The Inner Circle

Time out! Tex Winter would have called that the instant he saw trouble. Maybe twice, maybe for every timeout the Lakers had left, and borrowed and begged for 20 or 30 more, just to regroup, and yell a little.

Yell a lot.

But, with Winter fidgeting beside him, Phil Jackson let the Lakers trudge on in the third quarter of Monday’s Game 2 at Staples Center, let his players try to solve the Portland Trail Blazers on their own.

“He always thinks everything’s going to work out, that the players will figure it out themselves--he won’t call time out,” Winter said recently. “And I’m telling him we’ve got to call a timeout.”

No, that time, it did not work out for Jackson, something he readily admitted after the Lakers lost Game 2.

But the scenario unfolded in a way true to the dynamics and soul of this fascinating Laker coaching staff, which probably could not produce a false moment if it wanted to, and has produced more combined championships than can be quickly calculated.

This is a staff, and a team, infused with Jackson’s out-sized presence and overflowing confidence, stirred by Winter’s edgy innovating mind and fascinating camaraderie with Jackson, energized by Jim Cleamons’ bark and skill with young players, fed by Frank Hamblen’s encyclopedic NBA mind, and graced by Bill Bertka’s connection to two decades of Laker history.

Series tied, 1-1, heading up to Portland for two dangerous games? They have been here before.

They have been here--fanned out around VCRs, scribbling notes, grumbling about lost opportunities, arguing strategies, conjuring chest-thumping awakenings.

“If we were [down], 3-1, you know, it’s a different situation, and you’re pulling out all the stops,” Jackson said after a hard, loud practice Wednesday. “But it’s a 1-1 series. I mean, nothing’s happened.

“And we feel real comfortable as a staff doing this. We’ve done it many times, and we’re very confident we can get them back on an operating edge.”

Said Bertka, the only holdover from past Laker staffs and the only one who had not been a member of Jackson’s previous Chicago Bull staffs: “They know exactly what they want.

“Their philosophies dominated the ‘90s. Their philosophy of offense, defense, their style of coaching won six world championships. What more do you need to say about it? So they go about it the same way.”

Which is the way they are going about handling these problems posed by the Trail Blazers:

A long day of film study on Tuesday, a Wednesday morning meeting to devise response strategies, and practices Wednesday and today devoted to drilling them into the minds and hearts of the Laker players.

“I don’t like the idea that you have to have these kinds of challenges,” Winter said. “But, for me, anyway, it makes it interesting, because there’s problems that we see now that we have to face that maybe we didn’t worry about too much earlier.

“I think we knew they were there, but we weren’t face to face with them. Phil is always very optimistic and upbeat. He has a wonderful knack of facing adversities with a grin.

“I think that we feel like there are things we can do to take care of some of the things that we saw.”

Skeptic and Optimist

The cerebral centerpiece of the Lakers, no question, is the byplay between Jackson, the lanky free-thinker of the 1960s, and Winter, the 78-year-old purist who notes that he has been coaching basketball longer than anyone probably ever has.

Together--despite the skepticism of Michael Jordan--Jackson and Winter installed the triangle offense in Chicago, and rode Jordan, Scottie Pippen and the triangle to six titles.

Now, in their first season in L.A., Jackson and Winter continue to bicker and tease, argue and break down film and amuse the other coaches with a back-and-forth that rages constantly.

“It’s father-son, it’s brother-brother, mentor-to-pupil,” Hamblen said of the Jackson-Winter relationship. “It’s just terrific. It actually could probably play in Vegas at times. It’s just so funny.”

Said Winter of Jackson: “I bother him because I’m a skeptic and a little cynical. And there’ll be times when he thinks I’m too much of a pessimist, not enough of an optimist about things.

“And I’ll laugh at him about that and I’ll talk back to him. ‘No, I’m just saying it as it really is, I’m a realist.’ ”

Their descriptions of each other--what they value in each other, and what they need from each other--are reverse images of a basketball ethos shared intensely.

It is Jackson’s unique talent, Winter says, to be able to lace into his players and yet at the same time communicate his respect for them.

“He can come down on them hard, but he does it in such a way that they don’t take it personally, that much,” Winter said. “He’ll come down on them hard, but he’ll ridicule them in sort of a fatherly way.

“With a guy like [former Bull Ron] Harper, he’ll talk to him about ‘that peg-leg of yours, you can’t run. . . .’ They don’t take it personally. He presents it more or less: ‘I like you; consequently, I’ll make fun of you.’ ”

As he achieved with Jordan and Pippen in Chicago, Jackson has carved out sturdy two-way relationships with Shaquille O’Neal, in particular, and Kobe Bryant, Winter says.

“One of Phil’s strengths in his coaching career, one of the reasons he’s been as successful as he has been, is he’s been able to win the respect of the superstars,” he said. “If you don’t do that, then you’re going to get fired.”

Part of Jackson’s method, and his amusement, is using Winter as a foil, Winter concedes, from teasing him about his taste for free media-room food to questioning his points in coaching meetings.

“He likes that,” Winter said. “He’s with me as he is with a lot of the players. He makes a lot of fun of me a lot of times and puts the blame on me on things. . . .

“I understand him and we know each other. I tell him off and he tells me off, let’s put it that way. I won’t [do it] so much with him in front of players, but I do in front of the rest of the staff all the time.”

For his part, Jackson gives Winter much of the credit for bringing out broader, team-wide impulses in O’Neal and Bryant, and for communicating to all the players a pure vision of basketball.

“You know, I’ve sent him over to Kobe or Shaq a lot, because he’s got that kinder, gentler manner, perhaps, at his age, even though he’s extremely feisty about a lot of his feelings,” Jackson said.

“I think it’s very important for him to get into their heads--basketball, to Tex, has certain rules. And it doesn’t matter if it’s Michael Jordan or whoever, if they violate those rules, he’s going to call them to task on those things.

“Tex has always been real true about that.”

Winter, though, says he has noticed that Jackson seems to lean on him less and less--especially this season, 12 years removed from the days when they were Bull assistants and Jackson urged Winter to teach him the triangle.

“The first few years, he relied on me much more to present things and do the teaching, and he learned from that, I think,” Winter said. “And now he’s at the point where he feels he doesn’t need me to do what I did previously.

“I see that Phil has gotten to the point, has developed his own idea about how this game should be played. I feel like I have helped him in this regard a great deal, but how much more I can help, I don’t know.”

Jackson agreed that he, and in many instances, Cleamons, have taken more vocal roles in Laker practices.

“This team didn’t quite have that same motivation, that same intensity level that we had in Chicago,” Jackson said. “So it was important for me to kind of keep a hand on it, keep pushing them, keep them knowing that I was pushing the throttle a little bit and kept their nose to the grindstone.”

‘Great Collator’

The most visible portrayal of this staff’s blend of confident nonchalance and aggressive debate is, interestingly, during timeouts.

Jackson usually turns his back to his players, walks onto the court, and meets with his coaches for two or three minutes before using the final 30 seconds or so to speedily address his team.

Cleamons, Hamblen and Bertka were each assigned teams to scout and study at the start of the season, and each is chiefly responsible to advise on all possible maneuverings by their specific teams. (Hamblen followed Portland.)

“It gives the team a chance to sit down and towel down and get their water and say what they want amongst themselves,” Winter said, “which this team does--they communicate an awful lot amongst themselves. Sometimes, I think too much.

“But while that is going on, sometimes it may be the length of the whole timeout, Phil will be out there, assembled with us coaches . . . me basically offensively, and Frank and Jim basically from their scouting reports. . . .

“Sometimes, we’re out there just maybe laughing at each other, joking for half the time. Sometimes, I’ll say, ‘All right! That’s enough!’ ”

Hamblen said any one of the assistants is likely to get Jackson’s ear at any particular time.

“If it’s your [scout] team, then you’re probably a little more vocal that night,” Hamblen said. “Jim and I have an advantage, we’re sitting in the front row and Bertka’s sitting back [in the second row, since only three assistants are allowed on the bench]. . . .

“Tex is always going to say things in regard to the offense. Of course, Phil is the maestro. He’ll digest [what’s said], and then take back two or three points maybe, that he wants to hit them with in the timeout.”

Jackson, says former assistant John Bach, excels at giving his coaches space too, acting as a “great collator” of information.

“It’s pretty easy for me to feel comfortable with this staff,” Jackson said. “They allow me a lot of liberties as a coach to make them do more work.”

Bertka, 72, a Laker holdover since the Pat Riley championship days, also worked for the Lakers from 1968-74 when he had a hand in the drafting of Cleamons in 1971.

“He is such a familiar figure, a stabilizing kind of influence in the organization, with all of the things he can do, besides scouting and numbers and stats and all those other things he does, that it seemed like a natural thing to hold onto Bill,” Jackson said.

After the difficulties of the last few seasons, especially with the morale of the team, this season has been a wonder, Bertka said.

“[The other assistants] have been very good to me,” Bertka said. “And I’ve been very appreciative of the involvement that I’ve been able to experience and to see this kind of success is very special.

“I didn’t know if I’d ever have a chance in the remaining years of my career to experience something like this again. I’ve always said to Dr. [Jerry] Buss, I just want to see one more [championship].”

Cleamons was on Jackson’s Chicago staff for his first seven seasons (and four championships) before leaving in 1996 for a brief stint as coach of the Dallas Mavericks.

“Jim’s really a hands-on coach, likes the kids, really likes to coach the summer-ball type of thing, work with kids about the game,” Jackson said. “He’s really a motivator and has such good experience, a calming effect, he’s got a lot of poise.”

Hamblen, whom Jackson still chides about not learning all the intricacies of the triangle, replaced Cleamons when he left the Bulls’ staff, and was there for the last two titles, and Jackson turns to him for guesses about an opponent’s tendencies at critical junctures.

“I’ll say, ‘Phil, there’s one or two things they can run, either this or they can run this. Now you make $6 million a year, that’s why you get paid, to make those decisions,’ ” Hamblen said. “He’ll laugh or not laugh . . . and then we’ll go on.”

Winter, meanwhile, admits that he thinks “every day” about retiring.

“I’ve been on this staff so long now and with Phil so long, I want to make sure I feel like I can still make a contribution, that I’m still needed,” Winter said.

Said Jackson: “Tex wants to know his influence? He’s had great influence on this team. . . . I’m leaving it up to Tex. I expect him back. We’ve said, ‘You might as well go until you’re 80.’ ”