Momentous Season

You could have guessed, maybe, that this would be a Laker dream fulfillment, full of thunderclaps and thrilling whispers, lectures and fantastic leaps of faith.

Back at the start, 67 victories ago, you might have been able to plot this course.

You might have seen how point “A” led so obviously to “B” and to “C” and inevitably to “MVP,” then to the best record in the league and the best Laker record since the epochal 1971-72 team.

You might have predicted that, on the eve of the playoffs, Shaquille O’Neal would threaten to become the league’s first unanimous-vote most valuable player, that Kobe Bryant would find a comfortable place at O’Neal’s right hand, and that Coach Phil Jackson would pull all the levers at all the right moments, time and again, until it almost got boring.

But that does not allow for the staggering, random parts of this Laker regular season, the discovered gems and surprise flashes of maturity, defensive discipline and cosmic trust.

Whatever happens in the playoffs--and Laker players and coaches do not flinch from saying they will be vastly disappointed if they do not win the title in June--these kinds of Laker seasons come along every three decades or so.

O’Neal was smart enough recently to let others sort out the most savory moments of these engaging 24 weeks.

“It’s been a fun season overall,” he said. “You really can’t just bring out one game. It’s been fun.”

But someone has to try to pick and judge, so here are 10 defining moments, some that were impossible to miss, some that were beneath the surface, of this just-completed Laker regular season:

1. Echoes of Chamberlain: There was not a lot O’Neal had to say on the October day Wilt Chamberlain’s death was announced. They had exchanged criticisms--sometimes playful, mostly not--for much of O’Neal’s career, and as O’Neal stood in a Little Rock, Ark., hallway, he expressed the proper shock and sadness.

But there was more. Though the words were quiet, the emotion in O’Neal’s voice, one generation’s Goliath speaking to another, was clear indication that O’Neal, at 27, had begun to fully accept the responsibility of his startling gifts.

“I know he didn’t dislike me,” O’Neal said. “And I didn’t dislike him. When I was first coming up, my father always said, ‘Be like Wilt, be like Kareem, be like Hakeem.’ That’s why I am who I am today. It’s because I had people to look up to.”

The timing of Chamberlain’s death (as O’Neal adapted to Jackson, a coach who used Chamberlain as a model for O’Neal) and the trajectory of Chamberlain’s career path (struggling through years of huge individual statistics before maturing and flourishing with the Lakers) resonated with O’Neal.

“At first, you go in and you try and get your numbers and do your thing,” O’Neal said. “But later in your career, you realize that championships are more important. He realized that later in his career. And I’m realizing that now in my career too.”

2. The microphone manifesto, late October: Jackson had already run his new team through a tough and often awkward training camp. The triangle offense was run, but not well, through a dodgy exhibition season. Bryant had broken his right hand and would not be back for another month.

So when Jackson grabbed the mike at the Lakers’ annual tip-off luncheon in downtown L.A., with his players lined across the head table, who knew what would happen next--in the program, and for the rest of the season.

Jackson not only met the moment, he owned it. In a sign of many needlings and motivational moments to come, Jackson performed a breezy, crowd-stopping 20-minute routine, poking fun at his players and issuing a verbal blueprint for the season.

“We want to play basketball kind of like Mozart or Beethoven wrote music,” Jackson said. “We want to play together as a five-man unit on the floor.

“We know we have great individuals, but we think that five altogether is greater than individual effort. Doing that, of course, will take some patience.

“I have gray hair on my head and some of it has been produced in the last three weeks. . . . We know [the triangle system is] successful. We’ve had great success in Chicago with it. We had a player or two to go along with that system. And we have a player or two to go along with this system here.”

3. Hall of Fame Wrestlemania: First it was scary--super-heavyweights O’Neal and Charles Barkley, ready to rumble? Then, as the fracas during the Lakers’ victory in Houston on Nov. 10 devolved into Greco-O’Neal wrestling and milling about, it was amusing.

But there were some serious issues bubbling beneath the surface for O’Neal, who had been ejected in a game against Portland the previous week and, including the Nov. 10 ejection and an ensuing one-game suspension, failed to finish three games in a five-game span.

O’Neal was increasingly sensitive to the hard fouls that teams were all too willing to inflict on him--and his right shoulder was sore from the hits--all the more so because, as of Nov. 14, he had made only 33.3% of his free throws.

His immediate response, almost always, was physical: Hit them back.

But after this explosion, and some discussion with Jackson, O’Neal mostly refrained from retaliating, except at the free-throw line, where he increased his accuracy every week from that point on, finishing at 52.4%.

4. The road to Phoenix: Jackson recently picked the Nov. 15 victory over the Suns as one of his favorite moments of the season, stressing that O’Neal’s 34-point, 18-rebound, eight-blocked-shot performance came at a particularly important juncture.

The 91-82 victory gave the Lakers--who would have to play six more games without Bryant--a 7-2 record and plenty of confidence to win on the road for the months to come.

“They’d beaten us twice in the exhibitions,” Jackson recalled. “We went in without Kobe. . . . That really got us started in the course of the year to winning road games and being much more dependable on the road.”

5. Seattle, slain: “Yeah, it was amazing,” is about the best Jackson could come up with after his team erased a 19-point, third-quarter deficit Jan. 8 in Seattle to storm to a 110-100 victory.

It was the Lakers’ 14th consecutive victory, 24 hours after they rallied from 13 down to beat the Charlotte Hornets at Staples Center, and gave ample evidence that the players were realizing something wild was happening.

As the game wound down, guard Derek Fisher wandered over to press row, peered down at the reporters frantically reworking their stories, and coyly asked: “You guys all write your stories already?”

6. That’s all history: Executive Vice President Jerry West remains the one man in Lakerland who most represents the franchise’s past glory; he is the walking, talking link from the current team to every other great one.

Bryant, of course, represents much of the future, though he has always been intrigued by those who conquered before him.

So, during a 16-game winning streak in December and January--at the time tied for the second-longest winning streak in franchise history, behind only the NBA-record 33 straight that West’s 1971-72 team put together--everyone’s mind was on big things.

Hmm, if we’re going to compare the 1971-72 squad to this team, Bryant was asked, who had the better shooting guard?

A pause. A huge smile, as Bryant within a millisecond focused on the fact that West was the dominant guard on that team and that Bryant filled that role for this one.

“Oh, we do,” Bryant said, laughing loudly. “Absolutely. Much better.”

7. “The Big Felon,” because he stole a game: O’Neal, who makes up new nicknames for himself about as quickly as he piles up points, never did better, in performance or in description, than his Feb. 18 outing against Orlando.

His sprinting half-court steal of Orlando’s inbounds pass and dunk in the final seconds of the fourth quarter saved the game for the Lakers (they won it in overtime) and probably was the Lakers’ play of the season.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a 7-footer hop into the passing lane,” Bryant said.

8. Kobe, the stopper: If O’Neal’s steal was the play of the season, two days later, this was probably the opponents’ statistical line of the season: Philadelphia’s Allen Iverson, hounded by the taller Bryant all game, went 0 for 11 in the second half in the Lakers’ victory at First Union Center.

The Lakers were solid all season on defense. They finished the season holding opponents to 41.6% field-goal shooting, a franchise best and the No. 1 mark in the league. But showpiece plays by their centerpiece players in back-to-back games locked in the concept:

The Lakers were winning with defense.

“We’ve always had offensive firepower,” Bryant said. “But this year we’re able to hold teams down. And that’s how you win these ballgames.”

9. The end game: It was only Feb. 29, with five weeks of the regular season left. But that fooled no one. This game was for the No. 1-seeding in the Western Conference playoffs.

When the Lakers played the Trail Blazers at Portland, both teams were riding 11-game winning streaks and were tied atop the Pacific Division and all of the NBA. It was the first time two teams with double-digit winning streaks had met.

“I’ve never seen a bigger game in the NBA in my history of the game,” Jackson said 90 minutes before tipoff, “in 33 years, where two teams 50, almost 60 games into the season are tied and they’ve got the best record in the league and they’re still bumping it out in a divisional race. I just haven’t seen anything quite this dramatic.”

The big questions: Could O’Neal, back in Portland after his earlier ejection for retaliating after hard fouls, settle in and make big free throws in a huge game?

Could the Laker bench, which featured zero players averaging more than seven points or five rebounds, hold up against Portland’s vast and talented reserve corps?

The answers: O’Neal made nine of 13 free throws (“the story of the game,” Jackson said); and the Laker bench provided tough defense (Rick Fox, Robert Horry) and some timely production (Brian Shaw’s nine points and seven rebounds) in the gigantic, 90-87 victory.

After the game, Fox, with a smile, reminded a reporter about some skeptical pregame questions, and concluded: “We did a little something tonight, didn’t we?”

10. The finishing kick: Jackson said they could not win both in New York and, the following night, in Miami. The teams were too tough. The trip was too quick. The Lakers weren’t playing well enough.

But on March 19 and 20, in the Lakers’ last fully motivated act of the regular-season, O’Neal led a two-team, two-day demolition of two of the East’s premier teams, scoring 43 on the Knicks and blocking four of Heat center Alonzo Mourning’s shots in the third quarter.

Then, in a departure for him, O’Neal swung the talk to Bryant, going out of his way to praise a player O’Neal often had chided in the past.

Only a few months earlier, O’Neal had refused to join a postgame locker room huddle because he was frustrated with Bryant’s one-on-one play. But Bryant answered with sublime and spectacular performances, Jackson moved to calm the water, and O’Neal kept the whole thing going, with his energy and his dominance.

“Kobe has been playing fabulous since the All-Star break,” O’Neal said. “We’re going to be the one-two punch for a long time to come. We’re playing pretty good together.

“I’m proud of Kobe.”

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LAKERS GAME BY GAME: SEASON RECORD 67-15

NOVEMBER: 11-4

DECEMBER: 14-1

JANUARY: 9-5

FEBRUARY: 12-1

MARCH: 15-1

APRIL: 6-3

THE JACKSON FACTOR

Even as a rookie head coach with the Chicago Bulls, Phil Jackson made an immediate impact, compared to the previous season. His first bulls ream reached the 1990 Eastern Conference finals:

BULLS

BEFORE JACKSON: 47-35, .573

Place: 5th

NEXT SEASON: 55-27, .671

Place: 2nd

LAKERS

BEFORE JACKSON: 31-19, .620

Place: 2nd

NEXT SEASON: 67-15, .817

Place: 1st