He Isn’t Called Coach for Nothing

Phil Jackson, the laissez-faire coach, has had his assertive moments this spring, primarily because of matchup conundrums in the first two series, injuries to Shaquille O’Neal and the many close playoff games.

That’s a lot of coaching for a man who preaches self-reliance.

“Phil is funny, man,” Kobe Bryant said. “He doesn’t say too much. He gives you that little look. He might smirk a little bit. He did that [Sunday]. He said, ‘We can’t give them two possessions.’”

Those sage instructions were dispensed during a timeout when the Lakers were down by eight in the fourth quarter.

Antonio Daniels had just missed a long jump shot, and Tim Duncan had taken the loose-ball rebound from three Lakers.

“He had a smirk on his face, said we can’t let that happen with four minutes left in the game,” Bryant said.

Bryant has gone out of his way to commend Jackson and the coaching staff at least twice since the start of the playoffs, particularly in regard to game preparation.

That’s not to say all has been well on the sideline.

Jackson and O’Neal have had a running dialogue in the newspapers, none of it apparently damaging, some of it humorous, and Jackson did allow O’Neal to draw a fourth foul before halftime of Game 2.

The upshot: O’Neal continues to grind through his physical misery. Maybe Jackson’s public pondering of harder play or fewer minutes for O’Neal is unrelated to the center’s more active rebounding and defense. O’Neal did admit, half in jest perhaps, that he took the second-biggest rebound of Game 4 in part to forestall another Jackson lecture.

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When Derek Fisher’s late shot went up Sunday, when nearly every eye in a very large house followed the basketball, Rick Fox looked for Duncan.

So, while Bryant was getting the rebound and scoring on the put-back, Fox was to the right of the basket, boxing out Duncan.

“I’m thinking in my mind, he’s the one guy. If he doesn’t get the ball, we’ve got a great chance,” Fox said. “You take yourself out of the play and a chance for a rebound, but you take him out too.”

The box-out not only kept Duncan from the rebound, but pinned him away from the play when Bryant went back up, leaving David Robinson alone to contest the eventual game-winner.

“I had a friend call me, a guy who knows basketball, from Vegas, drunk off his mind, yelling, ‘You made the play of the day!’” Fox recalled. “I was like, ‘You saw that?’

“It helps. That’s something we’re supposed to do. As I get older, the story will be that as Kobe was going up, I was pushing him up. Boxing out Duncan with one arm and lifting Kobe with the other. That’s how he got up so high.”

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If the Laker series ends tonight, or Thursday in San Antonio, Los Angeles would open the Western Conference finals Saturday against the Sacramento Kings at Arco Arena, with Game 2 Monday also at Sacramento.