It’s been 10 years since Bryant and Phil Jackson embarked on a remarkable run that would net seven trips to the NBA Finals and five league championships.

In the wake of the Lakers’ 17^th title in 2010 (the franchise won one in 1948 in the National Basketball League, which was far superior to the early NBA), I’m publishing excerpts of a private conversation I had with Kobe Bryant right after the 2000 title, his first with the Lakers. Portions of this interview were later used in the paperback edition of my book about a young Bryant’s hard adjustment to pro hoops, “Mad Game, The NBA Education of Kobe Bryant.”

In that key Game 4 in 2000, Phil Jackson and Tex Winter ordered the Lakers to spread the floor wide to confuse the Indiana Pacers defense. This , and the Lakers’ surprise use of the screen and roll, freed up Bryant to score down the stretch of the key games in the series.

When they coached the Bulls, Winter and Jackson would always wait for key moments in the playoffs to use their spread floor or “open court” look. The Bulls soundly beat the Miami Heat in the 1997 playoffs by spreading the floor and later did the same thing to the Utah Jazz in the championship series that year. Spreading the floor is one of the subtleties in Tex Winter’s triangle offense, just one of the reasons that  Bryant fell in love with it.

Q: Phil Jackson often had long, deep conversations with Shaquille O’Neal. But Phil never had such conversations with you. You kept expecting to talk with him the whole season, but you never got that opportunity to sit down and talk about life with him?

Bryant: No, not to that extent. But I’m sure we’ll have one before next season starts.

Q: Tex Winter’s offensive system has some surprises that worked well for you in the playoffs.

Bryant: The system worked out well for us. In the fourth quarter, the triangle offense sometimes kind of goes out the window a little bit. The system in itself allows us to spread the floor toward the end of the game and penetrate. That works because with the triangle offense everybody is a threat throughout the ball game. So the defense is scared to leave off of guys to try to stop me. They’re scared to leave off of Robert (Horry) and they’re scared to leave Rick (Fox) alone to try to stop me, because they know those guys will make shots.”

Q: In Game 4 against Indiana at the end, that spread floor worked well?

Bryant: “In Game 4 it worked really well. We were able to spread the floor, and I hit a couple of jump shots for us and took us to the brink. Now we are champions.

During the season, I wanted to use the spread floor. I told him, ‘Phil, man, why don’t you open the court?’ He said, ‘We’re not ready for that. We’ll get to that.’ I say open it up. That’s when I can go to work. But I’m glad that we waited till the playoffs to use it.

Q: On the night you won the championship, in Game 6, you also went to a different look at the end of the game. That time you went to screen and roll action, which is something the Lakers hadn’t done all year until the playoffs. It surprised the Pacers?

Bryant: “Yeah, we went back to the same thing that worked for us in Game 4, spreading the floor and penetrating, and then attacking them. I was able to get to the free throw line and knock down some free throws.”

Q: Have you ever had a more emotional day than the day you guys won the championship?

Bryant: The whole day was just emotionally draining. You know what though? It was fun. Emotionally draining, but a lot of fun. Just going through it. Stepping up to the challenge and responding to it mentally. It was a lot of fun.”

Q: What was the main thing you learned? I know it was a long season with a lot of lessons, but what was the most important?

Bryant: The biggest thing, from a basketball standpoint, was learning when to attack.

Q: From a personal standpoint, was your main lesson about sacrifice?

Bryant: Not really. Other people had to sacrifice on this team. I think my teammates did a good job of sacrificing, allowing me to be myself and allowing me to grow. I really didn’t have to make that many individual sacrifices on this team. I just continued to play my game, and my teammates understood that and they played around me.”

Q: How important has Ron Harper been to you in learning to be a better defender?

Bryant: I learn more from Harp about position defense, because he doesn’t really have the ability to move like he used to. He plays position defense very well. Ron helps me out a lot, though.

Q: During games if you started doing too much, Harper would get in your ear and tell you to slow down. How important was that?

Bryant: It was important because we’re communicating. He’s been there before. He knows what to do in certain situations. A lot of times we just talk strategy. He’s like a player/coach. He’s been there with Phil before. He knows what Phil likes to do. He knows what to run when the shot clock is going down,, whether it’s a three pass or a four pass or whatever. Harp has been instrumental in my growth. He’s helped me this year as a basketball player figuring out my teammates, understanding them better.

Q: Harper has been greater for you than any other player you’ve ever played with?

Bryant: Absolutely. Harper has definitely been more of a mentor for me than other players I’ve played with in the past. No question about it.

Q: How was your relationship with Shaq this year?

Bryant: We’ve always had a mutual understanding. Shaq is more vocal than I am, and he knows that. Me, I lead by example. We just do it our separate ways. That’s all we did all season long. It just depended on what we needed in certain situations. So even though we go our separate ways, it all linked up in the end.

Q: Did you guys have a better chemistry this year than in the past?

Bryant: Oh, hell yes. Now we understand one another. We grew up together. We came here together, grew up in the spotlight together, took our knocks together.

Q: What was the problem with other Laker coaches in the past? Did they seem to doubt themselves?

Bryant: I don’t think they were as sharp and had as much confidence as Phil has with his coaching staff. Phil and Tex Winter have been real demanding of me, because they wanted me to figure out about this game. It’s important for somebody to give you the direction. And the coaching staff we have now makes it a lot easier. You can go to them for advice, for game film, anything for improvement. It’s good to have that information from them. You don’t have to seek it out.

Q: Why did the triangle work for you guys?

Bryant: The concept is a team game. Hit the first man that’s open. That makes it harder for teams to guard you, because they can’t key on one man. There’s constant movement of the ball. When you have players with the athletic ability of myself and Shaq, it makes it easier for the other guys on  our team. It’s cool, man. It makes it very difficult for defenses because they cannot relax. As soon as they relax, boom, we’re gone. We’re moving with a purpose.

Q: When you decide to drop out of your offense, to move without using the triangle, do you have to explain that to the coaches later?

Bryant: (laughs) With Tex Winter, yeah. Tex is so pure with the game. ‘Move the ball! Swing the ball!’ We’re like, ‘Tex, man, chill.’ It’s hilarious. But Phil’s assistant coaches are as sharp as Phil is. They don’t play around. They know what needs to be done and they do it. They sit there watching the game like hound dogs, making sure you do everything fundamentally correct. Especially Tex. Look at Tex. He’s always the only one with a worried look on his face. He’s got that look 24 hours a day. He’s a perfectionist.

Q: You had said that you hoped to be coached by Tex before that ever happened. It was strange that you sensed Tex Winter would coach you long before it ever happened. That was almost a mystical thing with you.

Bryant: It’s kind of weird. I had always had this feeling that I was going to play in this system, with the triangle. I had a feeling I would. I told Eddie Jones that when we played together here. I told him, it would be nice to get this triangle here.

Q: When you first met Phil in his hotel room after he was hired as coach of the Lakers, what was it like?

Bryant: I was like, ‘Let’s go.’ I don’t want to talk. Let’s do something!’

Q: What did you think of adding Brian Shaw to the team last year? What did you think when he arrived? Did you know him?

Bryant: I knew he owed me a pizza. I shot his lights out when I was like 12. He played for an Italian team in Rome back then (1989-90), and my father played for another Italian team. We got to shoot, and I shot his lights out. That was the first thing I said when I saw him with the Lakers. Because I didn’t know he was coming to our team. Then I saw him at the gym, and I was like, ‘Yo, Brian, where’s my pizza, man?’ He started laughing.”

Q: Kobe, who plays you the toughest, makes you play your best game?

Bryant: Eric Snow in Philly, he makes me play tough. He pressures me a little bit, has quick hands. The Sixers in general play me solid defensively. He won’t this next year, though.

Q: When you came back from injury last fall, a lot of people figured Phil was going to jump in and try to tell you what to do. But he didn’t do that?

Bryant: He let me do my own thing. It was important because he understood that’s how I am. I  like to do my own thing. He knows and has the trust in me that I’m gonna be prepared.

Q: Some players on the team said he was allowing you to change yourself?

Bryant: I didn’t even think about it. I just went with it.

Q; Phil brought in George Mumford, the sports psychologist, the Zen teacher and tai chi expert, to work with you guys. How was that?

Bryant: It was good because it gave people a chance to talk about things that might be on their mind, the hype, the pressure. I think it’s good for them to talk about those things. It increased our performance a lot. It really has. I’m surprised other teams don’t do that kKind of stuff. Working with George helps us to get issues out of the way before they even start.

Q: The pressure of performance, of the playoffs, can be destructive to players and to teams?

Bryant: Yeah, once it creeps into your team and your teammates, it can be destructive. Some people know how to handle it, some people don’t. The pressure can get to you. You got to know how to suck it up.

Q: Most NBA players don’t want to even acknowledge pressure. It’s a macho thing.

Bryant: The pressure is there, the pressure is there. But it’s how you deal with it. When you feel it, it’s how you deal with it.

Q: NBA players have tremendous pressure on them during the playoffs. If they play well, their futures will be successful. If they don’t, their stars will fall.

Bryant: You just give it your best. You prepare yourself as well as you can. You go out there and execute as well as you can. Then you sleep at night. That’s all. Then you get up the next day and do the same thing. Keep it simple.

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, recently released by ESPN Books.

So how could you even consider him the All-Time MVP of the NBA Playoffs?

Well, you have to at least consider Baylor among the nominees along with Boston’s great Bill Russell (the centerpiece of 11 championship teams), Chicago’s Michael Jordan, and a select few others. By the way, the number of once and former Lakers on this list is strong: Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal, George Mikan…

Mikan? Hey, the dude powered Minneapolis to six championships back when the lane was shaped like a keyhole (yes, that’s why they still call it the “key,” although the lane was long ago widened and no longer looks remotely like a keyhole).

So you have to nominate Mikan, just as you have to nominate Baylor, who was the motherlode of talent that took extremely weak Lakers teams all the way to the league championship series. To look at Baylor, we’ll consider this brief excerpt from my biography, “Jerry West.” After all, West and Baylor teamed together to make the Lakers one of the most consistently good teams in the history of pro hoops. They just couldn’t beat Bill Russell and the Celtics.

ELEGANT ELGIN

The Minneapolis Lakers had made Baylor the first pick of the ‘58 draft, not long after he had led the little University of Seattle to the NCAA championship game against powerhouse Kentucky, coached by Adolph Rupp. Baylor was called for a run of fouls in that game and his little team lost that title game. It would start a run of frustrations for the Magnificent Elgin.

Baylor, a Washington, D.C., native, sent his uncle to negotiate the contract, a $22,000 deal. As a rookie he had averaged 24.7 points and 15 rebounds for 1958-59. He was second in the league in the most minutes played and led the Lakers in assists, scoring, and rebounding. Midway through that rookie season, he scored 55 in a game, the third highest total in NBA history.

The team clunked along to a 33-39 record, while the roster learned to play with Baylor. By the play-offs, his Lakers teammates had gotten the hang of it, and that’s when Baylor showed his true value.  First, Minneapolis dumped Detroit, then Baylor and company got everybody’s attention by beating defending NBA champion St. Louis for the right to meet Boston and Russell for the 1959 league title.

The Celtics promptly swept the Lakers, but everybody knew there was an amazing new force among them. “Baylor was clearly the most exciting player in the league,” said his coach, former Laker great Jim Pollard.

The Lakers quickly hustled to increase his money to $50,000 a year, a huge figure at the time. Baylor opened that next season by scoring 52 against Detroit. A few nights later, on November 8, 1959, he rang up 64 points against the Celtics, breaking the league’s single-game record set a decade earlier by Jumpin’ Joe Fulks.

With almost no help, Baylor couldn’t lift Minneapolis to the championship series for 1960, but that off-season the club drafted Jerry West and announced that it was moving to Los Angeles for the 1960-61 season.

If people in Los Angeles didn’t know much about pro basketball, Baylor gave them the first big clue that November 15 when he scored 71 points, a new NBA single-game league record, against the Knicks in Madison Square Garden. The news would hit Los Angeles like a lightning bolt, giving sports fans the idea that they needed to get out and see this talented Lakers team.

The veterans around the league, though, weren’t surprised by anything Baylor did. “You couldn’t defend Elgin,” explained Detroit guard Gene Shue. “He had such good outside shot. He could stare you down. He had a quick jab step. He would catch the ball at the top of the key or further out and he’d get you going back and forth. He’d just explode by you. He had a nervous twitch. He was very, very hard to defend. Not only was he a good outside shooter, but he had a good deceptive first step. He had incredible strength and could hang in the air with the ball. When you put all those things together you couldn’t stop him.”

Baylor supposedly had gotten his name at birth when his father glanced at his wristwatch and liked the sound of the name on the face. And later, his college coach, John Castellani would say, “Elgin has more moves than a clock.”

Driving to the basket, he would leave the floor, often not quite sure what he wanted to do, simply relying on his hang time to open his options. Because he was an excellent passer, he could usually find someplace to put the ball for a teammate. Failing that, he could resort to a lay-up, as he seldom chose to dunk.

Even so, Baylor was no gliding featherweight. He was 6-foot-5 and 225 pounds, a powerful rebounder with another special gift for following his own shots and correcting the misses.

“Elgin was very strong,” said John Radcliffe, the Lakers’ longtime scorekeeper. “He would get bumped all the time, but it never seemed to throw him off stride. Even in the air, he would get bumped a lot, but his concentration was so good that the shot would still go where he wanted it to go. He used the glass a lot. I never saw him dunk. It wasn’t the thing to do in those days.”

“Baylor was really the first to have body control in the air,” former Laker and longtime NBA broadcaster Hot Rod Hundley said. “He’d hang there and shoot these little flip shots.”

“He just might be the best player I ever saw,” Chick Hearn offered. “He was doing things that Dr. J. made famous 20 years later, the hang time and so forth. But Elgin didn’t have the TV exposure. Nobody did in those days.”

Added to Baylor’s dynamic mix was the curiosity of his nervous tick, a twitching of his face, leaving defenders confused as Baylor headed around them to the basket. “We used to kid about it,” recalled Johnny “Red” Kerr. “If he gave the nervous tic to the left, he was going left. If he gave it to the right, he was gonna go to his right. But when he shook both ways, that’s when you fell on your ass, and he was gonna go around you.”

“Some players, they struggle when they score,” Gene Shue said. “Elgin, his instincts were so good. He kept you off balance. There wasn’t one forward in the league that wanted to play Elgin. Elgin was one of those players that could embarrass you. He could do 60 on you. And you couldn’t stop him.”

The opportunity to play with a talent like Baylor was one of the major strokes of good fortune in West’s career, something he would genuinely cherish. West came to rely on his multi-talented teammate that first year.

“It was an honor to play with him,” West said later. “I never considered Elgin Baylor as someone I competed against. He is without a doubt one of the truly great players to play this game. I hear people talking about great players today, and I don’t see many that compare to him, I’ll tell you that. He had that wonderful, magical instinct for making plays, for doing things that you just had to watch. I learned from him, from watching him. I was young, wanting to learn. I had an incredible appreciation for other people’s talents. It was incredible to watch Elgin play.”

Baylor’s performances seemed to entrance his less-talented Lakers teammates, especially the forwards, Tommy Hawkins and Rudy LaRusso. Which left little doubt that the Lakers were Baylor’s team, on and off the court.

“Tommy Hawkins was the hardest worker on the team, but he always had trouble getting the ball to go in the hole,” said John Radcliffe, the Lakers’ longtime scorekeeper. “He was a tremendous leaper but he had small hands. He and Rudy LaRusso worked so hard for Elgin. They’d battle and battle, setting picks, getting rebounds, whatever it took.”

Baylor’s mastery extended far beyond the floor with those young teams in Los Angeles, explained Merv Harris, who covered pro basketball for the old LA Herald Examiner: “It was fascinating to see the domination of his personality over that team. Elgin was the boss. He was the most physically dominating player, and his status began with that. Whenever Elgin wanted to play poker, they played poker. Wherever Elgin wanted to eat, they went to eat. Whatever Elgin wanted to talk about, they talked about.”

And in that age before trash talking became an art in the NBA, Elgin pioneered that element of the game, as well. “Elgin knew he was good and he’d let you know,” Gene Shue recalled with a chuckle. “He did it out on the court. He was really an unstoppable player.” “Our nickname for Elgin was Motormouth,” Hot Rod Hundley said. “He never stopped talking. He knew everything, or he thought he did. We had a lot of fun.”

For the Baylor and the Lakers, 1961-62 was one of those golden, fun-loving seasons in which almost everything seemed to go right.

“It was an enjoyable year,” Baylor remembered. “Our camaraderie was great. On and off the court, we did things together. We enjoyed one another. As a team we gave the effort every night.”

Baylor turned in one of the most remarkable performances in NBA history — and he did so while serving his country in the armed forces.

After opening the season on another scoring tare, Baylor was called into reserve duty with the army near Fort Lewis, Washington. As a result, he was able to appear in only 48 regular-season games. He made the lineup mostly on weekends or with an occasional pass, and when he did, he was fresh, ready, and virtually unstoppable. His 38.2 scoring average was second only to that of the prodigious Wilt Chamberlain, who averaged better than 50 points per game that season.

Even with Baylor’s intermittent schedule, the Lakers won the Western Division with a 54-26 record, 11 games better than Cincinnati and Oscar Robertson, and whipped Detroit 4-2 in the division finals series. For the league championship they faced the Celtics, who had ousted Chamberlain and the Warriors in the Eastern playoffs.

The series opened in dank, smelly Boston Garden, where the smoky haze hung over the floor. In that diffused light, the air took on a green hue. It was clearly Bill Russell’s lair, and the Celtics emphasized that in Game 1 with a 122-108 victory. The Lakers’ edge was that their legs were younger, and they used that the next night to deliver a 129-122 upset in Game 2.

A record crowd of 15,180 packed the L.A. Sports Arena for Game 3 on April 10. The Lakers had never seen the place so crazy. All night the noise fed their adrenaline. In the closing seconds, the Lakers were down 115-111 when West scored four points to tie it. Then Boston’s Sam Jones tried to inbound the ball to Bob Cousy with four seconds remaining. Guarding Cousy, West laid back, then surged into the passing lane, stole it, and drove 30 feet for the winning lay-up, 117-115. Boston coach Red Auerbach complained to the refs that it was impossible for West to dribble the distance to score with only four seconds left. The Lakers bench had feared as much. Everyone there shouted for West to pull up and shoot. But he kept digging for the goal and laid the ball in. It fell through the net as the buzzer sounded.

“I had deflected the ball on the run,” West recalled. “I knew I would have enough time. Most things in my life have been instinctive. I played basketball that way. I always knew what the clock was.”

Unfortunately, the Celtics never allowed dreams to linger. They promptly killed any thoughts of prolonged jubilation in LA by taking Game 4, 115-103, and headed back to Boston with the series tied at two. There, it was all Baylor in Game 5. Despite fouling out, he scored 61 points (the record for an NBA Finals game) and had 22 rebounds, while the Celtics’ defensive specialist, Satch Sanders, contemplated another line of work.

“Elgin was just a machine,” Sanders said later.

But his was the kind of performance that elevates Baylor onto the list of nominees. Unfortunately, his Lakers fell short in overtime of Game 7 of that 1962 title battle.

His LA teams also lost Finals series to Boston in  ’63, ‘65, ‘66, ‘68, and ‘69. His Lakers teams also fell in seven games to the New York Knicks in the famous 1970 championship series.

Baylor suffered what was thought to be a career-ending knee injury in the 1965 playoffs, but he defied doctors’ expectations and worked his way back to compete the next season.

Baylor finally retired early in the 1971-72 season, the year the Los Angeles Lakers finally won a championship.

Time has obscured Baylor’s major performances early in his career, especially his superb showing in the 1962 championship series. But he deserves to be considered among the game’s all-time best when it comes to playoff performances.

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, recently released by ESPN Books.

That was Tex Winter’s description of the coaching staff’s relationship with Bynum. Not mine. And that was almost two years ago, well before Winter suffered a debilitating stroke.

At the time, the Lakers were nursing their humiliation at the hands of the Boston Celtics in the 2008 championship series. Bynum’s approach was clearly a function of the disconnect between coach Phil Jackson and basketball operations chief Jim Buss.

As Winter explained at the time, Bynum was Jim Buss’s prize draft pick. Buss was apparently concerned about how Jackson was handling Bynum. In fact, Buss would advise Bynum to hire his own big man’s coach because Jackson wasn’t a good coach for big men.

Sister Jeanie Buss, well known as Phil’s girlfriend, questioned her brother’s take on the situation by pointing out Jackson’s large success with Shaquille O’Neal and lesser talented post players in Chicago.

Jeanie Buss had long confided to friends that her brother was the main impetus for the team’s firing Jackson in 2004. With trust between Jackson and Jim Buss already at a minimum, it’s not hard to figure that Jim Buss’s coaching advice for Bynum damaged the relationship further.

Then there was Bynum’s decision to involve his own doctors in his knee injury that season, rather than relying on what the team had to offer in terms of medical support. Frankly, it’s not all that unusual for pro athletes to seek medical advice outside the team. But the sum of the situation left Bynum oddly distanced from the coaching staff, Winter confided at the time.

Two years have passed, and Bynum’s situation with the team has perhaps improved. But the internal trust level in general is not great with the Lakers, so you have to wonder.

Recent games have shown that Bynum’s return to the lineup from his recent injury will be key for the Lakers prospects in this spring’s playoffs.

Even with the Lakers posting the top record in the Western Conference, the Twin Towers look of Bynum and c/f Pau Gasol has brought mixed reviews, but this much is clear: With the two big men, the Lakers have been able to overpower a lot of opponents. Though at times it has seemed that the best pairing is either one of the big men with sixth man Lamar Odom.

The truth is, questions such as these often never find definitive answers in the NBA. Some nights, Bynum and Gasol will play very well together. Other nights, the Twin Towers will have their issues.

As it stands now, those questions are small beside the questions about basic trust within the organization. There have been all sorts of strange signals and communications coming out of the organization this season.

And while Jeanie Buss has tried desperately to put a good public face on it, the situation seems fragile at best. Jerry Buss recently tried to pose that it was normal for Jackson to finish out the season without a contract for next year. But it’s not.

Consider the Denver Nuggets. They found themselves in a similar situation with coach George Karl and reached an agreement with him right before the All Star Weekend just so they could avoid just such late-season craziness as the Lakers are facing right now.

As Shaquille O’Neal told me a few years back, he felt no trust in dealing with Jerry Buss, had no relationship with the man. Now Buss is known for being quite loyal to those with whom he shares trust and warm feelings. But that’s not the case with these Lakers, no matter how many coats of paint you put on it.

Jackson himself has sought to emphasize in his recent public comments that the Lakers only have five or six players under contract for next season. The last time Jackson was fired, the team tried to make a transition to a running team. Are they preparing to do the same now? Has the decision already been made? That’s a fair and legitimate question.

Are the Busses quitting on these playoffs even before they happen? Another fair question.

And is Bynum’s return from injury a wild card in the hand that’s being dealt by the Busses? Another fair question.

And in all of this where stands Kobe Bryant, who can opt out of his Lakers contract after the season? A truly intriguing question.

If this Lakers season disintegrates into the foul gas of mistrust, the blame will lie squarely with Jerry and Jim Buss. Now, as an owner, Jerry Buss has been hugely successful, and he’s earned plenty of favor with Lakers fans. So it may just be that he and son Jim would be forgiven for ditching Jackson’s last team that runs the Triangle offense.

As a friend of Jeanie Buss’s said earlier in the season, Jim and Jerry Buss are gambling that fans won’t complain too loudly if they end the Phil Jackson era with the Lakers. Maybe not.

Of course, all this conjecture winds up lining the bottom of the bird cage, if Bynum returns from injury and the team gathers strength down the stretch.

In the meantime, all Lakers fans can do is wonder. And try not to get a whiff of the mistrust that blows in the winds of El Segundo.

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, recently released by ESPN Books.s

He wouldn’t go there to be part of a side act, says a basketball source who has known James well and worked with him since childhood. “And the Clippers are definitely a side act.

“He loves being a part of the show,” says the source. “And in L.A., that’s the Lakers. They’re the main show.”

James absolutely loves the California lifestyle, and if he were to make a move away from the Cleveland Cavaliers, California is the place he’d most likely want to go, the source said. He wouldn’t have to be a savior for the Lakers, wouldn’t have to inhabit the fishbowl lifestyle that he does elsewhere. He certainly would face less pressure in L.A. than in New York or even Cleveland.

Still, James will likely remain a Cav for next season, simply because the odds seem to grow daily making the Cavaliers the favorite to win an NBA title this June.

Last year, after Cleveland lost to Orlando in the playoffs, veteran Orlando assistant coach Brendan Malone said it was obvious that the Cavs needed scoring help from the forward position. They have that help now, with GM Danny Ferry’s acquisition of Antawn Jamison in February.

Another key question mark will be the health of veteran center Shaquille O’Neal. If O’Neal can overcome his thumb injury to return to the Cavs roster for the playoffs, the Cavs have size in O’Neal and backup center Zydrunas Ilgauskas to match up with the Lakers, should both teams reach the championship round.

If somehow, the Cavs reach the NBA Finals against the Lakers and lose, there’s little chance that James would try to force a trade to the Lakers. As much as James might want to be a Laker, that scenario would simply not be acceptable, the source said.

What scenario might bring James to the purple and gold? If both the Lakers and the Cavs lost in the playoffs, that might open a situation where James would aggressively attempt to force such a trade.

That, of course, would mean the failure of the two teams with the best record in each conference. Playing for the Lakers would be James’ ideal scenario, the source said, but only that narrow set of circumstances would make it feasible.

Those who have taken exception to my reports that James has quietly explored his Lakers option through an entertainment agent have cited salary cap issues as the obstacle to such a scenario.

Actually, James is a player with tremendous power. The main obstacle to such a move will be what happens on the court, as it should be.

Still, it’s interesting to ponder the result. How would James fit with Lakers star Kobe Bryant? Would there be enough basketballs for the two of them?

James would have no problem deferring to Bryant, said the source. “LeBron has no problem deferring if the player he’s deferring to is worthy.” The best proof of that lies in their Olympic play together.

One issue might be getting James to fit his game into the triangle offense run by Lakers coach Phil Jackson, even though James and Jackson are said to have high regard for each other.

James, however, would be a dangerous wing in the triangle, playing behind the defense much as Michael Jordan did in Chicago. The triangle seeks to create an imbalance by “filling the corner” on the strong side with a great shooter, which would leave James facing four-on-four from the weak side, with the defense spread out.

Good ball movement would mean James could find nice lanes to the basket.

Oh, well. L.A. is sort of a fantasy for James, one that would require certain developments. Still, stranger things have happened in the NBA, and the league is headed for a very strange off-season.

MORE TRIANGLE NOTES

What did the Lakers learn about the triangle offense during Kobe Bryant’s recent injury time? I posed that question to center Pau Gasol.

Without Bryant, the team got a different view of the triangle and more opportunity to explore options, he replied. “We can search more into it.”

And learn different things. “The ball moves a little more,” Gasol said, echoing a frequent complaint that triangle guru Tex Winter used to make about Bryant. “We can search more through the triangle and we can get more options. It’s made for that.”

Gasol acknowledged that the team has a different relationship with the triangle this season, mainly because of new teammate Ron Artest.

“Ron is trying to figure out the triangle and where to be on the court and how to have an effect offensively,” Gasol remarked. “Little by little he’s getting there, and he’s doing a good job.”

THE SIMPLE MAN

For years now, Spurs center Tim Duncan has been a favorite of many of the NBA’s legends and retired greats such as 11-time Celtics champion Bill Russell.

“I had a nice little interview with Bill Russell, and he’s always told me that he’s a big fan of mine,” Duncan said. “That’s an incredible honor to hear that from someone like Bill Russell. That’s the main guy.”

Why do the legends prize his game so much, I asked Duncan. “Probably just the simplicity of my game,” he said. “I’ve been blessed to win four championships over the years with that simplicity. I hope that’s it.”

MAGIC

Magic Johnson continues to rave about the play of Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant. I asked Durant about the props. “I’ve met Magic a couple of times,” he said, “and I really admire how much he loves the game. You can see it in how he speaks, how he carries himself when he talks about basketball… You watch old tapes of him, he’s always smiling and he’s always competitive. Hopefully, I’ll live up to that.”

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, recently released by ESPN Books.

YO, KOBE, WASSUP?

Never mind that the interviewer is a 44-year-old white guy. Kobe Bryant still greets him with a soul shake—a little skin, then the hooked fingertips and the tug. Very smooth.
And why not?
Life these days is a weave drill for the 18-year-old Bryant. Just months after taking his last high school exam, he is a member of the Los Angeles Lakers and seems well on his way to making a success of his brassy move to become one of the youngest players in National Basketball Association history.
“How ya’ doin’?” he asks, reflecting a level of people skills that could someday rival Michael Jordan’s.
Yes, everything at the moment seems very cool for the young Mr. Bryant. He’s even found answers for dealing with the littlest bit of adversity he has faced in the first games of his pro career.
First, there were the injuries that got his season off to a late start. Then, even when he did return to active duty, he found Lakers coach Del Harris using him sparingly.
“I’m just taking it as a learning experience, sitting back and getting to watch the guys,” he says. “You see so much sitting on the bench. . . It helps you mature because you just have to sit back and learn and observe and listen.
“I think it helps me mature as an individual as well as a basketball player, to be able to sit there throughout the crunch time. Even though you’re sweating and saying, ‘Man, I want to be out there,’ you just have to be patient and just learn.”
His first action didn’t come until the fourth game of the season, against the New York Knicks in Madison Square Garden, when he notched his first pro score with a free throw.
However, his first field goal—a three-pointer—didn’t come until the next night, in a road loss at Charlotte. In fact, Bryant scored five quick points in a second quarter appearance against the Hornets, but he also rang up three quick turnovers, including a play where he stepped out of bounds in his eagerness to get to the basket and dunk.
Asked about the play, Bryant said, “When I caught the ball in the corner, at first I said, ‘I’m gonna shoot it. All right! I’m gonna stroke it.’ But then I saw this big ol lane under the hoop and I started lickin’ my chops. I said, ‘Oh, man, I’m gonna finish this.’ But I was overexcited. My back step was a little too long. That was just being overanxious getting to the hoop. I’m like, ‘Man, if I can just get to that block, I can get this dunk! I’m there! I’m home. I’m free.’ So that was a little overanxious right there.”
He took his first bucket in similar stride: “It felt good,” he said. “When I first took that three point shot, I believed it was gonna go down. First it felt good, then it felt a little short. I kinda leaned back, eyein’ it. When it went down, I was like, “Shewww! My first three-pointer.’”
“He’s gonna be a good pro,” said Lakers assistant coach Larry Drew. “He has a lot to learn about the NBA game. He’s been battling injuries, but he’s coming along.
“He loves to play. He wants to be out there regardless. But he understands that this is a learning process and a slow process. He’ll get his chance.”
Obviously the main lessons the 6-6 Bryant will have to learn are defensive, which is true for most NBA rookies. At times during his early appearances, he has seemed lost on the floor.
“I feel like I’m getting a lot better,” he says. “I’m learning how to chase guys around screens and so forth.”
Defending the pro style high screen and roll is a little bit of a different wrinkle, Bryant says, “Especially if you haven’t done it before. I’m learning, and I think I’m getting better at it.”
His progress there could be critical to his team’s playoff hopes, although his coaches are quick to defray any pressure. Still, the first month of the season has found the Laker bench struggling to score. In the loss to Charlotte, it produced just two points outside of Bryant’s five.
Which means it’s understandable if the Laker coaches are watching his development. Bryant seems to be able to get his shot just about anywhere on the floor.
“You know, I grew up in Philadelphia,” he says with a laugh. “You go down to the playground, you play. If you can’t get your own shot, you can’t play. So that started at an early age.”
And it means that Bryant already has a clear vision of his expanded role—providing scoring off the bench. “I think of me stepping in there and being young and just having so much energy coming off the sideline, hopefully I can be a spark plug,” he says.
Besides learning patience and defense, there are other adjustments for an 18-year-old in the land of big paychecks. One of the most challenging is Los Angeles itself.
“Because of the lifestyle,” Bryant says. “With there being so many distractions. But I think that if you can remain focused on your goal and what you’re there for and what got you there, you should be okay.”
It helps perhaps that he grew up a child of affluence, the son of longtime pro hoops player Joe “Jelly Bean” Bryant, who played in the NBA and in Europe. His parents moved from their suburban Philadelphia home to Los Angeles just to aid in that adjustment.
Have you been calling home during this trip? an interviewer asked during the Lakers’ recent East Coast road trip.
“Off and on, yeah, we’ve been talking,” he says of his parents and pauses before adding with a laugh, “My mother calls me all the time.”
His father, meanwhile, spends much of his effort counseling patience about playing time. “My father tells me, ‘Your time will come,’” Bryant says.
Indeed it will. Kobe Bryant will play a decade in the NBA and still be only 28 years old, something of a frightening thought for other teams.
For now, though, it’s a matter of proceeding cautiously.
“He’s gonna be fine,” new teammate Shaquille O’Neal says, “once he gets a chance to go out there and shine and do his thing. He’s gonna be fine.”

Roland Lazenby is the author of “Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon,” set to be released by Random House/ESPN in February.