the trade removed two of the most rebellious players—Kwame and Javaris. But even more important, Pau’s gracious demeanor shifted the emotional climate on the team. It was hard to complain when one of the finest talents in the league was playing alongside you, doing whatever it took to win.
Pau’s arrival also allowed several players to expand their games in unexpected ways. Lamar Odom, for instance, had been struggling for years—unsuccessfully—to establish himself as a strong number two player. But Pau’s presence on the floor took the pressure off and freed Lamar to revert to the looser, freewheeling style of ball he was more comfortable with.
Kobe’s game changed for the better as well. Kobe was thrilled to have a big man on the team with “a pair of hands,” as he put it, and the two players quickly developed into one of the best one-two combinations in the league. Pau’s presence also gave Kobe the opportunity to focus more attention on playmaking and letting other players take shots. That made him a better team player overall and, by extension, a better leader. Kobe was ecstatic with the key acquisitions we’d made that season, notably Fish, Trevor Ariza, and Pau. “Got a new point guard, got a new wing, got a Spaniard, and then it was all good,” he said. “I had a bunch of Christmas presents that came early.”
Kobe’s bitter discontent that had infected the team in the preseason was now ancient history. Best of all, the character and heart needed to create a brotherhood of champions had been restored.
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All of a sudden, everything started to break our way. With Pau in the lineup, we went on a 26-8 run and finished the season with the best record in the Western Conference, 57-25. And Kobe was voted the league’s MVP, in part because he had blossomed into a better all-around player. The only team with a better record was the Celtics, who had acquired Garnett and sharp-shooting guard Ray Allen in the off-season and danced to the third-best record in franchise history, 66-16.
Usually talent wins out in the playoffs, but sometimes victories are decided by happenstance. For us it was a little bit of both. We pushed past the Nuggets and Jazz in the first two rounds, playing some of the most spirited, integrated basketball I’d seen in years. Afterward, while we waited to see which team we’d face in the Western Conference finals, a strange turn of events tipped the odds in our favor. The defending-champion Spurs won a hard-fought game 7 in New Orleans, only to be held up at the airport after the game. The team was forced to sleep on one plane while they waited for another to arrive. As a result, their flight didn’t arrive until 6:30 A.M. Pacific time. Coach Gregg Popovich refused to blame this nightmare trip for his team’s lackluster performance in the next two games, but I’m certain it played a role. They built up a 20-point lead in the third quarter of game 1 but flagged in the fourth, and we stole the game away from them, 89–85. Three days later they looked exhausted as we ran over them in a 30-point rout. The Spurs bounced back and won game 3 in San Antonio. But Kobe took over in the next two games and we closed out the series in five.
That set up a long-anticipated showdown with Boston. The rivalry between the Lakers and Celtics is one of the most storied in sports. In fact, Dr. Buss was so obsessed with the Celtics that he had put winning more championships than them on his bucket list. At the time we trailed Boston by two, 16–14, and had a dreadful 2-8 record against them in head-to-head clashes in the finals. This was the first time the two teams had faced each other in the finals since 1987, when the Lakers triumphed, 4–2.
I wasn’t sure if our team was ready to knock the Celtics off again. They had a powerful front line, led by Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Kendrick Perkins, and I worried that they might be able to outmuscle us under the basket, especially with Andrew Bynum out of the picture. I also was concerned that our team had been too successful too soon and hadn’t been tested hard enough in the earlier rounds to stand up to a tough, physical team like Boston.
The Celtics took game 1 in Boston, 98–88, inspired in part by the return of Pierce in the fourth quarter after leaving the game in the third with what looked like a serious knee injury. Then they cruised to a 2–0 lead in the series three days later. I was impressed with the way they played Kobe. They didn’t double-team him, but they had several defenders switch off and assist whoever was covering him. That often prevented him from penetrating inside and kept him exiled to the perimeter for most of the game. Garnett, who was the league’s Defens
ive Player of the Year, did an excellent job on Lamar, sitting on his left hand and challenging him to make jump shots. This made Lamar increasingly insecure. Garnett felt confident enough to sag off Lamar at times and help Kendrick Perkins punish Pau when he moved into the lane.
We bounced back briefly, winning game 3 at home, but collapsed in the second half of the next game and blew a 24-point lead to fall behind 3–1 in the series. After staving off embarrassment in game 5, we returned to Boston to endure such a lopsided defeat in the final game (131–92) that it haunted us all summer.
The tone was set early in the first quarter when Garnett plowed down the lane, knocked Pau to the ground, and dunked the ball over him while he lay on the floor trying to keep from getting hit. Naturally, none of the refs called a foul.
After the game, Kobe and I sequestered ourselves in a locker room used by the Boston Bruins, who play in the same stadium. Kobe was in a depressed state and took his time before going into the shower room. While we were sitting there, Ron Artest, who was then playing for the Sacramento Kings, dropped by and told us that he would like to be part of the Lakers someday. Little did we know that Artest would play a critical role for us the next time we faced the Celtics in the finals two years later.
The nightmare continued after we left the stadium. By then the streets were filled with mobs of rowdy Celtics fans, cursing the Lakers and trying to turn over the team bus while we were stalled in traffic. One fan stood on the front bumper, glared at me, and gave me the finger. I was angry at the Boston police for not doing anything to break up the crowd. But in the end I was thankful for the disturbance because it galvanized everybody on the bus into committing themselves to returning to Boston and repaying the Celtics in kind.
There’s nothing like a humiliating loss to focus the mind.
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After we returned home, my former Knicks teammate Willis Reed called to console me about the Boston fiasco. I told him I thought our players needed to grow up and take responsibility for what had happened during the finals.
“I figured you just left your guys out there to die in game 7,” he said, “so that they could learn something from that awful feeling.”
“Yes,” I said. “Because you can’t really understand what that’s like unless you go through it yourself.”
From that point on, none of the players needed convincing. When they returned to L.A. in October for the 2008–09 training camp, there was a fire in their eyes that I hadn’t seen before. “There’s no experience that wrenches your gut like making the NBA finals and losing,” says Fish. “We went into the off-season questioning everything because we had come so close, but we were still so far away. I think that loss forced us all to ask ourselves, ‘Do we really want this?’”
The answer was decidedly yes. From day one this was a team possessed. “There wasn’t anything that was going to hold us back,” Fish adds. “No matter what we faced, no matter how many ups and downs, we knew we were tough enough—mentally and physically—to figure this out. And we did.”
During training camp, we talked about what we’d learned in the playoffs that could help us in the future. The players said that they’d discovered just how good we could be but realized that we hadn’t played with the kind of physical intensity we needed to win it all. When we were overrun by Boston, Pau got labeled as “soft,” which we knew wasn’t true. Still, if we wanted to win a championship, we had to change that perception.
I was impressed by the players’ cool determination. The previous year they had taken a quantum leap forward in terms of mastering the system. Now, inspired by their mutual loss, they were deepening their commitment to one another so that they could become more integrated—and invincible—as a team.
This is what I often refer to as dancing with the spirit. By “spirit” I don’t mean anything religious. I mean that deep feeling of camaraderie that arises when a group of players makes a commitment to stand up for one another to achieve something greater than themselves, no matter what the risks. This kind of commitment often involves covering for teammates’ weaknesses or fouling when necessary or protecting another player from being harassed by the enemy. When a team is bonding like this, you can feel it in the way the players move their bodies and relate to one another on and off the court. They play the game with a joyful abandon, and even when they’re squabbling, they do so with dignity and respect.
The 2008–09 Lakers were that kind of team, and their spirit grew stronger as the season progressed. This was not the most talented team I’d ever coached, nor the most physically dominant. But the players had a deep spiritual connection that allowed them, every now and then, to produce miracles on the court. What I especially liked about this version of the Lakers was that many of the players had grown up together and learned to play the game the right way. By this time, they also knew one another well enough to integrate their movements in ways that baffled their opponents.
One player who reflected the spirit of the team was Luke Walton. The son of Hall of Famer Bill Walton, Luke had been immersed in basketball wisdom since early childhood. After attending the University of Arizona, he was drafted by the Lakers in 2003 but had difficulty finding a role for himself because he didn’t fit the standard profile of a small forward. He didn’t have a killer jumper, nor was he gifted at creating his own shots. But he loved moving the ball and playing the game the right way. He was also gifted at shifting the flow of the action from one side of the court to the other, a critical move in the triangle offense. Many coaches don’t place a high value on such skills, but I encouraged Luke to grow in that direction. Eventually, he blossomed into one of the best facilitators on the team.
Like many of the younger players, Luke was emotional and would often shut down and avoid talking to anyone for a few days if he hadn’t played well or the team had lost because of a mistake he’d made. I tried to convey to him that the best way to get off the emotional roller coaster is to take the middle way and not get too high when you win or too low when your game fails you. Over time Luke matured and calmed down.
Some players require a gentle touch, while others, such as Luke, need something more provocative to wake them up. Sometimes I would get under his skin on purpose to see how he would react. At other times I’d throw him into difficult situations in practice to find out if he could handle the pressure.
“It was frustrating,” recalls Luke, “because I didn’t always know what Phil was doing or why he was doing it. And he’s not going to explain it. He wanted you to figure it out on your own.” After a couple of years Luke realized that he’d absorbed what we had been teaching him, and he started to play the game naturally in a more integrated way.
Another player who evolved into a more integrated player during this period was Kobe. Ever since Fish had returned, he’d been developing a more inclusive style of leadership that came to fruition during the 2008–09 season.
In the past Kobe had led mostly by example. He’d worked harder than anyone else, rarely missed a game, and expected his teammates to play at his level. But he hadn’t been the sort of leader who could communicate effectively and get everyone on the same page. If he talked to his teammates, it was usually, “Give me the damn ball. I don’t care if I’m being double-teamed.”
That approach usually backfired. As Luke describes it, “I’ve got Kobe on the floor yelling at me to give him the ball. And I’ve got Phil on the bench telling me to make the right pass no matter what. So instead of just seeing what’s happening on the court, I’m trying to take in Kobe yelling and Coach telling me not to pass to him. And it made my job a lot harder.”
But then Kobe started to shift. He embraced the team and his teammates, calling them up when we were on the road and inviting them out to dinner. It was as if the other players were now his partners, not his personal spear-carriers.
Luke noticed the change. Suddenly, Kobe was reaching out to him in a much more po
sitive way than before. If Luke was bummed about missing three straight shots, Kobe would say, “C’mon, man, don’t worry about that shit. I miss three straight shots every fucking game. Just keep shooting. The next one’s going to go in.” Says Luke, “When your leader is telling you that, instead of giving you a death stare, it makes the next shot a lot easier to take.”
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The season started out on a 17-2 roll and didn’t taper off until early February, when I decided to slow things down after beating Boston and Cleveland. I wanted to do everything possible to keep the players from burning out before the playoffs. Still, our biggest losing streak was a mere two games, against the Spurs and the Magic. We finished the season with the best record in the Western Conference, 65-17, which gave us home-court advantage over everyone except the Cleveland Cavaliers, if we had to play them.
To inspire the players, I started wearing my 2002 championship ring to playoff games. That ring had seen a lot of action. I’d worn it through two failed championship finals runs and three other playoff campaigns that went south. As I told Los Angeles Times reporter Mike Bresnahan, “I’ve got to get rid of that ring.”
My biggest reservation was the team’s lack of a sense of urgency. Everything had come so easily during the regular season, and we’d glided past the Utah Jazz in the first round, 4–1. I was concerned about how our team would handle an opponent that matched up well against us and played a more physical brand of basketball. That happened in the second round, against the Houston Rockets.
The Rockets didn’t look all that imposing on paper. They were missing two of their best players—Tracy McGrady and Dikembe Mutombo—and we were confident we could contain their other major threat, center Yao Ming, with double coverage by Bynum and Gasol. But when Yao broke his foot in game 3 and was sidelined for the rest of the series, Rockets coach Rick Adelman responded by putting in a small lineup led by six-six Chuck Hayes at center, forwards Ron Artest and Luis Scola, and guards Aaron Brooks and Shane Battier. The strategy worked. In game 4 our lackadaisical defense broke down and Houston tied the series, 2–2. Lamar called it “our worst game of the year.”