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Shaq vs Kobe - original article
BASKETBALL
Dr. Shaq Grows Impatient With the Kobe Experiment
You asked for it: The Lakers' deepest, darkest story won't
go
away, but it's not because of us paparazzi hounding them.
By MARK HEISLER , Times Staff Writer
You asked for it: The Lakers' deepest,
darkest story won't go away, but it's
not because of us paparazzi hounding
them.
Instead, a prominent player keeps
suggesting that the press delve into it.
"You guys know the real problem,"
Shaquille O'Neal recently told reporters, who
were asking about something else entirely.
"You're just scared to write about it."
If that was too subtle for us cowards,
Shaq spelled it out last week to CBS
Sportsline's Mike Kahn:
"What is this, an experiment? Nobody
waited for me when I came into the league.
The pressure was there as soon as I started to
play. That's my job. Why wait? I'm not going
to be here that long that I want to wait years
for him to figure it out."
"Him" is Kobe Bryant, whom O'Neal considers too
wild, a view
that was completely valid last season, especially
after the All-Star game,
when the over-hyped child star began struggling and
throwing up shots
even wilder than usual.
Then, O'Neal was cool about it, never saying a
word or even
making a face. His anger seemed to pop up this season,
as if from a
jack-in-the-box, even as Bryant's game began to smooth
out.
O'Neal slapped Bryant in a preseason skirmish,
made oblique
comments about "playing dumb"--code for taking a long
jump shot
instead of throwing it in to the center--and finally
put it on the record.
Part of it is basketball and deserved. The rest
is psychological and
inevitable.
O'Neal, the designated savior, arrived here
with Bryant, the high
school kid with the game and smile that enchanted
everyone, including
Shaq, who named him "Hollywood" and tried to take him
under his
wing.
That didn't last long. Bryant was his own
person and didn't fit
under even a wing as large as O'Neal's.
If O'Neal was the franchise, Bryant was the
darling. Even
management was transfixed, with Jerry Buss and Jerry
West doting on
the child, Kobe, as much as the man, Shaq.
Next thing you knew, Bryant was the nation's
darling too. He
broke out commercially as teenagers, the target
audience in basketball
marketing, began choosing fellow teens as heroes. The
league and the
networks, desperate for a successor to you-know-who,
went off their
gourds, and Bryant, who never backs down, tried to
live up to it.
After last season, you wondered if he would
ever be able to play
with other players, but now he does, even if he errs
on the wild side.
Of course, there were other things going on . .
. such as Dennis
Rodman. O'Neal sponsored that one, rode it all the way
down and
mourns it still.
"Everybody knew the off-court stuff before he
came in," O'Neal
told CBS Sportsline. "Why were they surprised? It
wasn't a distraction
to me. . . . The L.A. media made more out of Dennis
off the court than
it really was to the team."
Actually, the problems were on the court, where
the Lakers
swooned to No. 5 in the West and started no-showing in
big games
while their thug asked out.
O'Neal has been bashed for everything--missing
free throws, doing
movies, rapping--as if size and fame meant he should
stroll to a title.
Actually, he worked hard at his game, even the free
throws. He
developed a burning desire to win, a growing
inclination to lead and a
welcome habit of speaking his mind, but also a
monumental impatience.
This season, he campaigned for "a thug and a
shooter." Buss
caught the fever, West lost authority and to this day,
nobody seems
willing or able to reassert the command structure.
For all of Bryant's exuberance on the floor,
he's actually shy, a
loner among his teammates, and at 20, one basketball
generation
younger than the 26-year-old O'Neal.
Shaq's upset at him? Kobe can't imagine why.
"It can't be a personality thing because I
really don't know the guy
that much," Bryant says. "I don't really hang around
him that much so.
. . .
"It has to be on the court--and certain things,
I just can't help. You
know what I mean? I go out there and I just play and
I'm trying to learn
and do the best job that I can, whether it's passing
the ball, moving the
ball. I try to do that. I'm trying. That's all I can
say. What do you want
me to do?"
Well, stop breaking off plays that are supposed
to go to O'Neal in
the low post to throw up a 20-foot shot.
Trying may not be doing, but as long as Bryant
makes annual
quantum leaps of a kind we've never seen before, it
will have to suffice.
It would be nice if someone sat the local
prodigies down, talked to
them about who's in charge of what and helped them
talk to each other.
They may be talented youngsters, but they aren't
capable of running
their franchise. This is the NBA, not "Lord of the
Flies."
It isn't a matter of who's right. It's a matter
of understanding that
each has things to learn--and that each is the other's
best bet. For the
Lakers' sake, it would be nice if Shaq and Kobe
figured it out while they
still wear the same uniform.
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