Kobe beats Jordan in practice, or so says Phil Jackson

 

“We’re talking about practice man. We’re talking about practice. We’re talking about practice. We’re not talking about the game. We’re talking about practice. When you come to the arena, and you see me play, you’ve seen me play right, you’ve seen me give everything I’ve got, but we’re talking about practice right now… Hey I hear you, it’s funny to me too, hey it’s strange to me too but we’re talking about practice man, we’re not even talking about the game, when it actually matters, we’re talking about practice… How the hell can I make my teammates better by practicing?”

The author of that rant is Allen Iverson, a forthcoming Manila visitor next month who went off on May 7, 2002, four days after his Philadelphia 76ers got creamed 120-87 by the Boston Celtics and thereby got eliminated from a first-round Eastern Conference playoff matchup. Paul Pierce went off for 46 points in that game, going 8-for-10 from three-point range, as Iverson and his mates didn’t have a chance.

Iverson went on that rant after then-Sixers coach Larry Brown, who just the previous year led AI and the team to the NBA finals against the LA Lakers and also won Coach of the Year honors, talked about Iverson and his aversion to practice. Iverson was then asked by media guys about what he thought of his coach’s remarks. Of course, the six-foot fireball didn’t need much provocation and readily went off. He failed to see that Brown, being the teacher that he was, was pointing not at AI’s need to practice his skills but simply to practice plays that his mentor wanted to use during games, and those plays would not be properly executed if not practiced. 

The stormy relationship would end after six years when Brown resigned after the 2003 season, and the Sixers never got a whiff of the finals again.

Iverson, of course, was one of the latter-day players who was not a particularly good model to fellow players regarding practice. He won’t be used by coaches as an example when preaching about the virtues of preparation and practice.

In contrast, there’s one modern-day player who may be raised up there on the pedestal when it came to training and practice to get himself prepared: Kobe Bryant.

His former coach Phil Jackson, now the president of the New York Knicks, said in a recent interview with the New York Post that nobody worked harder in practice than Bryant. Jackson in fact said Kobe has the legendary player he also coached, Michael Jordan, beat decisively in one important aspect: dedication to training.

As he was asked by Post scribe Steve Serby if his current Knicks top man Carmelo Anthony can use Bryant as model, Jackson answered: “No.  No one can approach that. I don’t expect anybody to be able to model their behavior after that, although Kobe modeled his behavior a lot about Michael Jordan, but he went beyond Michael in his attitude towards training, and I know Mike would probably question me saying that, but he did.”

Of course, before we get into a debate again, that doesn’t necessarily mean Bryant is the better player, or that Jordan was even a bad practice player. It was just an honest statement of fact that has been used as a testimony, verified and affirmed by Jackson, whose knowledge and familiarity with the two legendary players can’t be surpassed by anybody.

It’s easy to understand why Bryant practiced as hard as he did. He is one of the most competitive and driven athletes, let alone basketball players, in history. In high school, for example, there was a story that he got up at 5:00 am to practice and also forced his teammates to play him one-on-one up to 100 points.  Can you beat that? A normal youngster would just ask his playmate to compete up to 12 points or thereabouts, but 100?

(RELATED: Holding Court – Is Kobe better than Mike?)

Another story has it that during Team USA’s pre-Olympic training camp in 2012, Kobe surprised an Olympic trainer named Robert, as an @NBA_Reddit link related. The guy was about to call it a day at about 3:30 am after watching TV, and when he was about to drift off, his cell phone rang and saw it was Kobe calling. 

“Hey, Rob, I hope I’m not disturbing anything, right?” the voice at the other line said.

“Uhh, no, what’s up Kob?” Robert answered.

“Just wondering if you could just help me out with some conditioning work, that’s all.” It was already 4:15 a.m. at that point.

“Yeah sure, I’ll see you in the facility in a bit.”

The trainer then gathered his gear and got out of the hotel in about 20 minutes, and when he got to the main practice floor, there was Kobe, alone, and drenched as if he just came out of the swimming pool, only it was not water but his own sweat dripping all over him.

As he grew older, Kobe actually shifted his attention to his physical conditioning to prolong his career. He lost 20 pounds in the 2007 offseason, and although the Lakers lost to Boston that year when Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen joined forces, Bryant went on to capture two more titles the next two years (the second in 2010 though was helped a little by luck when then-Celtic starting center Kendrick Perkins tore his ACL right in what was supposed to be Boston’s clinching game in the finals, enabling a Laker comeback in seven games).

(RELATED: Ron Harper: Nobody can beat Michael Jordan)

Before that aforementioned Olympics in London, Bryant also dropped 16 pounds (who wouldn’t with the guy’s love for workouts?), and this ploy of losing weight while one gets on in years has caught on with other elite players.  

This summer alone, LeBron James went on a 67-day diet program and has lost lot of poundage in an attempt to keep his quickness as he pushes 30. Melo himself and Dwyane Wade have also gotten slimmer as well.  

And this is all because of the influence of a peer who has been known to be a stickler to keeping himself in shape to enable him to keep up, if not stay ahead of the pack.

Knicks’ chances

Phil Jackson was naturally asked about his new and old team (remember, Jax was an original New York Knick and won two championships as a player with the Gotham City squad in 1970 and 1973).

Jackson honestly says he has not visualized winning a championship in New York – yet – as he’s still looking to see how the team’s going to work.

“I’m still looking to see how this team’s going to operate, with great anticipation – how we’re gonna play our guards, how we’re gonna play our big men. I’m encouraged by the dedication they’re showing pre-camp, and their thirst and hunger to get out there on the basketball court and to start playing. [New coach] Derek’s [Fisher] gonna figure this out, that’s his goal as a coach. And I gotta let him do that on his own, because that’s his proving ground, and I’ve got great confidence in his ability,” Jackson explains.

Fisher, who retired after playing his last season last year with Oklahoma City, will have to do that with a cast led by Carmelo Anthony, of course, and such players as carryovers Amare Stoudemire, Andrea Bargnani, Iman Shumpert, J.R. Smith, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Pablo Prigioni, rookie Cleanthony Early as well as Samuel Dalembert, Jose Calderon and Shane Larkin, all of whom came from Dallas in the offseason trade that sent Tyson Chandler and Raymond Felton to the Mavericks.

The trademark triangle offense utilized by Jackson’s teams was perceived as somewhat incompatible to Anthony’s style of play, but the Knicks’ new basketball boss says that on the contrary, Melo’s game should be enhanced by the triangle and he’s on board with it.  

“It’ll give him opportunity to be a passer, a rebounder, and probably easier spots to score from than he’s had before. I think. I hope that’s true for a lot of the players,” Jackson asserts. “(And) all we talked about in our negotiation was, ‘I’d like not to have to feel like I have to carry the load to score every night.’ He wants some help.”

He says the accuracy of a comment by the Atlanta Hawks’ GM-on-leave Danny Ferry that Melo can shoot the lights out but can hurt his team in other ways and thus may not be worth $20 million (actually an average of $24.4 million for five years for him to stay), will depend on a few factors.

“I think there’s probably 15 players in the NBA that are in very similar position. I don’t know if all of ‘em are paid $20 million, but the coaches and GMs are talking about it in those type of terms – how much does this guy hurt your team, or hurt the game flow because he’s trying to score. The attempt to score, the need to score, the pressure that he feels he has to score… Does he take away from the team’s game?  That’s what Danny’s talking about there. And that’s where Carmelo’s gonna move forward this year in that situation – the ball can’t stop. The ball has to continually move. It moves, or goes to the hoop on a shot or a drive or something like that. In our offense, that’s part of the process of getting players to play in that rhythm,” Jackson says.

Jackson adds that assuming the Knicks’ top basketball position is part of his desire to “give back” what he has accumulated over a lifetime, beyond the money he’s going to make with the Knicks.

“It’s time to do that. And my fiancee, Jeannie Buss, has been whacking away at me for a while about, ‘You’re just kinda sitting on a lot of information.’  I have friends here, I have history here. This is a place that has the ability and the willingness to want to come back. It’s a priority for this fan core that we get back and become a competitive franchise. So all those things I thought were grounds for a wonderful return.  I know that we were hampered in a lot of ways by salary cap and issues that went along with that, but I thought there’s gonna be a chance for this team to be really good.”

Soon?

“I don’t know what soon is. Is soon this year? Is soon next year? Is soon the year after? I see it in a sequence of 1, 2, 3… A, B, C. We’re starting out with our A this year, we’re gonna move forward next year. This year we’re gonna show people who we are. We’re gonna get our players accustomed to how to play together, what kind of culture we’re gonna have, develop a chemistry that we want, and shed what’s not gonna help us get on the way and to move forward in the process,” the 11-time champion coach says.  “I don’t know (if Step B is contender stage). I wish I had an answer to that one. We don’t know what’s gonna happen on the process. We have our eye on the target and the goal. That’s what’s important, and we know how to get there.”

When asked when he expects New York to become a champion again, Jackson says the Knicks would have to take the necessary steps to get to that stage, unlike his Lakers and Bulls squads whom he felt were ready-made to win championships when he took over.

“We would love to do it this year. When I went from retirement the last time to the Lakers in ’99-2000, I believed that I could win a championship in the first year. We had the personnel to do that. When I took the job in Chicago in ’90, I thought we could win a championship,” he says. “This team hasn’t taken the subsequent steps to get to the place where you vault yourself from not in the playoffs to a championship.  So we have to go through some of those steps… It’s a day-to-day thing, it’s about every day doing the right thing. There’s no doubt that good fortune has to be a big part of it. I always refer back to a statement about Napoleon looking for a general to replace someone that’s fallen. And they gave him all the benefits of this general and all this stuff, and he goes in the end and says: ‘Is he lucky? Does good fortune follow him?’ And that’s really a part of it. And so we’re looking for people we think are lucky, good fortune follows them, and we think that’ll happen here.” Will Phil Jackson be that lucky charm for the Knicks?Disaster completed

The country’s Asian Games basketball campaign that started auspiciously has ended in a disaster, and the disaster was completed with our Gilas Pilipinas team’s 78-71 defeat to dethroned champion China, relegating the Filipinos into a battle with Mongolia for seventh place, which figures to be the worst finish by any Philippine team in the Asiad.

The Filipinos, after suffering two consecutive setbacks in the quarterfinals, 77-68 in an upset to Qatar and 97-95 in a heartbreaking loss to perennial tormentor South Korea, were hoping to get into the semifinals through the backdoor with a win against Kazakhstan. This was after the Kazakhs upset the Qataris 65-57 after the Filipinos’ defeat to the Koreans, giving back Gilas a window of hope as long as they beat the Kazakhs by at least 11 points.

If they did, they would have ended up with a plus-2 quotient, Qatar plus-1 and Kazakhstan minus-3 based on the point differentials in the games involving the three teams, which would have been tied with 1-2 records. Some quarters felt it was doable because the locals beat the Kazakhs 88-58 in last year’s FIBA Asia Championship here in Manila.  

But the Filipinos’ remaining medal hopes went down in tatters when they couldn’t even hold on to an 18-point lead they erected in the third quarter against Kazakhstan and ended up winning by just two points 67-65, relegating them to that classification game against the Chinese.

What’s worse in that Kazakh defeat was the way the Filipinos, upon instructions from coach Chot Reyes, tried a bizarre ploy to achieve the winning margin they needed by shooting at their own basket in an effort to send the game into overtime, and then obviously try to beat Kazakhstan by 11 in extra time.  But it was, to my mind, a humiliating way to achieve that objective. I have to say that winning at all cost – like shooting at your own basket – degrades the game and should have no place in it.  

This is because that’s precisely the essence of the game, defend your basket, and if any team tries to do the opposite for whatever reason, like our Gilas team did, it’s tantamount to debasing the sport and going against its very basic principles.  I would always prefer to lose with dignity rather than degrade the sport I love.

But as Rappler sports editor Ryan Songalia so eloquently put it here, “They were playing within the rules as they understood them, behaving like an injured man sawing off his own arm to stem infection. It was cheap, but entirely essential towards their goals.”  

Ironically, the predicament the Filipinos found themselves in was in a way self-inflicted, or brought upon the team by their coach. Reyes, livid at naturalized big man Marcus Douthit’s uncharacteristically poor play in the Qatar loss, benched the 6-foot-11 center against Korea as a “disciplinary” measure, depriving Gilas of an extra big man and leaving June Mar Fajardo, the team’s only other legitimate center, gassed when the Koreans staged their late-game uprising that erased a seven-point lead late in the game.

That setback against the Koreans was especially painful. Faced with a must-win situation after that upset to the Qataris whom they also beat 80-70 in last year’s FIBA Asia tournament, the Filipinos erected a 68-52 lead in the third quarter against the Koreans only to allow them to go on a 19-4 binge and narrow that lead down to 72-71 going into the payoff period.  

The Koreans then outlasted the Gilas guys in a war of attrition towards the end. T.J. Moon, the Koreans’ naturalized American who was not around in last year’s FIBA Asia games, was the biggest thorn on the Filipinos’ side with 38 points, as another naturalized FIBA Asia absentee almost was in the case of Qatar, Boney Watson, who was instrumental in his team’s upset win with 15 points.

SHORTSHOTS: Boston Celtics guard Rajon Rondo set the record straight during media day regarding the circumstances surrounding a fracture of the third metacarpal he suffered in his left hand last week by saying the injury indeed took place during a fall in the showers when he slipped and tried to catch his hand, landing on his knuckle in the windowsill. Rondo was earlier reported to have visited a local trampoline park with his daughter and speculations arose that he must have suffered the injury while trying some tricks in the facility. He admitted going to the trampoline park not just once but twice, but debunked the theory that he got hurt while there… Phil Jackson denied a widely-accepted notion that Steve Kerr, who later took the head coaching job at Golden State, rejected his offer to coach the Knicks.  Although they had reached an understanding about it, it was not set in stone as Jackson knew Kerr had long eyed the Warriors job where he can implement the triangle offense. Once Mark Jackson was fired unexpectedly, Jackson knew Kerr would go after it because his daughter was a star volleyball player at nearby Cal… Mike Woodson, Lawrence Frank, who was unceremoniously ditched by Jason Kidd while in Brooklyn, and Sam Cassell just joined Doc Rivers with the LA Clippers to give the Clips a high-powered coaching staff. – Rappler.com

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Bert A. Ramirez has been a freelance sportswriter/columnist since the ’80s, writing mostly about the NBA and once serving as consultant and editor for Tower Sports Magazine, the longest-running locally published NBA magazine, from 1999 to 2008.  He has also written columns and articles for such publications as Malaya, Sports Digest, Winners Sports Weekly, Pro Guide, Sports Weekly, Sports Flash, Sports World, Basketball Weekly and the FIBA’s International Basketball, and currently writes a fortnightly column for QC Life and a weekly blog for BostonSports Desk. A former corporate manager, Bert has breathed, drunk and slept sports most of his life.