Will They Go Forward to the Past?

On the day the Lakers’ new ex-coach said goodbye, the Lakers’ current coach heartily endorsed the return of the old ex-coach.

Got that?

If you need a simpler summary, call it Three Men and a Kobe.

It was about Rudy Tomjanovich and Frank Hamblen and Phil Jackson. The latest variation of the triangle offense.

“We call it overload,” Hamblen corrected.

Well, he’s running things right now, so we’ll use his terminology for the familiar offensive sets we’ve seen lately.

Whatever words you want to use, all the talk in Lakerland was of coaches past, present and future. Following the screwy Laker logic, we’ll begin at the end.

Tomjanovich ended the speculation and everything else Wednesday, saying he was stepping down as the Lakers’ head coach, and adding that he would not coach in the NBA again.

“That’s clear in my mind,” Tomjanovich said. “Absolutely not.”

The odd thing is that we didn’t get to know him in Los Angeles until he was saying goodbye. He wasn’t here long enough to form a bond. More important in this town’s priorities, he hadn’t won anything here.

But it was impossible not to feel for the man as he poured his heart out at a crowded news conference held at the Kings’ practice facility dressing room.

“Maybe I took on too much,” Tomjanovich said.

Unlike his predecessor, Jackson, Tomjanovich didn’t always say what he thought. So there was never a disparaging word heard about any of his players.

But, unlike Jackson, Tomjanovich always showed how he felt. You didn’t need to follow a Laker game, you just had to watch Tomjanovich.

His passion was his undoing. His deep caring, the energy he expended on every win and loss, had worn him out. After a postgame meal of steak and fries, he went right back to worrying.

“I didn’t do a good job of having other outlets, and it built up in my body,” Tomjanovich said.

He didn’t see a way to get through the rest of the season without strong medication.

The toll on his health was so great that his doctor asked him, “Is it all worth it?”

By Monday, in a meeting with General Manager Mitch Kupchak, he provided the answer that Kupchak could see coming from his own observations: no.

Tomjanovich said it wasn’t the pressure of Los Angeles or the Lakers’ proud history that got to him. He didn’t pay attention to these outside factors.

“Nobody put pressure on me but me,” Tomjanovich said.

The same rules as when he coached in Houston for 12 years. Only it wasn’t the same Tomjanovich. He used to escape the pressure by drinking. But he hasn’t had alcohol since 1998, a streak that continued even through this season’s challenges, he said proudly.

“It would’ve been easy,” he said. “That was not an option.”

And his body, after successfully battling bladder cancer two years ago, couldn’t handle the stress as well it had before. He couldn’t maintain the even balance so essential to making it as a coach.

“You could see a little change in him,” said Hamblen, the man who drafted Tomjanovich for the San Diego Rockets in 1970 and who served as his assistant coach this year. “He was very high when things were good, and very low when things weren’t good.”

So Tomjanovich had to step aside. Hamblen filled in for the last two games while Tomjanovich and the organization sorted through his fatigue and the larger implications. Now Hamblen is the permanent replacement -- at least temporarily.

He said he would love to be a head coach after spending the bulk of his 35 years in the league as an assistant.

“Sure, you’d always like to be an NBA head coach,” Hamblen said.

That said, he didn’t take any offense at the various Jackson rumors floating around -- some of which were even thrown his way.

“If I owned a team and was in charge, I’d want Phil Jackson, also,” Hamblen said, in that voice that sounds like a bulldozer in low gear.

Hamblen’s the perfect man for this latest crazy interlude in Lakerland. He has credibility, the players are responding to him, but he doesn’t have too large of an ego to get upset about his status.

Because, more and more, it sounds as if the Jackson talks will get serious when he gets back from his vacation Down Under.

“Going forward, [Hamblen] will be the coach of this team,” Kupchak said, as definitively as possible.

But we don’t know how long that forward is.

“I don’t think there’s an urgency to it,” Kupchak said of the search for a new coach.

“On the other hand, if there is someone that we identify and it’s the right thing to do, we will move quickly.”

They’ll have to run it by Kobe Bryant first, of course. They should run it by Bryant. No point in bringing in a guy if the franchise player won’t accept him. Which makes it so incredible that they’re considering Jackson, who couldn’t coexist with Bryant and has the book royalties to prove it.

But Bryant said Wednesday, “I love Phil as a coach. If that’s the decision they want to roll with, I’ll roll with it.”

Strange, isn’t it?

But as Kupchak said, “If it’s so strange, then why has it come up so much?”

Because these are the Lakers.

Get ready for more overload.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Leading Men

NBA coaches with 500 or more victories (Through Tuesday, *active):

*--* LENNY WILKENS 1,332 *DON NELSON 1,177 PAT RILEY 1,110 *LARRY BROWN 960 BILL FITCH 944 RED AUERBACH 938 DICK MOTTA 935 *JERRY SLOAN 932 JACK RAMSAY 864 COTTON FITZSIMMONS 832 PHIL JACKSON 832 GENE SHUE 784 *GEORGE KARL 711 JOHN McLEOD 707 RED HOLZMAN 696 *RICK ADELMAN 688 CHUCK DALY 638 DOUG MOE 628 *MIKE FRATELLO 594 AL ATTLES 557 DEL HARRIS 556 RUDY TOMJANOVICH 527 K.C. JONES 522

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.