Curing Sore Feet ... and Sore Feelings

The thing about raising banners and modeling championship rings is, at some point you’ve got to play the season, like it or not.

The Lakers do regular seasons the way Allen Iverson does practice. Even when they’re there, their hearts aren’t totally into it.

They got through this season, however, and generally without the fuss of the season before, though not seamlessly either.

They wrapped and soaked Shaquille O’Neal’s feet and played a magical November, then became uninterested. For a while, they even lost their voice.

Kobe Bryant, O’Neal’s MVP pick from the beginning, became a team captain at 23 and had only one or two leadership lapses. His maturity and even play made him a first-team All-NBA guard for the first time.

Finally, they arrived at the postseason reasonably hale and confident, at about where Coach Phil Jackson had hoped, and glad to be done with their regular-season requirements.

Eighty-two, they hardly knew you.

From 16-1, or how the notion of 73-9 was born

The best start in franchise history took the Lakers a week past Thanksgiving and convinced many that this was a team destined to challenge the Chicago Bulls’ record 72-win season.

In the early weeks, despite O’Neal’s bad feet and the predictably slow integration of newcomers Samaki Walker and Lindsey Hunter into the triangle offense, the Lakers beat Utah twice, Sacramento, Minnesota and Dallas.

They opened the defense of their back-to-back championships the night before Halloween by raising their championship banner. They received their rings in a pregame ceremony from Laker Vice President Jeanie Buss, who got a kiss from O’Neal and a high-five from Jackson.

Though the eyes of pro basketball were on New York, where Michael Jordan attempted to exhume his former self and his former game, the Lakers defeated the Portland Trail Blazers by 11 points and began a remarkable run, in spite of Jackson’s uneasiness.

“I always predict a slow start,” he had said.

In honor of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, Bryant wore shoes decorated with the colors of the American flag.

Off they went, through six weeks of wins and a lone loss, in Phoenix, by a lopsided 95-83. Though players and coaches warned that the team was not playing well despite the record, some said the Lakers had a chance to win 73 regular-season games, which would surpass the record set six years before by Jackson’s Chicago Bulls.

Including the final eight games of the previous regular season and their 15-1 postseason, the Lakers reached Dec. 7 with 39 wins in 41 games.

It seemed the Lakers had found a formula in the previous season and that their momentum did not fade in three months away.

Unlike the last two seasons, when conflict eventually gave way to championships, the Lakers appeared emotionally secure.

“We keep looking back to last year’s start,” forward Rick Fox said, “and we have to be pretty satisfied that we’ve learned a little bit about defending a championship and coming prepared to start the season off in the right fashion.”

Bryant, at one point, held up his hand.

“We’re winning,” he said, “but we can be so much better.”

Turned out, they were worse. For the next 2 1/2 months, into mid-February, the Lakers were 19-15.

Shaq’s aches, or how the notion of 73-9 died

There were times when Jackson didn’t coach basketball as much as he coaxed it.

Mostly, out of O’Neal and his sore feet.

After spending most of the summer hoping his deformed left small toe would heal, O’Neal had surgery in August, pretty much killing training camp and his desire to go into the season at 290 pounds. He missed that by plenty, some said by 70 pounds or more.

Then, trying to limp through the early weeks and leaning hard on his right foot, his arthritic right big toe became unbearably painful, beginning a season-long experiment with new shoes and orthotics and liniments and injections and anti-inflammatory drugs by the fistful.

The season had just started, and O’Neal practically had to be carried from his car before games and back to it afterward. He had lost his legendary mobility and hardly could get off the ground, making his defense nonexistent and his offense limited to the basics.

By the end of November, he averaged 24.7 points and 10.9 rebounds, well below his career numbers.

On Christmas Day, he went to the injured list for the first time. In all, he missed 15 games to injury or suspension.

Still, he had his moments. Early in the season, against Horace Grant, Patrick Ewing, Andrew DeClercq and whatever else the Orlando Magic found handy, O’Neal scored 38 points, took 18 rebounds, blocked four shots and reminded everyone what’s what in the NBA, and who’s who.

“I’m still the baddest bad-feet big man ever,” he said, grinning.

He was grumpy, however. He hated the new rules that allowed zone defenses from the start. Defenders took advantage of the new, sedentary Shaq by fouling him hard and often. He was on the injured list twice for his feet, missed two late-season games with a sprained wrist and was suspended for three games for the air punch that buffed Brad Miller’s ear.

The Lakers looked thin without O’Neal, and the fear grew within the organization that this was the O’Neal it would take into the postseason. Bryant, however, knew better.

“I don’t think it really matters, because we aren’t going to play without Shaquille in the playoffs,” he said. “It doesn’t matter, because our team is with Shaquille. We’re going to win a championship with Shaquille. That’s the bottom line.”

When O’Neal returned from the injured list to play the Phoenix Suns despite little relief in his toe, he said he did it “because I’m back on the [anti-inflammatory] drugs. Hopefully, the drugs will carry me.”

Though he once said, in jest, “I’ll keep going until I’m Bill Walton,” O’Neal revealed late in the season that he probably would have surgery this summer.

“I want the pain to go away forever,” he said.

He finished the season averaging 27.2 points and 10.7 rebounds, still enough to rate third in the league MVP vote.

They like each other, they really, really do

The days O’Neal and Bryant would pass in the locker room without finding each other’s eyes were over, buried by the championships taken and the hand extended.

For more than four years as Lakers they were teammates and barely that. They were close enough to lift a trophy together and still found little common ground.

“I think it was part of the process,” Bryant said a year later. “Things got out of hand. One thing we didn’t do, we didn’t sit down and talk about it. In retrospect, we should have done that right then.”

Instead, it lingered for seasons and cost them who knows how much in victories and peace of mind. It ended perhaps a year ago, when O’Neal called Bryant his idol and held out his fist, and Bryant touched it with his.

Friendships come easily in big wins, however, and everyone knew this one would be tested in the doldrums of the regular season.

The months passed, and they didn’t roll their eyes anymore. They laughed together after games. There were fewer fears of O’Neal’s bad moods, forced because of a shot Bryant had taken the night before. And they didn’t measure Bryant’s coolness after he sensed O’Neal’s displeasure.

“It makes for good harmony,” Jackson said. “I compared it the other day to like a dog and a cat. The dog goes around and makes the cat hump its back and spit a little bit. Then, all of a sudden, when they get to be friends, the cat starts bouncing around all over the dog. That’s the way it appears to be, with Kobe being the cat.”

One Saturday night in Ardmore, Pa., in a stone building at Lower Merion High, Bryant had his jersey retired.

His parents sat to his right. His young wife, Vanessa, sat ahead of him. Some 1,500 friends, classmates and fans sat behind them. There were many highlights of Kobe, bald, crossing over 10th-graders.

All that was expected.

What surprised them, what made Bryant smile and touch his chest, were the large men in the third row. From left to right: Shaquille O’Neal, Brian Shaw, Samaki Walker, Devean George, Mark Madsen and Rick Fox.

They watched the videos. They applauded the superintendent of schools. They laughed with the kid with the funny stories about Kobe.

When it was done, O’Neal rose first and strode to the stage and held out his hand, and Bryant hugged him instead.

“I love you guys,” Bryant said to them, to everyone, over and over.

Zen and the art of Shaq O’Neal maintenance

It was Jackson’s job to push O’Neal through his injuries and maladies. It was O’Neal’s nature to resist.

And so went the season, beginning in training camp, when Jackson considered O’Neal’s early free-throw troubles and said, “It’s a dire, a scary situation right now,” and O’Neal nearly went apoplectic.

O’Neal should not have felt undercut. It simply was his turn, as it had been Bryant’s last season, when Jackson blindsided him with various observations of conscience and sabotage.

Indeed, O’Neal balanced his angry retorts with promises to retire with Jackson in two years, at 32 years old, a life decision that would have him turn his back on nearly three-quarters of the $88-million extension he had signed the year before.

In October, O’Neal missed a few free throws, which Jackson noticed.

“He always has something to say,” O’Neal said.

It was suggested to O’Neal that this was Jackson’s way to motivate him.

“I ain’t Toni [Kukoc]. I ain’t ... Horace [Grant],” O’Neal said of two famed Jackson targets. “I don’t need motivation. I’m already motivated. I don’t worry about that stuff.

“However, I don’t get into that, how they treat me. I do my job. It ain’t over for me. I don’t ever start it. I don’t start anything. But any man who stands for nothing, will fall for everything.

“I got two championships. That ain’t enough for him? That guy never shuts up.”

A day later, they found themselves on the same dais at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel. Jackson poked him again over his free throws and announced, “He’s been in a bad mood ever since the toe operation.”

O’Neal fumed.

In November, O’Neal missed two practices to attend the birth of his daughter. One was excused, the other was not, and he was fined for the second.

“That [gentleman] knows what he can do with that fine,” O’Neal said.

They lived together on the edge of civility thereafter, Jackson occasionally wondering about O’Neal’s conditioning, O’Neal occasionally answering with 40-point games and end-to-end defense and sneers.

It would, of course, lead to other uncomfortable moments in the playoffs. But in the end, Jackson and O’Neal always came back to the same reality: They needed each other.

“I’m the type of guy,” O’Neal said, “if something goes down on Tuesday, I leave it on Tuesday.

“I won’t play for anybody else. Well, unless I get traded or something.”

They’re so bored, they lost to Chicago--twice

Mostly, the Lakers were good. Sometimes, they were exceptional.

And then there were the other nights.

Six of them, each more grizzly than the last:

Dec. 21, at Memphis. Grizzlies 114, Lakers 108.

Dec. 26, at Golden State. Warriors 101, Lakers 90.

Jan. 12, at Chicago. Bulls 106, Lakers 104. In overtime, at least.

Jan. 22, vs. Denver. Nuggets 107, Lakers 91.

Jan. 16, vs. Miami. Heat 102, Lakers 96.

Feb. 6, vs. Chicago. Bulls 97, Lakers 89.

The Lakers lost those six games to teams in last place at the moment of the opening tip, and so they will be featured in more highlight videos than any back-to-back-to-back champions in history.

Crummy teams danced off the floors behind them. Coaches’ jobs were saved. Summers were lengthened. Fans had hope. Jerry Krause probably even smiled, some.

It was the Lakers’ gift to David Stern and NBA parity. The unconscionable losses cost them a Pacific Division title and home-court advantage, and maybe an ounce of pride, but this was their duty.

“We’re all about the NBA,” Fox said, smiling crookedly. “We’re all about lifting the spirit of the NBA, keeping everybody interested, not just in us, but other teams.”

O’Neal was limping and two starters--Hunter and Walker--were new to the triangle offense. The defense had a definite midseason malaise to it. Everyone had an eye on the playoffs, and often played like it, causing Jackson to doubt if he owned their psyches or ever would.

“There’s nothing you can do about it,” Bryant said after one terrible loss. “You can’t take them back. There’s no sense in blowing up.

“We’re going for a three-peat. It’s going to be harder, more difficult, more challenging. We have to be patient with the offense, with ourselves and believe it’s going to come around.”

Portland’s Steve Kerr, Jackson’s former guard who was swept by the Lakers in the playoffs as a San Antonio Spur a year ago, put the league’s growing confidence to words.

“To me, last year the Lakers looked unbeatable,” he said. “Now they look a little more vulnerable. They are still by far the best team and the team to beat, but Shaq doesn’t quite look right. He looks like he is banged up a bit.

“To me, they miss [Ron] Harper and Horace Grant and they are not as strong as they were last year. If a team goes in and plays them tough, plays them smart, then they are vulnerable.”

The Lakers were great when it was worth the trouble, but sometimes had neither the legs nor the heart for it, proving they could be had in winter, if not in spring. They picked their moments, often right in the middle of them, and in the end it mattered not at all.

The boxer and one defense by Shaq

Hacked for a decade, O’Neal came within an ear hair of the largest mistake of his career, a wild overhand right that nearly finished Brad Miller on a rainy January night in Chicago.

Clearly still growing into his role as a team leader, Bryant threw a short punch that landed on the cheek of Walker on the bus ride from a Cleveland hotel to Gund Arena.

Eight days later, seconds after the final buzzer sounded on a victory in Los Angeles, Bryant charged after Indiana’s Reggie Miller, throwing at least one punch as the two tumbled onto the scorer’s table.

O’Neal was suspended without pay for three games and fined $15,000. On the bus leaving the United Center, O’Neal told Fox it was merely the beginning.

“That’s how it’s going to be from here on out,” he said. “I’m not going for this no more.”

A long time passed before O’Neal spoke again.

“I ain’t a punk and I ain’t a whiner,” he said. “I got nothing to say.”

Shaw addressed it for him.

“It’s not about the suspension or the money,” he said. “It’s about the respect. You can be physical, but you have to be clean. As big and strong as he is, when he does it it’s always in self-defense. You never see him go over and try to take somebody’s head off. As big and strong as he is, if he did that, somebody would really get hurt.

“He has to restrain himself every day. A lot of fouls for everybody else are not going to be fouls to him. He accepts that for the most part. But if it’s a foul it’s a foul, regardless of how strong the guy is.”

Six weeks later, it was Bryant who was surly, first lashing out at Walker, then Miller.

An amiable sort, Walker, who sported a fresh lump under his eye, said he hadn’t minded the confrontation at all. Indeed, he said, “It was good to see the intensity.”

Any more intensity, someone would have been eating through a straw for a month.

“Juvenile play,” Jackson said.

So cool in his first five seasons, Bryant lost it again on the floor of Staples Center, reacting to trash talk by balling his right hand and chasing Miller. He was suspended for two games.

“Guys need to defend themselves,” Derek Fisher said.

O’Neal tried again March 15. After tangling with Clipper center Michael Olowokandi during a game, he attempted to enter the Clipper locker room afterward. When that failed, he waited near the parking lot.

“Beat it,” he said to a bystander. “You don’t need to see this.”

Asked then about the sudden courage shown by opposing centers--Miller, Danny Fortson a few nights earlier and Olowokandi, in particular--O’Neal said, “The refs let them do whatever they want, and then these bums think they can play.”

The day that Chick didn’t come to work

On Dec. 20, someone other than Chick Hearn called a Laker game for the first time since Nov. 21, 1965.

Hearn’s run of 3,338 consecutive games ended when he required surgery to replace a heart valve. Two months later, after a fall, Hearn had hip replacement surgery.

On April 9, with wife Marge at his side and after an extended standing ovation, Hearn called a 30-point victory over the Utah Jazz. He missed 56 games.

“The idea of coming back, after you miss 50-something games, that’s a while,” Hearn said. “I’ve missed the familiarity of it. But the reception I got from the players when I was there brought me up tremendously.

“I realized I missed the camaraderie of the coaching staff and the players and the press. There’s a bond that develops when you’re there every day. It gets to be routine.”

Upon Hearn’s return, the Lakers distributed buttons that declared, “Win With Chick,” and mug shots of Hearn on sticks that fans waved at him.

Four months before, Stu Lantz, Hearn’s partner for 15 years, sat behind a microphone in Houston, welcomed replacement Paul Sunderland, and shook his head at the task ahead.

“It’s very strange,” Lantz said. “It’s strange and it hasn’t even started yet. I can’t even envision it happening. The one constant with this franchise, in its existence in Los Angeles, has been Chick. Players come and go. Jerry, Elgin, Wilt, Kareem, Magic, now we’ve got Shaq, Kobe. They’ll have to go at some point in time. But the one constant through all of that has been Chick. You’ve never heard a Laker broadcast without Chick. I can’t envision what that’s going to be like.”