Being a Laker Roadie Not Like Old Days

Back from the long road to . . . wherever.

I just spent 10 days with the Lakers, which was very instructive, in a Marquis de Sade kind of way.

This is NBA regular-season, One-Night-Stand Hell: Write until midnight. Wake up at 6 a.m., fly out to catch up with the Lakers in the next city (they chartered out after the game on their luxury jet with the first-class seats and the primo cuisine) for Phil Jackson’s briefing in which he zings Isaiah “J.R.” Rider or Kobe Bryant or, if he’s really upset, the league for making him grant us all this access.

Not that I was up at 6, of course. We’ve got another reporter named Tim Brown to handle the early calls, for which I thank my lucky stars.

I did this stuff too . . . as long ago as the ‘70s, when NBA teams still played back-to-back-to-back games and the players flew commercial on the same planes with us and we knew them a lot better.

We went out to dinner with the coaches, drank with players, commiserated with everyone in airports and got our boarding passes from whoever was acting as traveling secretary, the trainer or the radio color guy (in the early ‘80s for the Lakers, it was Pat Riley.)

We stayed in the same hotels too, back when players roomed together, before the big money hit and the NBA discovered the Four Seasons chain (and the writers discovered Marriott Rewards). So funny things could happen, such as the day at the Ponchartrain in Detroit when I got a room that was supposed to go to one of the players and a woman called up looking for him, assuring me she was his “special friend.”

That was nice, I thought. Everybody needs friends.

I worked in Philadelphia then, covering the 76ers, who had Julius Erving, George McGinnis and a talent-packed roster that included rookies Darryl Dawkins, Lloyd (later World B.) Free and Joe Bryant, Kobe’s father, whom we called by his playground name, Jellybean.

Like his son, Joe was a fine ballhandler and sweet tempered. There the comparisons stopped. Joe was fun-loving. Kobe is stone-cold serious.

Of course, the rookies weren’t going to play much--this was a veteran team that would reach the finals--but what do rookies ever know?

Dawkins said to write he wanted to be traded. I obliged. Free liked it so much, he wanted to do one.

Before I could get Free’s into the paper, Bryant said he wanted one too. I told him he was going to have to wait. I was booked up.

But I digress. . . .

Actually, I haven’t even started because this is about the Lakers, your Quintessential Modern Crew. Covering them is more like intermittently interfacing with a troupe of movie stars, which, of course, some are, literally.

(One day in the dressing room last season, TV guy Paul Sunderland asked John Salley if he’d seen “The Green Mile,” which had just come out.

(Answered Salley in a true Laker Moment: “I read for it.”)

The Lakers are also the NBA’s defending champions and top marquee hope in the post-Michael Jordan age. As such, they’re a disappointment, because they’re less like a dynasty than a family driving across country with the kids in the back seat, belting each other with pillows.

In the three seasons since Bryant became a starter, Laker history has revolved around chilling him out on the floor and chilling Shaquille O’Neal out off it, with varying degrees of success.

Two seasons ago, they went through two coaches, Dennis Rodman and much of Jerry West’s nervous system.

Last season, they won a title, although West played it safe and retired while he still knew his name.

This season, they’re back to chasing their tails and testing Jackson’s long-held, let-events-run-their-

course-then-deal-with-the-survivors technique.

This trip is supposed to be an opportunity to regroup . . . the hard way. But O’Neal is back after being sidelined two weeks and has promised to let “bygones be bygones.”

Not that it starts off so well when Shaq is quoted on All-Star weekend hinting he’d be happy to go back to Orlando if things don’t work out with the Lakers.

Asked about it, he snarls indignantly, “I never said a word of it,” adding that’s what’s wrong with this !@#$%?&! world, people believing what they read.

Anyone who knows O’Neal can tell you, he’s really a teddy bear. However, he’s an extremely large teddy bear and, at this moment, a very unhappy one.

Kobe could be happier too. After the All-Star game, he lingers for a moment in the interview room to see if anyone has anything else to ask.

“No Kobe-Shaq questions?” he asks, jumping to his feet, smiling. “Great!”

No such luck. Wherever they go, it’ll be All Feud, All the Time. This is more distressing to Kobe, who fields most of it, than Shaq, whose hints continue to fuel it on this trip as he no-comments questions about going elsewhere, tells reporters to write what they see, etc.

The Lakers win at New Jersey, get bombed at Philadelphia, win at Charlotte. O’Neal is playing great for a guy who wasn’t in top shape before he was hurt.

Bryant is playing a better floor game but remains a tough nut for Jackson. At a team meeting midway through the trip, Bryant and Jackson reportedly have a heated exchange. Jackson often notes how “insulated” Bryant is, as in, “What do you expect me to do with him?”

Actually, Bryant means well and he tries. He simply doesn’t understand there’s an inherent conflict in trying to be all he can be (now!) and team goals.

In Indianapolis, the roof seems to fall in.

A victory would send them into Dallas for Don Nelson’s homecoming with momentum, perhaps enough to push the Mavericks aside and take a head of steam into San Antonio for the trip’s grand finale/reality check.

They run up a 14-point lead, then blow it. Rider walks off for 15 minutes after Jackson yanks him.

On merit, or demerits, Rider could have been gone long ago, but Jackson, who prides himself on his high threshold for eccentricity . . . or whatever . . . has apparently decided to keep him, no matter what.

Nevertheless, Jackson makes Rider do things his way, bringing him off the bench, which Rider hates, insisting he run the triangle right, which J.R. rarely does.

Tough love might have worked better, had someone tried it with Rider 25 years ago. Now it’s hard enough to keep him on the reservation if you’re stroking him all the time, as opposed to never. He’s a walk-off waiting to happen and in the Pacer game, it happens . . . just about the time the Lakers start to blow their lead and the game.

Then they go to Dallas and rock the Mavericks’ world as Shaq rises to Nelson’s challenge and makes 11 of 15 free throws. This might not be an optimal situation, but you never want to count out a team with the game’s two best players.

The next night at San Antonio, with Bryant hurt and O’Neal all but out on his feet, Rick Fox, Horace Grant and Rider, who have been tiptoeing around all season, or in Fox’s case several seasons, suddenly start looking for their shots and driving the ball to the hoop.

Voila! Instant esprit and a shocking upset of the Spurs, who had them figured for crash-test dummies.

As young as he is, Bryant is so bulletproof and pushes so hard, teammates say he can be intimidating on the floor, to them as well as opponents.

Some also think he’s roughly back to where he was last spring, when they won their title. Now he has to stay there or get better . . . as in looking for teammates more.

As trips go, the Lakers have had worse. They may still carry the seeds of their own destruction, but they have for a while. Now it’s plain, they’re also carrying the seeds of their rebirth.

Me, I’m fine as long as I don’t have to do this again for a long, long time.

If the office needs me, I’m home, hiding under my bed.