The Few Links to Glorious Past Savor Success In a Different Way

The celebration was in full swing in the Lakers’ cavernous locker room. Players, their families and hangers-on with the proper access passes smoked victory cigars and hugged each other, eyes teary from champagne and the emotion of the Lakers’ first NBA championship since 1988.

Rick Fox, barefoot and carrying a champagne bottle, drew a round of applause as he darted across the room to share his happiness with friends.

A few dozen feet away, the coaches’ room was an oasis of relative quiet and sanity. Not that Bill Bertka, the last of the Laker assistants still in the room long after the team’s title-clinching 116-111 victory Monday, was having less fun than the noisier revelers.

Bertka, who has spent 19 seasons as a Laker assistant, having served seven coaches, was savoring the triumph from a different perspective, that of someone who knows how far the Lakers had to climb to reach the pinnacle they hit Monday.

“This is the best,” Bertka said. “That’s because we had bottomed out. We really hit bottom in ‘94, when we didn’t make the playoffs. To get back to this position is something that makes it special. We really started from scratch.”

On a team that is so like the city it calls home--almost everyone seems to have come to Los Angeles from somewhere else to chase a dream--Bertka is a pillar of stability and certainty. It is a role he shares with few other players or executives.

Only owner Jerry Buss, who bought the Lakers, the Kings and the Forum in 1979; Executive Vice President Jerry West, who followed his brilliant 14-year playing career with three seasons as a coach and three as a consultant and has spent the last 18 in management; forward A.C. Green, who is in his second tour with the Lakers, and trainer Gary Vitti, a veteran of 16 seasons, have seen so much of the good and the bad of recent Laker history.

“I wish Jerry West was sitting here beside me,” Buss said Monday as he peered down at reporters at a news conference. “Because you know, he’s the magician. For 20 years he’s brought the kind of talent it takes to win an NBA championship to L.A.”

West, notoriously nervous during routine regular-season games, was too antsy to go to Staples Center on Monday. But Bertka and Green savored every minute of it.

Bertka, 72, might not have had as prominent a role this season as he did in the past. It’s natural for coaches to hire their own trusted lieutenants, as Phil Jackson did in bringing Tex Winter, Frank Hamblen and Jim Cleamons with him from Chicago, and Winter has been widely and properly credited with helping players digest the vaunted triangle offense previously used by the Bulls. But from the start, Jackson emphasized how important Bertka would be as a strategist and as a link to the Lakers’ storied past, and that proved to be true.

Green’s role has also changed from his first stint as a Laker, 1985-86 through 1992-93, when he played on two championship teams. Power forwards have become so monstrous and muscular, eyebrows were raised when the Lakers reacquired the 6-foot-9, 225-pound Green from Dallas last September and reinstalled him in the starting lineup. But Green, 36, proved his worth because of his experience and focused calm under pressure.

Asked if this season’s success was as satisfying as the triumphs he enjoyed in 1987 and 1988, he shook his head.

“That was a well-greased machine,” he said. “This team was just put together this year. It’s not even a fair comparison.”

However, he said, this title doesn’t suffer by comparison to those he experienced earlier in his career.

“It feels great,” Green said. “What we did back then is something else. This is special in its own right because this team was just put together this year. We had a higher level of play and a higher level of expectations in the Showtime era. This was almost trial by error. People were saying, ‘Can they do it?’ I think we surprised ourselves a little.”

Bertka professed surprise over how quickly the Lakers came together despite their disparate personalities and philosophies. The blending process wasn’t always smooth, and the route the Lakers took to their six-game triumph over the Indiana Pacers was sometimes tortuous. But to Bertka, the detours made the end result that much sweeter.

“Del Harris came in [as coach for the 1994-95 season] and he was the right guy at the time,” Bertka said. “He took a young team and later got Shaq [O’Neal] and Kobe [Bryant] and helped them mature. Then they brought in Phil, and here we are.

“With the season we were having this year, I didn’t know if we were destined to be world champions. But the more the season went on, the more confident I got. One indication was the success we had against Eastern teams during the course of the regular season [the Lakers were 27-3].”

Other teams have had talented pieces but ended up less like a jigsaw puzzle than they were puzzling. Bertka credited the Lakers with making a concerted effort to develop camaraderie that ultimately showed on the court.

“This is one of the closest Laker teams I’ve seen, and that’s very gratifying,” he said. “This team played a different style of basketball than the old Laker teams. We have three really gifted players in Shaq, Kobe and Glen Rice, but everybody, by playing the game together the way Phil has taught them, has really grown. It’s Phil’s system that has made a difference.

“When you’ve seen it put together, piece by piece, and you watch Kobe mature and you watch Shaq come back from three major injuries, it’s remarkable. They suffered some disappointing losses earlier, and to see a payday like this makes it all worthwhile.”