When it all went wrong

As things turned out, the problems that surfaced in Honolulu were just a tuneup.

On media day, the organization set up a picket line outside the El Segundo practice facility and barred some members of the media, hoping to lessen the hysteria. Perhaps thinking he could redirect the media, like Moses parting the Red Sea, [Phil] Jackson reminded them there were more important things, like the war in Iraq, going on. Of course, without press coverage that was disproportionate to the importance of what he did, Jackson wouldn’t be making $6 million annually. In any case, the press didn’t melt away.

Every day, Black [John Black, Lakers publicist] announced Bryant would only take basketball questions, but it was the reporters’ job to ask other questions, and Bryant often answered them. When a CBS producer asked Bryant about that day’s events in court, Black lifted her credentials on the spot. After Newsweek’s Allison Samuels wrote a tough cover piece, she couldn’t even get credentials.

For his part, Jackson regarded this as the usual hysteria, like that which he’d turned to his own advantage in Chicago. He jauntily told the press he would show players “how to dodge questions that you guys present,” and said Bryant’s situation might actually be a “boon” that brought them together. Everyone else in the organization was considering alternative careers.

“Just assume this is the season from hell,” someone told Black, “and anything that doesn’t go wrong is a bonus.”

“I just didn’t know the flames would be so hot,” said Black.

Four days later, O’Neal, sitting out an exhibition in San Diego, said he was doing it because “I want to be right for Derek [Fisher], Karl [Malone] and Gary [Payton].” In case anyone had missed the significance of what he’d said, Shaq repeated the list of players he wanted to be right for, which didn’t, of course, include Bryant.

Bryant was now venting in front of teammates, vowing to leave at the end of the season when he’d be a free agent -- free, that is, to get away from O’Neal. Of course, that got back to O’Neal, who got even madder at Bryant. The feud was back on and spiraling toward a showdown.

Everywhere they went, the press corps, which included many members who cared little about basketball, followed. Before an exhibition at Staples, a TV guy doing a courtside remote asked a local writer, “Which one is Payton?” In Las Vegas, a TV woman entering the dressing room greeted Derek Fisher with a breezy, “Hey, Deron!” Bryant finally began practicing on October 18. The veterans had the day off, so it was just Kobe, looking like he was enjoying himself, and the young guys on a quiet Saturday afternoon in El Segundo.

“Some days must be better than others,” someone suggested to Bryant afterward.

“Every day is a bad day,” he said.

Bryant played his first exhibition in the next-to-last one, against the Clippers in the Pond of Anaheim, on Oct. 23. He was rusty but brash as ever, getting up 14 shots in 32 minutes and missing 10. The sideshow was better than the show. Mike Tyson attended to show support for Bryant. Two security people ushered [Bryant’s wife] Vanessa into the press room and made sure the ladies room was clear before she entered. Vanessa wore a top with “Fashionable . . . “ written on it.

The next night in the exhibition finale in Las Vegas, Jackson, fretting at the loose play he’d seen in the preseason, mentioned the possibility of “implosion.” Bryant went three for 10 in that one. Afterward, O’Neal suggested he pass the ball more while he was getting in shape. The next day, Bryant, who never used to react, reacted.

“I know how to play my guard spot,” he said. “He can worry about the low post. I’ll worry about mine.”

Replied O’Neal: “Just ask Karl and Gary why they came here. One person. Not two. One. Period. So, he’s right, I’m not telling him how to play his position. I’m telling him how to play team ball. . . . He doesn’t need advice on how to play his position, but he needs advice on how to play team ball. As we start this new season, [things have] to be done right. If you don’t like it, then you can opt out next year. If it’s going to be my team, I’ll voice my opinion. If he don’t like it, he can opt out. . . . I ain’t going nowhere.”

O’Neal and Bryant had never had an exchange like that. The nonconfrontational Jackson had to step in, telling both players to knock it off. Everyone else went back to the usual practice of pretending it had never happened.

“It’s all resolved,” said Payton the next day at practice. “We’re talking about basketball now. That’s all we’re going to talk about. We’re talking about basketball. We’re not talking about who’s saying this and who’s saying that. Everything is fine here in our camp and that’s the way it’s gonna be.”

“It’s not going to continue,” said Malone. “Trust me.”

What did the new guys know? Everywhere else, this would have been more than enough. Here, it was only the opening act. Bryant, still burning, went home and called Jim Gray, the ESPN reporter who was a longtime confidant, dumped all over O’Neal, and told Gray to say he had said it all on the air.

On O’Neal: “There’s more to life than whose team this is, but this is his team so it’s time for him to act like it. That means no more coming into camp fat and out of shape when your team is relying on your leadership on and off the court. It also means no more blaming others for our team’s failure or blaming staff members for not overdramatizing your injuries so that you avoid blame for your lack of conditioning. Also, ‘my team’ doesn’t mean only when we win. It means carrying the burden of defeat just as gracefully as you carry a championship trophy.

“Leaders don’t beg for contract extensions and negotiate some $30-million-plus deal in the media when we have two future Hall of Famers playing here basically for free. A leader would not demand the ball when you have three of us besides you, not to mention the teammates that he’s gone to war with the past three years. . . . You also don’t threaten not to play defense and not to rebound if you don’t get the ball every time down the floor.”

On playing in pain: “I don’t need Shaq’s advice on how to play hurt. I’ve played with IVs before . . . with a broken hand, a sprained ankle, a fractured tooth, a severed lip, and a knee the size of a softball. I didn’t miss 15 games because of a toe injury that everybody knows wasn’t that serious.”

On their relationship: “He is not my quote-unquote big brother. A big brother would have called me up over the summer.”

On that note, the Lakers started the 2003-04 season.

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This excerpt from “Madmen’s Ball: The Continuing Saga of Kobe, Phil, and the Los Angeles Lakers” is printed with the permission of Triumph Books, www.triumphbooks.com.

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Lakers tonight

vs. Houston, 6:30, Fox Sports West

at Staples Center