Jackson tries to get last word on fines

The league struck Phil Jackson with fines totaling $50,000. On Wednesday, he struck back.

Jackson was not happy to hear that he and the Lakers were each fined $25,000 because he criticized the referees after Game 4.

“I didn’t think very good of it at all,” Jackson said. “I didn’t go through the litany of things that we certainly have [experienced] over this series. But that’s the league for you. They’ll come back and hammer.”

Jackson said the NBA’s disciplinary process, including reviews of technical fouls and flagrant fouls, was confusing, if not irritating.

“We might need some candidates for Supreme Court justices to be sitting in the situation because there’s so many judgments going on,” he said.

He also related an anecdote from a few years back.

“When they came up with the flagrant fouls . . . one of the lead officials who I won’t mention by name, but he’s been in the league for almost as long as I’ve been around, for 35 years, said, ‘It may not be a flagrant, it may be a flagrant foul, but I’m going to call them all and let them sort it out back in the office.’

“That, I understood. The idea of maybe not calling them and them being changed in the other hand [by the NBA office] . . . that’s one of the things I just don’t know.”

Jackson has been fined numerous times over the years, including a $25,000 fine in 2006 for saying after a loss in Utah that the league “throws out some referee corps that you’re dubious about to start with and, you know, the game ends up like that.”

He was hit with a $50,000 fine in 2004 for saying referee Bob Delaney was “prejudiced against Shaq” after former Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal was ejected for two hard fouls.

West has regrets

Jerry West, the man responsible for bringing Kobe Bryant to the Lakers in a 1996 draft-day trade, basically retracted his comments last week that Cleveland forward LeBron James had passed Bryant as the game’s best player.

“I said something that I wish I wouldn’t have said, to be honest with you, because it was in no way demeaning to Kobe Bryant,” West said in a recent interview on “The Jim Rome Show.”

“I love his passion. I want him to win a championship without Shaquille O’Neal because I think it would vindicate him in some respect. If I had to watch a player play, there’s about four players I would pay to see play on a regular basis, and Kobe Bryant certainly would be at the top of that list. Late in the game, who are you going to take to make a shot, who are you going to take in the last quarter of a game? Kobe Bryant’s still the best in the league.

“If that comment upset him, I hope he uses it the right way and it propelled him to win another championship. I’m an unabashed Laker fan.”

Faces in the crowd

Houston Rockets forward Ron Artest sat courtside for Game 5. Former UCLA star Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves was in the second row, across from the Lakers’ bench. Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner was in owner Jerry Buss’ suite, with companions on either side of him.

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mike.bresnahan@latimes.com