Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success (30 page)

Pure character. Pure Fish.

If this were a movie, it would have ended there. But we still had one more big hurdle to get over.

Before game 5 even started, the media was in the locker room asking the players to imagine what it was going to feel like to win a ring. And when I strolled into the trainers’ room, I noticed Kobe and Lamar quizzing each other about championship-finals trivia. So I closed the doors and tried to set a different mood.

Instead of giving my usual pregame talk, I pulled up a chair and said, “Let’s get our minds right.” We sat in silence for five minutes and got our breath in sync.

Then assistant coach Brian Shaw started to give his chalk talk on the Magic. But when he turned the board around, it was completely empty. “I didn’t write anything down,” he said, “because you guys already know what you need to do to beat this team. Go out there and play with the idea of playing for and with each other and we’ll end these playoffs tonight.”

It was a great way to set the tone for a final game.

Kobe led the attack from the start, scoring 30 points as we took the lead in the second quarter and never looked back. When the buzzer sounded, Kobe leaped into the air and celebrated with his teammates in center court. Then he came over to the sidelines and hugged me.

I don’t remember exactly what we said to each other, but the look in his eyes touched me the most. This was our moment of triumph, a moment of total reconciliation that had been seven long years in coming. The look of pride and joy in Kobe’s eyes made all the pain we’d endured in our journey together worth it.

For Kobe, this was a moment of redemption. He would no longer have to listen to all the sports pundits and fans telling him that he would never win another championship without Shaq. Chinese water torture is how he described their lack of faith in him.

For me it was a moment of vindication. That night I surpassed Red Auerbach’s championship record, which was gratifying in its way. But more important to me was how we did it: together, as a fully integrated team.

The most gratifying thing of all was watching Kobe transform from a selfish, demanding player into a leader that his teammates wanted to follow. To get there, Kobe had to learn to give in order to get back in return. Leadership is not about forcing your will on others. It’s about mastering the art of letting go.

DELIVERANCE

Fall down seven times. Stand up eight.

CHINESE PROVERB

T
his was the moment we’d all been waiting for. After nine months and 104 games, the 2009–10 season came down to this: a rematch with the Boston Celtics in game 7 of the championship finals. As we arrived at the Staples Center that afternoon, there was no doubt that the players were plotting revenge for the debacle that had taken place two years earlier in the TD Garden.

It was bad enough that the Celtics had humiliated us on the court in the final game of the 2008 finals. They’d done it in classic Boston style, dunking coach Doc Rivers with Gatorade before the clock ran out so that we had to sit on the bench in misery while workers mopped the floor and a stadium full of besotted hometown fans screamed invectives at us. Then, when we thought it was all over, we had to endure a postgame ride from hell through an unruly mob determined to upend our team bus. This was the nightmare that had stuck in our minds for two years.

If it had been any other team, we might have been able to laugh it off. But this was the Celtics, the team that had haunted the Lakers ever since 1959 when Boston swept the then-Minneapolis Lakers in four games to win the NBA championship. The Celtics were so dominant in the 1960s that Jerry West stopped wearing anything green because it reminded him of the frustration the Lakers had endured during that decade.

The most embarrassing defeat came in 1969 when an aging Celtics team, led by Bill Russell in his final year as player-coach, bounced back from a 3–2 deficit to snatch victory from the Lakers on their home court. The Lakers had been so confident going into game 7 that owner Jack Kent Cooke had thousands of purple and gold balloons hung from the ceiling of the Forum, ready to be released during the postgame celebration. Alas, that was not to be. With less than a minute to go, West knocked the ball away on defense, right into the hands of Don Nelson, who tossed up a shot from the free-throw line that hit the back of the rim, bounced high into the air and fell miraculously back into the hoop to put the Celtics ahead for good, 108–106.

West, who played brilliantly throughout the series and was the first and only player from a losing team ever to be named finals MVP, was shellshocked. “I didn’t think it was fair that you could give so much and maybe play until there was nothing left in your body to give, and you couldn’t win,” he told author Roland Lazenby years later. “I don’t think people really understand that trauma associated with losing. I don’t think people realize how miserable you can be, and me in particular. I was terrible. It got to the point with me that I wanted to quit basketball.”

West didn’t quit, though. Three years later he finally won a championship ring, not against the Celtics, but against my team, the Knicks. Still, the Celtics’ curse hovered over the franchise like an undropped balloon until the mid-’80s, when the “Showtime” Lakers beat Boston two out of three times in the finals. The rivalry between the two teams was such an important part of Lakers lore that Magic Johnson once revealed that he cheered for Boston when the team wasn’t playing against L.A. because, as writer Michael Wilbon wrote, “only the Celtics know how it feels to sit atop the basketball world for the franchise’s entire existence.”

—

History was not on our side going into game 7 in 2010. Over the decades the Lakers had faced the Celtics four times in finals series that came down to seven games and had lost every time. But on this go-round we were playing at home, and we’d beaten the Celtics decisively, 89–67, two days earlier in game 6. We also had a few more weapons in our arsenal than in 2008, notably center Andrew Bynum, who had been sidelined with a knee injury that year. And we’d acquired forward Ron Artest, one of the best defensive players in the league. My main worry was Boston’s Rasheed Wallace, who was filling in for injured center Kendrick Perkins. Wallace wasn’t as strong as Perkins on defense, but he was a formidable offensive threat who had done serious damage to us in the past. I wasn’t taking anything for granted.

By Lakers’ standards, 2009–10 had been a fairly uneventful season. The biggest setback took place before the season began when Trevor Ariza, who had played a big role in the 2009 championship run, left the team to become a free agent. Trevor was a quick, daring defender who often ignited our fast-breaking offense by making steals or forcing turnovers. He also was a clutch outside shooter from the corners and other points on the floor. But during the off-season, negotiations between Trevor’s agent and the Lakers stalled, and Mitch Kupchak started talking seriously with Artest, whose contract with the Rockets was ending. Before the deal was complete, however, Ron announced on Twitter that he was joining the Lakers. Baffled by this turn of events, Trevor signed with Houston as a free agent and was later traded to New Orleans.

—

What I liked about Artest was his size (six feet seven inches, 260 pounds), his strength, and his lockdown defensive play. Ron, who had recently been voted the “toughest” player in the NBA in a survey of general managers, was forceful and crafty enough to neutralize strong, mobile forwards such as Boston’s Paul Pierce. But Ron could be erratic on offense and wasn’t as speedy as Trevor, which meant we’d have to shift our quick, fast-breaking attack into a slower, half-court offense.

I also had concerns about Ron’s unpredictability. He was best known for the wild brouhaha he took part in as a Pacer during a 2004 game against the Pistons at Auburn Hills. The fight broke out after Ron fouled Ben Wallace as he was driving to the basket, and Wallace retaliated by shoving him in the chest. Midway through the brawl, a Detroit fan threw a cup at Ron and he charged into the stands and started whaling away, which resulted in a seventy-three-game suspension, the longest in NBA history not related to drugs or gambling. (Wallace and other players were also penalized, but not as severely as Ron.)

During our series against Houston in the 2008 playoffs, Ron, then playing for the Rockets, got ejected from game 2 after getting into a clash with Kobe over a rebound. He also missed two team buses en route to the Staples Center for game 7, and caught a third bus—transporting Houston management—wearing only his sweats.

Ron grew up in New York’s rough Queensbridge projects, and sports tattoos of a
Q
on his right leg and a
B
on his left to remind him of his roots. He remembers hearing gun shots while playing at the Twelfth Street courts. And he once witnessed a young man getting killed during a game at a local recreation center when a brawl broke out and one of the players tore off a leg of the scorer’s table and stabbed him with it. “I’m still ghetto,” Ron once told the
Houston Chronicle
. “That’s not going to change. I’m never going to change my culture.”

Basketball was Ron’s salvation. When he was twelve, he was good enough to play AAU ball. He joined Lamar Odom and another future NBA star, Elton Brand, on the Brooklyn Queens Express, a team that went 67-1 one summer. All three players went on to success in high school and college, and were selected in the first round of the 1999 draft. The Bulls chose Brand and Ron, as the first and sixteenth picks overall, respectively, and the Clippers took Lamar as the fourth pick overall. Since 1999 Artest had played for four other teams—the Bulls, Pacers, the Kings, and the Rockets—but now he was going to be playing with his childhood buddy, Lamar. For Ron, it was like coming home.

Despite his background and his proclivity for playing rough, Ron is a good-natured soul off the court who does a lot of unpublicized charity work for children. Once, when he was in China, he met a young fan who couldn’t afford to pay for his textbooks, let alone a pair of Ron’s signature basketball shoes. So Ron took his $45,000 watch and auctioned it off to pay for the boy’s education.

Ron has a flair for the outlandish. During his stint with the Kings, he offered—unsuccessfully—to forgo his entire salary in order to keep his friend, guard Bonzi Wells, from jumping to another team. And in 2011 he changed his name to Metta World Peace, as he said, “to inspire and bring youth together all around the world.” The word “metta” means “loving kindness” in Pali, and refers to a key tenet of Buddhist teaching: cultivating universal love. Clearly, Ron has come a long way since his first days at the Lakers when he told
San Diego Union-Tribune
reporter Mark Ziegler, “I don’t know what Zen means, but I’m looking forward to being a Zen man. I hope it makes me float. I always wanted to float.”

My major concern about Ron was whether he could learn the triangle offense fast enough. Like Dennis Rodman, Ron had a hard time staying focused. Dennis’s solution was to work out in the gym day and night to burn off restless energy. But Ron had trouble sticking to a workout regimen, so he practiced jump shots instead. The only problem was that every day he would shoot with a different style. And that affected the way he performed in games. Sometimes he was blessed and everything dropped in. Other times there was no way of telling what was going to happen.

During a practice session I suggested to Ron that he select one style of shooting and stick with it, but he took it the wrong way. “Why are you always picking on me?” he said.

“I didn’t know I was picking on you,” I replied. “I’m just trying to help you along.”

Neither of us was speaking in anger, but assistant coach Brian Shaw pulled me aside and said, “You’re walking a dangerous line there, Phil.” I was stunned. I thought I was trying to be supportive. However, Brian worried that Ron might misinterpret my body language—moving in closer and talking in a low tone of voice—as a form of aggression.

After that incident, I realized that the best way to communicate with Ron was to couch everything in a positive way—not just with the words I used, but with my gestures and facial expressions as well. Eventually, he figured out the system and, with the help of Kobe and others, began integrating himself into the team’s DNA.

—

Ron wasn’t the only question mark in 2009–10. Another concern was Kobe’s physical decline over the course of the season. In December he broke the index finger on his shooting hand during a game against the Timberwolves, but he decided to skip surgery and tough it out, a decision he later regretted. Not surprisingly, the injury had a negative impact on his shooting percentage; his numbers were down in several categories.

In February he aggravated his sprained ankle and agreed to sit out three games to let it heal. Kobe was proud of his iron-man resilience and hated to miss games. In fact, he had taken part in all 208 games in the previous two seasons. But he needed to recover, and the break gave the team a chance to practice playing together without him. They won all three games against leading opponents.

Just when Kobe started finding his rhythm again, his right knee, which had been bothering him for years, began to swell and forced him to miss two games in April. This injury would bother him throughout the playoffs and contributed to his mystifying shooting slump at the end of the season.

The only upside to Kobe’s knee problem was its positive effect on our relationship. When his knee had started acting up the year before, I gave him the freedom to go light at practice—or even skip one here and there, if necessary, to help him maintain his leg strength. Kobe was touched by my concern for his well-being, and the bond between us grew stronger. We often bounced around ideas during practices and spent time scrutinizing game videos together on the team plane. Over time we developed the kind of intimate partnership that I’d enjoyed with Michael Jordan. But the connection was less formal with Kobe. With Michael, I’d often arrange meetings ahead to discuss strategy. Kobe and I talked all the time.

Kobe likes to say that he learned 90 percent of what he knows about leadership from watching me in action. “It’s not just a basketball way of leadership,” he says, “but a philosophy of how to live. Being present and enjoying each moment as it comes. Letting my children develop at their own pace and not trying to force them into doing something they’re not really comfortable with, but just nurturing and guiding them along. I learned that all from Phil.” I’m grateful for the thought.

—

As we headed into the playoffs, Kobe would have a number of opportunities to test his leadership skills. Throughout the regular season the team had been beset by injuries, affecting several players in addition to Kobe. Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum each missed seventeen games due to various problems, and Luke Walton was out for most of the season with severe back pain. But we had good team chemistry for most of the year, and that allowed us to hold on to first place in the Western Conference with a 57-25 record, despite a 4-7 slump at the end of the season.

Our opponent in the first round was the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team that pushed us harder than we expected. To get inside their up-and-coming forward Kevin Durant’s head, I told reporters that I thought the refs were babying him by giving him a lot of easy calls, as if he were a superstar. (He shot the most free throws during the season, in large part because of a move he used to hook his shooting arm under those of defenders, which has since been disallowed by the NBA.) Durant got defensive about the remark, which was what I wanted, but the NBA fined me $35,000, which was not exactly my plan. As it turned out, Durant had an unimpressive series, but I think Ron’s defense on him had more to do with that than my gamesmanship.

The Thunder’s strategy was to leave Ron wide open in the corners so that they could pull down the rebounds when he misfired and launch fast breaks. And Ron obliged, missing 20 of 23 three-point attempts in the first four games. The Thunder’s fast-paced attack—and our slow transitional defense—allowed Oklahoma City to win two games at home and tie the series, 2–2.

Kobe had struggled during the first four games, but experienced a rebirth in game 5 after getting a significant amount of liquid drained from his aching knee. One of our best moves was having him cover the Thunder’s free-wheeling point guard, Russell Westbrook, who had been running wild against our other guards. Kobe not only held Westbrook to 15 points on 4 for 13 shooting, he also galvanized our offense by acting as a facilitator and moving the ball inside to Pau, who scored 25 points, and Bynum (21). The final score: Lakers 111, Thunder 87.