Jackson Tired of ‘Sabotage’ Story

Phil Jackson asked Wednesday night if he couldn’t move on, beyond his recent remarks concerning Kobe Bryant, past Bryant’s relationship with the triangle offense, and through Bryant’s high school career.

“That was last week,” Jackson said coolly. “This is this week.”

He said it was a story that survived “much longer than it should have lived.”

Since he divulged the contents of a private conversation he had with Bryant, then offered that Bryant “sabotaged” high school games to heroically win them, Jackson has been in mild, if not full, retreat. He recently tried to explain himself to Bryant, who does not appear to be holding a grudge.

Jackson, then, was asked if he regretted his words.

He considered the question for a full 10 seconds.

“I don’t like that word ‘regret,’ ” he said. “Do you want to restate the word?”

He was asked if he wished he hadn’t said it.

“There’s a word, ‘sabotage,’ ” he said, “that got a large degree of colorization.”

It continues to be curious, of course, that Jackson divulges intimate details from inside the team setting, either in interviews--this one was intended to be off the record--or in his own books. In “More Than a Game,” the book by Jackson and Charley Rosen, Jackson revealed that Shaquille O’Neal once railed against Bryant in a team meeting.

Then, in last week’s Chicago Sun-Times, Jackson clipped Bryant again.

“That was, well, I’m not going to discuss it,” he said. “I’ll just leave it said as it is. I won’t back away from the comments. If I could take the word back, ‘sabotage,’ I would do that. The connotation of what I was trying to describe was taken out of context.”

Finally asked if Bryant understood--or accepted--his story, Jackson said, “I have no idea. It’s something that I discussed with him, but I didn’t ask for anything about understanding. I told him the piece was coming, but that’s not what we’re focusing on here tonight.”

The buzz isn’t hurting book sales.

By one account, “More Than a Game” had risen into Amazon.com’s top 50 by game time.

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It’s all Phil all the time.

Tuesday night was “60 Minutes II” and Jay Leno. He’s also scheduled to do “The Late, Late Show,” which will air Monday night.

As for Tuesday night, he said he’d rather have been scouting the Kings and New York Knicks.

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Jerry West, who retired as general manager in August, attended Wednesday night’s game. He breezed through the locker room about an hour before the game and then watched from owner Jerry Buss’ suite.

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Jackson said he believed regular-season success carried over into the postseason.

“That’s why we’re happy Seattle may not make the playoffs this year,” he said.

The Lakers were 0-4 against the SuperSonics.