After All the Talking, Mission Still Possible

Your assignment, Mr. Jackson, should you choose to accept it, is to win the NBA championship. You can assemble the members of your team from anyone who isn’t opting out, or didn’t hit a milk truck, or have the wheels stripped off his car in front of his home in Beverly Hills, causing him to call in sick.

As usual, if you’re caught, we will disavow any knowledge of you. This team, er, tape, will self-destruct in one minute.

Having talked enough of the talk to last the rest of their lives, Phil Jackson and his plucky band of Lakers went back to work Tuesday night to see if they could still walk the walk, or if they could walk at all.

They looked interested, they looked harmonious with Kobe Bryant going for a season-high 10 assists to go with his 31 points and eight rebounds, but if they were overpowering, the Portland Trail Blazers didn’t get the memo, chasing them right to the end before the Lakers prevailed, 89-86.

Of course, putting everything behind them is harder for some teams than others.

The big second-half push got started at Monday’s practice, without Shaquille O’Neal, who was either feeling bad after All-Star partying, or because he hit a milk truck, or a fish truck, or because someone took the wheels of his car, as he explained before the game in one of his comedic performances.

Of course, lest anyone think the Lakers’ nature, or at least his, is essentially frivolous, Shaq noted, “We just got to get back on track. Even though the world thinks we’ve got a lot of problems off the court, that shouldn’t have anything to do with our basketball.

“We let a lot of games slip away but we haven’t been full strength and teams have come to us full strength and we’re still right there....

“We’re not going to use that as an excuse, we’ve got problems, he’s doing this, he’s doing that, management’s doing this. We’re not going to use that as an excuse for our play. We’re going to go out and play.”

Problems?

Them?

Just when they thought it was safe to go back into the dressing room, Charlie Rosen, Jackson’s biographer, co-author and once his assistant coach in the minor leagues, wrote a story that ran on the Fox Sports website, headlined: “Kid Kobe needs to grow up -- somewhere else.”

Wrote Rosen: “Rumors abound that Bryant has challenged his biggest critic to fisticuffs and that Shaquille O’Neal indeed has been tempted to oblige. So far, cooler heads have prevailed. The Lakers’ organization likewise is disgusted with Bryant’s antics.

“ ‘Every shot that Kobe makes when he freelances outside the context of the triangle,’ says one Lakers insider, ‘only feeds the monster.’ ...

“There’s no doubt Bryant is the best non-big man in the NBA. He has talent to spare, a ferocious competitive edge and a penchant for making clutch shots. Too bad Kobe is such a numskull.”

It’s usually spelled with a B, as in “numbskull,” but you get the idea.

Of course, things are tough all over. The Trail Blazers, newly ripped apart and reassembled, with Rasheed Wallace and Bonzi Wells in exile, started the game with a two-game losing streak, and their memories.

“You know, it’s different than when I got traded here [in 1997],” said Damon Stoudamire before the game. “I essentially have seen four different teams come and go.

“You know, that’s the business of the NBA. We had our run. We came close. We could sit up here and talk about shoulda, woulda, coulda, but we were winning by 15 points in this arena [over the Lakers in Game 7 of the 2000 West finals]. If that game had a different outcome, who knows?

“It takes the sting out of it because you knew essentially that ‘Sheed probably wasn’t going to be here, or Bonzi. So it took the sting out of it happening, but it didn’t take the sting out of the day it happened....

“I’m really the last piece of what was here, and that’s from the top to the bottom, other than our owner [Paul Allen.] You know, you see change, you see things happen but at the same time, there’s enough pieces in this locker room. They got guys who can play....

“For the organization, at the end of the day, the organization probably made out a lot better by trading him.”

The Trail Blazers played all right but that wasn’t Kid Kobe, the numskull out there. It looked to be another incarnation, the accommodating Bryant who would often show up at the end of the season and help his teammates pull things back together.

Where could this lead?

For the moment, only as far as tonight’s game in Oakland. The time for talking is over, even if the talking isn’t.