Lakers Show How Tough It Is at Top

It was halfway through a series against the same San Antonio Spurs a year ago--in the Western Conference finals--when Shaquille O’Neal called Kobe Bryant his idol, and the best player in the NBA, and that was that.

When it was met with suspicion in the manner of what-are-you-up-to-now expressions, O’Neal widened his eyes and shook his head.

Of course, he reserved the place for most dominant player in the league for himself, which seemed fair to everyone, because there was no arguing that he was the largest man on the largest team on the planet.

A lot has happened since, most of it good for the Lakers, who did the parade thing again and added a ring and a banner. Somewhere along the way they lost Jerry West, but added five championships from Minneapolis, and suddenly they’re right behind the Boston Celtics.

If it looked easy, maybe it’s because it was. But, as the Lakers open yet another best-of-seven series against Tim Duncan, who could be named most valuable player within the month, and the Spurs, maybe it looked easy because few appreciate just how tough the Lakers can be.

The Spurs don’t have a reputation for being particularly hard, but they won’t lack for inspiration. Last time they were in Los Angeles for a couple of playoff games, they lost by 39 points on a Friday night and 29 on a Sunday afternoon, making for a very unkind 36 hours and a terribly long summer.

“I think they’re thinking revenge,” said Samaki Walker, a Spur then and a Laker now. “Being swept, obviously, left a bad taste in their mouths. I think it’s an opportunity to bury that humiliation. To finish the season the best team overall last season and then to be swept, that was bad.”

Maybe it is time the Spurs were freed of their burden.

Maybe it was the Lakers who were too good too often, who were too strong and too single-minded. It is they, after all, who have won 19 playoff games in 20 tries, not all because O’Neal is most dominant and Bryant is most talented. They win because O’Neal wants them to and because Bryant won’t relent, because Derek Fisher and Rick Fox are dogged, and because Robert Horry has no conscience for losing.

In a town where wearing the baseball cap backward while driving the Beamer is considered keeping it real, it is difficult to carry a reputation for grit. It doesn’t help either when every national interview is done with Marina del Rey’s yachts and sailboats in the background. But, these are the same Lakers who fought back from 15 down to the Portland Trail Blazers in the fourth quarter of a seventh game two years ago, who have won a record nine consecutive road playoff games, and who keep showing up as favorites, and keep winning.

They also are the Lakers whose minds wander far enough to lose regular-season games to Chicago (twice), among other atrocities of focus, and throw unwarranted punches (O’Neal at Brad Miller, Bryant at Reggie Miller). But this is their time of year, their time to push and be pushed, and to breathe deeply and allow Coach Phil Jackson to ooze into their psyches.

“Resilience, I think, more than anything else, is what I see as toughness,” Jackson said. “It’s not physical brutality or strength, or being able to come back and retaliate against an opponent. It’s more the resilience to take tough situations on the court--bad calls, a situation that didn’t work out--and respond to it. The toughness is, in my eyes--and this goes along with what I’m teaching the team--is about being able to read what a defense or an offense is throwing at you. And to make adjustments on the move and work it out on their own. That’s what this team that was together last year could figure out. We have very resilient players, there’s no doubt about that.”

They aren’t Pat Riley’s Knicks or Chuck Daly’s Pistons. They just don’t quit in little places, Fox on Peja Stojakovic, or Fisher on a charge, or Bryant to the rim, O’Neal with half a team on his neck. Still, the strategy before every series is to be physical with the Lakers, for the Spurs to send Bruce Bowen aggressively at Bryant, as Ruben Patterson was, for Malik Rose and Mark Bryant to spend their six fouls freely on O’Neal.

“Everyone has played us every other way, other than trying to beat us up,” Fox said. “You look at the regular season when that was tried, and to a degree it worked, because Shaq lost his head and Kobe lost his head and they were thrown out of games.

“People talk about playing us physical. They play physical and hope we respond negatively. I got kicked in the head [by Portland’s Dale Davis]. Part of me wanted to jump up and go at Dale. The other part of me started laughing. I said to myself, ‘This is the point where I lose my head or I laugh and recognize the part of the game where I go beyond them.’”

The Lakers won that afternoon by a point, the width of a technical foul free throw.

“All the teams L.A. has had have been touted as not being physically tough,” Horry said. “It’s just because we’re in California, the nature of where we’re from.

“Look at me. I’m a power forward and I’m not a typical power forward’s size. And everybody else is not really big except for Shaq, so they feel like the way they get to us is muscle us and wear us down that way.”

Now they’re going on three championships in a row, in part because the largest man on the largest team has their backs. In part, it would seem, because they have his too.