WHAT WILL THE LAKERS DO FOR AN Encore?

In the front office, the saga continues.

They don’t make victory celebrations the way they used to, either. Nobody said the Lakers’ return to glory would be easy or like any title they’d ever won before.

A Laker icon--the Laker icon--Jerry West, left, walking away from the championship team he’d built just as it reached its zenith, forgoing $10 million in salary for a nice, but far more modest pension.

His place was taken, in effect, by Phil Jackson, like legends passing in the night, amid backstage speculation that the show’s new management star pushed the old one out.

So what really happened? Did Jackson run West off?

It isn’t simple but interviews with Jackson, West and people close to them suggest the answer is . . . no. Or not on purpose, anyway.

Jackson, says a friend, has no intention of running anyone’s front office or moving here full-time. He liked having West running the basketball operation and had no thought of pushing him out.

Laker insiders note Jackson couldn’t have pushed West out, even had he wanted to. This was still Jerry West, after all.

Of course, Jackson was Jackson and West was West. Even if they liked each other--friends of both men agree they did--they were different.

Jackson was brutally honest, acknowledging Laker weaknesses and tipping off their personnel intentions. And long before Jackson arrived, the needle on West’s comfort meter had begun swinging wildly.

So they would have only one season together, triumphant as it was.

“I tell you what,” West says, “it was very simple to work with him. . . .

“It’s amazing to me. I had sort of wanted to step away quietly and for some reason they don’t want me to and they want to have some other reason for me leaving.”

Says Jackson, “There were never any words between us the whole season. I know I do things that are different than Jerry does and vice versa. But we’d sit down and talk and he’d tell me, ‘People always ask me, how’s it feel to be your boss? And I say, I don’t look at it in that regard, I look at it as a mutual thing.’

“It was going on, I thought, very well, all the way through, until the Portland series, we saw the strain that basketball and the whole intensity of it was putting on his life. . . .

“When he told me that in June, right before the draft, of the possibility he’d step away from this game, I wasn’t surprised. It didn’t surprise me, although I had looked forward to working with him for the whole tenure I was going to be here.”

They were different, all right.

West came from a simpler time and had a nervous system to match. He had spent all his time as a Laker player, coach and executive in this most pacific of markets. He hated controversy, bristling if the words, “Laker source,” appeared in a newspaper, since that suggested disharmony in their family-style organization.

One season in the early ‘90s, he vowed for months that he’d quit out of pique at the short-lived National Sports Daily’s NBA columnist. Every season, he’d say he was going to let his assistant, Mitch Kupchak, handle reporters.

In 1998, West announced his retirement. In 1999, after he came back, the Lakers signed Dennis Rodman and he started wishing he had gotten out when the getting was good.

Over the summer, he told a friend, “It was just time. It was probably time a year ago.”

Jackson came from the turbulent Chicago Bull organization, where everyone was pitted against everyone else and success lay in leaping from one log to another, in the hope it didn’t turn out to be an alligator.

Jackson’s answer was candor and plenty of it. More than anyone, he confirmed the existence of the Bulls’ schisms, fencing with his bosses, owner Jerry Reinsdorf and General Manager Jerry Krause--even fielding other offers one spring when his contract ran out--and survived to tell the tale.

Jackson challenged players too, even Michael Jordan, asking him to give up his annual scoring title for the good of the team. (Of course, Jordan blithely ignored that suggestion, en route to winning six more to go with his six championship rings.)

If confrontation was needed, Jackson did that too, as when he refused to cover up for Scottie Pippen for taking himself out of a playoff game, as most other coaches would have.

As Laker coach, Jackson got off the plane talking. He wanted to trade for Pippen, to sign Rodman--he claimed later he was only joking--the Portland Trail Blazers were the best team money could buy, Sacramento was semi-civilized, etc.

It was never dull with Jackson around and if there was one thing West didn’t need in his life, it was more fireworks.

The Last Days of Mr. Clutch

This wasn’t how West’s friends wanted to see him go out but, in retrospect, why wouldn’t he? He had suffered day by day through all other phases of his career, why was anything going to change now?

West was always haunted by expectations, but, ironically or not, his angst seemed to multiply in the summer of 1996--right after he had pulled off his twin coup, signing Shaquille O’Neal and trading for 18-year-old Kobe Bryant. Exhausted from the high-stakes pursuit of O’Neal, West started talking about retiring and it came up annually after that.

Until then, the Lakers had seemed a model operation, owner Jerry Buss setting the agenda, creating an environment that was the envy of the NBA and leaving the basketball to West, whom he had long doted on.

However, dysfunction was seeping in. Buss was no longer around much and the distance unnerved West, who says the ‘80s, when they often hung out, were “some of my fondest memories.”

Nor could West like the idea of the owner installing his inexperienced son, Jim, in the personnel department, where West and Kupchak were supposed to break him in. In fact, insiders say Jim wasn’t around much, although he wasn’t shy about venturing opinions.

In the spring of 1997, West asked Buss to move up the payment of a deferred bonus. Friends said West was on tenterhooks throughout and talking about retirement as he waited for Buss to get back to him. In the end, Buss paid the bonus.

In the spring of 1998, West actually announced he’d retire, saying he was burned out. Buss lured him back with a four-year, $14-million extension, making West the NBA’s highest-paid non-coaching administrator.

The next season, 1998-99, was shortened by a lockout and featured the signing of Rodman, who stalled the team in negotiations, wouldn’t even take West’s calls, demanded under-the-table payments from Buss and, after joining the team, blew off practices and refused orders to go into games. West, beside himself, left Coach Kurt Rambis to deal with it and absented himself for weeks, often watching even home games on TV at his home.

Nevertheless, by the time the season ended in a 4-0 sweep at the hands of the San Antonio Spurs, West had decided to come back and fix the problem.

The first order of business was the coach. West seemed to lean toward a change, Rambis having struggled in all areas, but Buss wasn’t keen about spending big money for Jackson, then sitting at home in Montana.

For his own part, West had always preferred hiring from within--Pat Riley, Randy Pfund or low-key outsiders such as Mike Dunleavy or Del Harris, rather than a high-profile coach. Nor did West sound pleased that Jackson was being quoted in the papers, talking about Laker problems.

Laker officials began indicating Rambis would be back. It got into the press without demurral. Several days later, West told a general manager that’s what they’d do, it was the Laker way, etc.

Then to everyone’s surprise, Buss suddenly did a 180, asking West what he thought about Jackson.

In the meantime, O’Neal later revealed he had made his own recommendation. (“I sort of gave the organization an ultimatum. ‘This is my eighth year. I’m tired of winning 50, 60 games and going home early. Get me somebody that can take us to the next level.’ ”) He said he wanted Jackson.

And Jackson, it became.

West was usually content to give his owner and his coach what they wanted, and so he fell in line behind the hiring easily.

Of course, he may not have liked Jackson’s brokerage commercial, which showed Phil arriving in town, ready to make a trade (get it?) or his candid discussions of heretofore-taboo personnel issues. On the other hand, West loved that Jackson was taking over responsibility for the troubled Shaq-Kobe relationship.

All the winning the team was doing wasn’t hard to take, either.

However, West became alarmed last spring, when he learned Jackson was dating Buss’ daughter, Jeannie, worrying--out loud, over and over to confidants--what the consequences for the organization might be if they broke up.

Typically, West had more to worry about, starting with his health.

As he got older, he had less and less tolerance for stress, of which there seemed to be more and more. He had trouble sleeping. During the Rodman days, he once told a confidant, “I’m taking pills I shouldn’t be taking.”

With the Lakers on the threshold of victory, he absented himself during the finals, watching on TV or, finally, driving around so he couldn’t watch.

He told all his confidants he was leaving, but they had heard it before. Magic Johnson, speaking for all the veterans of West’s internal campaigns, said he’d believe it when he saw West standing at the lectern, making the announcement.

Then--surprise!--West actually left.

Later foxsports.com carried a story under the headline, “Report: Phil Jackson to blame for West leaving.” Written by Chicago-based Roland Lazenby, it said Jackson had thrown West out of the locker room and raised the question that Jackson had nudged West out of the organization.

However, Lazenby acknowledged that this was a version being circulated by Bull officials, who, of course, still nursed grievances against Jackson.

Said an unnamed Bull official to Lazenby, “West is the guy the NBA based its logo on. Can you believe that Phil kicked the NBA logo out of his locker room?”

The logo says that isn’t the way it was.

“Let me tell you what happened, OK?” West says. “After games, I usually go in the locker room, say hello to the coaches. But he talks to the team after the game. I stuck my head in there and he says, ‘Wait till we get done.’ It was really nothing. . . . That’s so ridiculous.”

West remains a Laker consultant but his protege, Kupchak, is now in charge. Kupchak still likes to call to run things by West but is careful not to ask for advice, and West is careful not to offer any.

West sounds more relaxed than he has in years, decades or ever, although he wonders how he’ll feel during the season and the playoffs.

Who knows? He could even get to like this retirement.

The First Days of Big Chief Triangle That’s one nickname Jackson doesn’t have to listen to anymore.

With seven titles in 10 seasons in two cities, having clearly made the difference for the Lakers, he isn’t merely at the top of his profession, he reigns for the moment as its colossus.

In effect, the Lakers became his organization last season, when he turned things around for O’Neal and Bryant, vis-a-vis each other and everything else.

Not only that, Jackson coached a peculiar offense he has used for years. He had his own profile for players--experienced, tall, able to handle the ball, make good decisions and accept roles--that was different from West’s. West loved young talent.

Nevertheless, West remained the Lakers’ rudder. Now that he is gone, the question is, how long is Jackson staying?

All Jackson knows today is, he’s good until tomorrow.

“I’m totally a day-by-day person,” he says. “If I had to go through a lot of pain or stress, physical or emotional, that would change or color what I was doing, I would have to think about it, continuing on here.

“That’s why I empathized with Jerry West about the process he went through last year in making the decision to leave the game at a time when the Lakers had their seventh title.”

Unlike West, Jackson doesn’t show much stress, exuding a sense of calm, regardless of the situation. Unfortunately, he has his own problems.

His body is a repository of pain. He has had back troubles, hip troubles and last summer, which he thought would be so sweet, was cut short by a knee operation.

Like West, Jackson has nothing left to prove. He coaches because he likes it. He’s making $6 million annually--plus $2 million in bonuses last season--but he has already banked a lot. Like West or Kaiser Sosay in the movie “Usual Suspects,” Jackson could leave in a heartbeat.

Nor is Jackson likely to stay on in a front office, noting he spurned big-money offers from the New York Knicks and New Jersey Nets that would have returned him to New York, a place he’s still clearly intrigued by. Jackson doesn’t like scouting, tryout camps and networking, all the things general managers do and West was aces at.

“I don’t look at that aspect of the game as my forte, my strength,” Jackson says.

“I think that I know what kind of players can benefit from playing in this system. I have a certain work schedule that works well for me and the intensity of an NBA season is enough. I don’t need to go through July and August at the kind of intensity it takes to recruit the players and finagle the agents, the various general managers and owners.

“There are people who are better at that than I am and are willing to sit and work 18 hours on the telephone while the sun is shining and it’s time to be outside, from my standpoint, and enjoying life.”

West, who was always thinking about leaving, was a Laker for 40 years. Jackson, who suspects he’s passing through, however slowly, is starting his second season here.

The Forum is history. West is a consultant. For better or worse, it’s a brave new Laker world.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Phil In The Blanks

Phil Jackson has coached 10 seasons, nine with the Chicago Bulls and the last with the Lakers. His results (* with Lakers):

* 1998-90: Lost to Detroit in Eastern Finals

* 1990-91: Beat Lakers in NBA Finals

* 1991-92: Beat Portland in NBA Finals

* 1992-93: Beat Phoenix in NBA Finals

* 1993-94: Lost to New York in Eastern semifinals

* 1994-95: Lost to Orlando in Eastern semifinals

* 1995-96: Beat Seattle in NBA Finals

* 1996-97: Beat Utah in NBA Finals

* 1997-98: Beat Utah in NBA Finals

* 1999-00: Beat Indiana in NBA Finals*