Tag: Kobe Bryant

Defending NBA champs on playoff precipice

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

DALLAS — First, the Spurs fell, a 61-win No. 1 seed ousted in the first round of the NBA’s Western Conference playoffs.

Soon, the West’s No. 2 seed, the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers, may join them as idled observers, a legendary coach sent to early retirement in the process.

Dallas has a 3-0 lead in the best-of-7 Western Conference semifinals series that resumes today at American Airlines Center.

The Lakers are the 99th team in NBA history to face such a daunting deficit, defiance seemingly their final refuge. The first 98, after all, failed to overcome. But Lakers star Kobe Bryant insisted he has no doubt his team can be the first, starting with today’s game, and issued a warning to any teammate that might not share the belief.

“I’m going to keep this train moving,” he said, “so you’re either going to be on it, or in front of it. But the train will keep moving.”

The Mavericks have outscored the Lakers in the fourth quarter of each of the first three games because they have kept Bryant from dominating. In the final five minutes of Dallas’ 98-92 Game 3 victory, Bryant missed all four of the shots he attempted and committed two turnovers.

Meanwhile, center Andrew Bynum, on the brink of a breakout game after scoring 21 points through the first 3??1/2 quarters, did not touch the ball.

“The last five minutes is when I go to work,” Bryant explained, “and I didn’t the last game. I’ve got to get the ball and make those plays.”

Lakers coach Phil Jackson has hinted all season that he will retire at season’s end, whenever that may be. Veteran Lakers such as Bryant and Derek Fisher, starters on the five Lakers teams Jackson has coached to NBA titles, don’t want to get swept and have that be Jackson’s final experience.

“It means more to myself and Derek than anybody else on this team, the history that we have,” Bryant said, “but you try not to think of that. You just try to think of the game.”

In a pre-practice meeting, Jackson told his players to forget about him and any legacy issues, then fell back on a longtime playoff ploy: Complaining about the officiating, hoping the referees working today’s game will notice.

Jackson said his All-Star power forward, Pau Gasol, has struggled in the first three games of the series because defenders are breaking a rule.

“I’ve resisted this the whole playoffs, but the NBA used to call it ‘knee up the butt,’?” Jackson said. “You couldn’t lift your knee off the floor to run a guy off the post. They’re doing it every time. They’re taking him out of the post so he can’t get a post-up.

“We didn’t complain about it against New Orleans, but the Mavs are doing the same damn thing. So we’re kind of resigned that they’re not going to change the rules. .?.?. I mean go back to what they used to have as a rule.”

Meanwhile, the Mavericks quietly go about their business of making the two-time defending champions look old, and in the way.

“We’re up against an opponent that’s very experienced and has got a lot of weapons,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. “We’ve got to stay on task.

“I feel like they’re going to play better, and we’ll have to play better, too.”

Scot Pollard calls Phil Jackson ‘one of most overrated coaches of our time’

Despite a record 11 NBA championships with two different franchises, former Sacramento center Scot Pollard isn’t buying Phil Jackson’s credentials as a legendary NBA coach.

Pollard told KHTK radio in Sacramento that Jacksoncoaching players like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Scottie Pippen and Shaquille O’Neal during his career with the Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago.

“I just think he’s one of the most overrated coaches of our time. He’s only had the greatest players of our era on his teams. Put him in charge of the Sacramento Kings this year, and I don’t mean to offend Sacramento fans, but put him on a team with no Hall-Of-Famers on it at least no one that has established themselves as a Hall-Of-Famer already, put him as the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers right now and let’s see how he does next year with no Hall-Of-Famers on the team. That’s all I’m saying.”

Pollard added that he respects Jackson’s championship rings, but he has “never taken a team that wasn’t a playoff team and turned them into a playoff team.”

Jackson has had a well-publicized relationship with Sacramento and its fans since the memorable 2002 Western Division Championship series.

It’s been nine years since that series ended. And it seems like the Kings and their fans still haven’t forgiven or forgotten that Jackson called them a “cowtown.”

I’m curious if Spurs Nation shares Pollard’s thoughts on this question.

Mike Monroe: Pop sees possible Phil successor down on the farm

After his Mavericks chased Phil Jackson into retirement a few weeks earlier than planned, Rick Carlisle famously speculated how long the Lakers coach “ … can go to Montana and meditate and smoke peyote, or whatever he does there. I don’t know. He’s going to get bored, and I mean that in an endearing manner.”

Gregg Popovich wonders how long another old coach can watch corn grow without feeling the pull of competition.

Shouldn’t the Lakers ask Jerry Sloan if he would like to discuss replacing Jackson?

“I just can’t see him staying on the farm,” the Spurs coach said. “Jerry’s too freakin’ competitive.”

It’s hard to imagine Sloan, who swears he is perfectly content on his Macleansboro, Ill., farm, adapting to the go-go life in La-La Land.

Adapting to a coaching role that includes replacing a legend?

Easier than shucking an ear of corn.

“L.A. is very ‘un-Jerry,’ but he’d have the respect, that’s for sure,” Popovich said. “People would listen.”

They would listen because Sloan is a Hall of Fame coach and because he remains just as competitive as the most intense of players.

Sloan’s approach to basketball, and life, is so foreign to Jackson’s, he could be the perfect replacement.

Here’s something easy to imagine: Kobe Bryant, executing high pick-and-rolls with Pau Gasol or Lamar Odom, as John Stockton once ran them with Karl Malone.

Part of Jackson’s genius was embracing an offensive system, Tex Winter’s triple-post offense, and sticking with it.

Sloan, too, is a system coach who demanded perfect execution of the offense he borrowed from Dick Motta and others.

Now Sloan is on the farm, and Jackson is meditating in Montana.

At 62, Popovich has watched fellow 60-something coaches ease into retirement, forced or otherwise. With Jackson gone, Popovich and Boston’s Doc Rivers are the only active coaches who fully comprehend what it takes to wring an NBA championship from a team.

“I’m just awestruck at what Phil’s accomplished,” Popovich said. “To a degree, I know what you have to go through to do that, but we’ve done it four times. He’s done it 11 times.

“To go through all those playoff games, each one a war and a drain, an unbelievable emotional and psychological test; for him to have done that 11 times makes me awestruck.”

Popovich never ate dinner or shared a bottle of wine with Jackson. Amazingly, he never had a single conversation with him until February. Then, he phoned him before the All-Star Game, a courtesy call to let Jackson know he was starting Tim Duncan, rather than Pau Gasol, as a replacement for injured center Yao Ming.

“I wanted him to know,” Popovich said, “before the press found out.”

The fact they weren’t fast friends doesn’t diminish Popovich’s sincere respect for Jackson’s professional achievements and personal vision.

“He exhibited unbelievably great perspective,” Popovich said. “He knows it’s basketball, period, and nothing more. He’s been great in applying life’s lessons to it. Once it’s done, it’s done. You do the best job you can and try to relate it to people’s lives and take your satisfaction out of the group that you’ve formed and how well they have progressed together. That’s the real joy of it, and I think he gets that as much, or more, than most ever have.

“He seems to relish what the group can accomplish and how to get it to that point. Then, when it’s over, you win or you lose, and it seems he is very able to just move on, because life does move on and is important beyond basketball.”

mikemonroe@express-news.net