Title Was Forged in Every Corner of the Room

A tour of the 2000 NBA champion Lakers begins, much like the tour of Oz once ended, at a curtain in a palace.

Hanging in a corner of Staples Center underneath the stands, this curtain also separates fantasy from reality.

Walk through it and down a short hallway to a set of double doors.

Turn right through the doors past a guard.

(Shouting, “L.A. Times! Deadline! Pity me!” usually works.)

Take a few steps down another hallway and make a left through another guarded door.

(Pleading, “I make the gel for Rick Fox’s hair!” should do it).

You are now in the Laker locker room.

You can tell from the championship photos on the walls and the loud, deep laughter from around the corner.

(Yep. Shaq.)

First stop, first door on the left, Phil Jackson.

This is where the 2000 NBA champion Lakers started. This is where a group of talented but misguided players changed.

More important, this is where Jackson changes, from America’s frumpiest coach to one of its pin-striped sharpest.

What Jackson sometimes wears to practice, you might not even wear to bed. Sandals, old jeans, T-shirts.

His casual clothes are in direct contrast to his defined playbook.

Just as his off-court shyness doesn’t fit with his on-court directness.

This well-dressed sideline general is actually an untucked professor who walks the halls with his head down.

We quote him, but we don’t really know him. We admire what he has done for this town, but sense he is still a stranger.

His confirmation of rumors to Times beat writer Tim Kawakami that he was dating the boss’ daughter--Jeannie Buss--was just another piece in a constantly changing puzzle.

The only time I saw Jackson show much emotion, either on or off the court, was when he spotted me talking to Glen Rice while Rice was shooting jumpers before practice during Rice’s controversy-filled week in Indianapolis.

“Everybody off the court!” he screamed.

Both Rice and I knew who he meant.

Leave Jackson’s office, walk a few more steps down the hallway, turn right, and a locker room about the size of a two-car garage appears.

First stop on the right, Shaquille O’Neal.

So big he has two lockers.

O’Neal is the opposite of the coach who helped him become the game’s best player. He is always looking up, looking for a friend or a kid or anybody who will listen to a joke.

After seeing this softness in the locker room, it is hard to imagine an ability to summon up such toughness on the court, but that is O’Neal’s best trick.

Sometimes we’ve caught him singing. Other times, dancing in place.

Then there was the time he approached me and shook my hand in thanks for something I had written.

It may have been a story critical of him, I wasn’t sure. With Shaq you never know.

With the national media watching, he then pulled me to his chest, locked me in an embrace, and began hopping with me around the locker room like the Lakers often hop together in the hallway.

My level of embarrassment was only matched by the pain in my back and neck.

“So now you know what it’s like to guard Shaq,” said one writer.

Guard him? I couldn’t even survive the pregame warmups.

A couple of lockers down from O’Neal is Brian Shaw. He’s a survivor, of both family difficulties and bad teams.

I talked to Shaw whenever I needed insight into the Lakers’ heart. He knows about hearts.

Fans finally understood his importance to the team not with any shot or pass, but with a shirt.

Shaw was suspended for one game of the Portland Trail Blazer series for leaving the bench during a scuffle. At the end of that game, with Shaw watching from the team hotel, O’Neal put on Shaw’s jersey while sitting on the bench.

It looked about 10 sizes too small. It looked just right.

Next to Shaw, at the end of a row, in a corner locker that is probably already vacant, was Glen Rice.

The debate that raged throughout his short time here was whether he would rather score 25 points on a last-place team, or 12 points for a champion.

It is an argument that even a championship ring will not silence. It will soon be an argument for some other team.

But for the record, Glen’s wife Christina did not call me. Because she is his de facto agent, I called her.

She was not intentionally stirring things up by complaining about his playing time, she was emotionally reacting to something she believed contributed to a Laker loss.

Was she right to talk? The timing was certainly bad. Did her vocal support ultimately prod her husband? Check out his statistics in Monday’s clincher and decide for yourself.

Across from Rice, at the start of a row along the locker room’s back wall, is Ron Harper.

There are always crowds around him. Those crowds are always laughing.

Although his amazing interview skills despite a severe speech impediment have been documented here, Harper did his best stuff with props.

There was the time at Sacramento, late in the Lakers’ second loss there this spring, when Harper ordered a ball boy to retrieve a championship ring from his locker.

Even though the Lakers were getting pounded, even though the Arco Arena fans were raining abuse on the Laker bench, Harper slipped the ring on his hand, casually put his hand on his bald head, leaned back, and smiled.

The enraged fans shouted even louder. Harper just kept smiling.

A couple of days later at Staples Center, when the Lakers were sending the Kings to summer vacation, Harper ordered the ball boy to bring him a fishing hat.

Next to Harper is John Salley, a rescued former radio talk-show host who offered constant humorous inspirational exchanges such as this one:

Reporter: “John, is it difficult to play during garbage time?”

Salley: “Ain’t no such thing as garbage time.”

As the Laker subs learned again and again.

It was Salley who could counsel O’Neal, soothe Jackson, advise Kobe Bryant, and grab the media’s attention so those three could rest.

It was Salley who, shortly before one of the playoff games at Portland, actually broke into a comedy monologue in the locker room. The Lakers won that game.

On a team of feisty young guys and weary old ones, it was Salley who made the most sense.

Two lockers down from Salley is Bryant, and here is the real reason everyone is comparing him to Michael Jordan.

He now sounds like him. Same deep voice. Same confident answers. Heck, he even uses some of the same word structures as Jordan, such as when he starts a sentence with, “Quite naturally . . . “ or “I’m quite sure . . . “

Please tell us this is accidental.

Across from Bryant, in the back locker along the far wall, is A.C. Green.

A bench-warmer in starter’s clothing, he was also the subject of the strangest question I’ve ever been forced to ask on a court in the middle of a media horde.

“So, um, well, um, are you still a virgin?” I queried.

As most of you know, he still is.

So too, apparently, is the toy bear he wore on his head in creating a nightly scene that made his teammates believe he was absolutely nuts.

But, hey, on Monday night, he finally hit that baseline jumper, didn’t he?

Next to Green is a guy who smiles as much as Green broods, that being Robert Horry.

Horry smiles when hitting three-pointers. He smiles when throwing the ball in the stands. He even smiled when reporters asked him about Jackson’s comments that he was underachieving.

During what was the final media session Sunday, Horry was the first Laker to leave the locker room. There were reporters shooting baskets on the Laker practice court.

“Hey, hey, put those balls down!” he screamed.

Hundreds were silent.

Horry was smiling.

A couple of lockers down from Horry is Derek Fisher, who arrived four years ago with Bryant and O’Neal, and has since been criticized more than both of them combined.

Yet he has always been unfailingly polite and accommodating, becoming a team spokesman when everyone else hid, never allowing on-court struggles to seep into the room.

He has been such a nice guy that folks were actually thrilled to realize two human things about him in the last two games of the NBA finals.

In Game 5, we learned he curses.

After Game 6, we learned he smokes cigars.

A Laker at last.

Finally, in the far locker on the far wall, is Rick Fox.

Who we now know, we don’t know at all.

Is he the sensitive man who played horribly against Sacramento on the night before his daughter’s birth, then became teary-eyed in the locker room when describing it afterward?

Or is this the smart-aleck guy who suddenly took the court like Eddie Haskell?

Of course, once Fox hit that three-pointer in the fourth quarter Monday, did it matter?

Once the Lakers defeated the Pacers for the L.A. franchise’s seventh NBA title, did any of it matter?

In some small way, each of these Lakers was different from the men you saw running around for the last nine months.

All of it contributing to the reality of the ring.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.