Jackson Studying Dynamics of His Duo

At home or on the road, wherever they go and whatever they accomplish, the restless moods still come and go in Lakerland.

A few weeks ago, in the middle of a 3-6 tumble, Coach Phil Jackson acknowledged, the fever was high again, and there were familiar flash points.

Sitting outside during a quiet afternoon late last week at the team hotel, Jackson said, with a weary smile, maybe it was a case of a “bad mood rising” over his team:

There was anger; there were complaints raised and glares exchanged among teammates--all the same frustrations that have plagued the Lakers for years.

Now the team is on another winning streak, and there is calm again.

Still, the signature drama of the Lakers--trying to fit the overwhelming talents, presences and personalities of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant into a cohesive, championship-ready team--plays on.

Jackson said he expected it, has analyzed it, and, after 51 games as Laker coach to measure the temperature of his players, knows it is time for him to do what he does best.

“I wanted to handle this situation,” Jackson said when asked about the relationship between the two strong-willed superstars. “That’s why I’m here--to handle this situation.

“And if this situation can’t be handled, there are other ways of getting it done. . . . We’ll find a way to get this done. I’m pretty sure that I know how to do this. This is one of the things I feel like I’ve got a pretty good handle on.”

Several sources indicated that, during the 3-6 spell, O’Neal, as he has off and on through the last two years, grew increasingly impatient with some of Bryant’s more obvious one-on-one tendencies.

Most specifically, after the team’s tight victory over Cleveland on Jan. 19, the sources said that O’Neal refused to join a postgame huddle in the Laker locker room, telling Jackson loudly that there was no need to act as a team if the Lakers could not play as one.

The day after that game, Jackson held his first meditation session with the Lakers, and has since spoken about O’Neal’s need to feel freer and less tangled in emotion, and about Bryant’s vast learning curve in life and basketball.

Recently, O’Neal’s frustrations have quelled, but will they arise again the next time the Lakers lose two in a row?

“I withhold making any statements about people, about incidents,” Jackson said. “I think it just goes back to the past and we’re trying to build on the future.

“We’ve come over a little bit of a rocky spell right now. . . . We want to move past it and be reaching toward what we’re doing.”

Jackson conceded that, along with every other Laker partisan, he watches O’Neal and Bryant closely for signs of warmth or casual by-play and says he was pleased that the two chose lockers next to each other at last weekend’s All-Star game.

But Jackson was ambivalent about the recent surge in Bryant-O’Neal high-fives and smiles.

“I think there was a little space in time when they might’ve been overcompensating a little bit,” Jackson said. “But I’m comfortable with the fact that they see the better parts of each others’ games. They’re searching. . . .”

Bryant, who initiated a summer thaw when he invited O’Neal to his 21st birthday party, shook his head recently when his relationship with O’Neal was brought up again.

Old story, Bryant said.

“I think Shaq was a little frustrated,” Bryant said. “At the same time, we were like, 33-6. It was just a matter of getting this system down a little better than we had it. Once we did that, we were fine. . . .

“I think we’re all, as a whole, understanding the system better, and as a result, we’re playing better in it together. I don’t think it’s me as an individual understanding something. I think it’s us as a team getting things down.”

Jackson said that at the beginning of the season, he made O’Neal a co-captain of the team, along with Ron Harper, to help him see things from a broader, team-wide view.

Meanwhile, Jackson compared Bryant’s development, and relationships with his teammates, to the early fitful years of Michael Jordan in Chicago.

“It’s not unlike any other situation that I’ve seen on teams where players are lining up as to how things are going to work, what’s the order of how to get business done,” Jackson said.

“I want them to trust the fact that I’m going to ferret out what has to be done on the team. . . . It’s no mystery to anybody that there are times when Kobe gets into trying to work out situations in a game and he has to learn when to either expand his game and start doing things on the floor and when to wait for his time to do it.”

O’Neal is, of course, the biggest part of the Laker equation on any level.

“I had talked to both of them individually before I got here and found out they both respected each other and felt confident that they could play together,” Jackson said.

“I didn’t know who they were, I just knew what they were and didn’t know the dynamics of how their personalities fit together. But now I know. . . . Kobe’s a bit of an enigma. He’s a young man that has really got certain intriguing things about himself. . . .

“It’s going to be interesting to watch as a coach and I’m looking forward to it. He’s not totally formed--nobody is at 21. . . . I think Kobe’s really willing to understand that now. I don’t see that as a problem that can’t be overcome.”

All of the things that are special about Bryant--his passion, his ability to beat almost anybody off the dribble, his competitiveness, his single-minded dedication--also sometime keep him apart from his teammates, Jackson said.

“Kobe’s a real smart person,” Jackson said. “He’s got a good intellect, and he can be reasoned with. When you have that ability, you can make decisions on the court that are reasonable. And you don’t have to play impulsively.

“And that’s what Kobe gets caught in sometimes. I don’t know if it’s egotistical or whatever. . . . The rest of the players know that sometimes he’s more interested in putting his head down and dribbling the ball than moving the ball and moving himself and doing the things that I like to happen in our offense.”

At those times, Jackson has not shied away from bellowing at Bryant. As recently as Wednesday’s victory at Charlotte, when Bryant put up a fast three-point shot, Jackson instantly shouted: “If you want to stay on the floor, don’t take those shots!”

Bryant said he doesn’t mind the loud instruction, and several people who know him well agreed that Bryant does not take offense to anything that is meant constructively.

“He just needs to know that there’s someone that’s firmly going to be there to tell him there’s some things he can’t do,” Jackson said.

“How did he get all the shots [during a later, game-changing eight-point spurt against Charlotte]? He wasn’t dribbling up the line on his own and shooting. He was getting shots out of the format of our offense. . . .

“All of a sudden he got hot, and you could see him just enlarge himself. Just got bigger. And that’s the trust that comes along. And then everybody on the team feels good for him, because they know how it’s come.”