Jeff Pearlman is the author of Showtime, the great book about the unforgettable Lakers of the 80s, Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Now he publishes Three Ring Circus, a review of the next Los Angeles dynasty, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal's tumultuous years under the orders of Phil Jackson, which will undoubtedly be another essential work for NBA lovers, especially for fans of the LA franchise.
Some excerpts from a work that will undoubtedly delve into the difficult relationship between Kobe and Shaq, one of the great couples in basketball history and one that won three championships (2000-02) but quickly fell apart in the midst of a bloody and media ego war that took down Phil Jackson himself.
The coach took sides with the center (just as the owner, the legendary Jerry Buss, always bet on Kobe) but returned later to mend his relationship with the shooting guard and win two more championships in 2009 and 2010. O'Neal arrived at the Lakers in the summer of 1996 and was traded to the Miami Heat in July 2004, after a brutal defeat in the Finals against the Pistons. Kobe arrived in 1996 via the draft at just 17 years old. Shaq, at 24 and after four seasons with the Orlando Magic, landed in L.A. as one of the biggest acquisitions in free agency history, publishes the daily AS from Spain.
But Kobe never wanted to bow to Shaq's rule. And their clashes, two alpha males of almost antithetical character, began before the years of glory and championships. Jeff Pearlman's book tells, in fact, how a game during the 1999 lockout ended in a fight and Shaquille slapping Kobe:
One day O'Neal and Bryant came to Southwest College to play.
It was early January, shortly after L.A. Magazine published the piece that called Kobe the new Jordan. There were other Lakers players and Olden Polynice, the veteran center who had spent four and a half years with the Sacramento Kings and who wanted to sign with the Lakers. Despite their battles in the paint for years, Polynice and Shaquille were friends: "I just wanted to go there and play with Shaq, the Lakers were my childhood team, it was a dream come true to play with them and I wanted to show that I was serious."
Then the players warmed up, took a few shots, and formed two teams: "Some on one side and others on the other. Kobe was on my team, we played against Shaq," Polynice recalls. The game heated up when O'Neal started calling fouls when he missed shots and Kobe shouted, "I'm tired of this shit, just play." And Shaquille replied, "One more comment like that and I'll slap you." A few possessions later, Bryant drove, leaned on Shaquille, and scored. A good move, but nothing special. "Fuck you, this is my team, it's my fucking team!" Kobe shouted at O'Neal. Then everything stopped, as Polynice remembers: "We realized he wasn't talking about that little game, he was talking about the Lakers."
O'Neal responded, "No, bastard, it's my team," and Kobe insisted, "Fuck you, seriously, fuck you. You're not a leader, you're nothing." Shaquille told him "there's no problem" because he would have Kobe's ass traded. The two were separated, but only a few possessions later, and with a lot of tension, Kobe scored on another drive and shouted, "Yeah, bastard, that shit won't stop me." O'Neal grabbed the ball, stopped the game, and replied, "Say another fucking word...". Kobe interrupted ("Fuck you, you won't fucking believe...") and at that moment Shaquille slapped Kobe Bryant. Hard, as Mark Blount recalls, who was also playing: "His hands were huge, it sounded really loud."
Polynice tells the rest of the story: "Shaq swung another hand at Kobe, but missed. I ran to grab him because I was big enough to do it, and he kept throwing punches, but without success because I had grabbed his arms. I was holding him as best as I could and shouting for someone to grab Kobe, who was also throwing punches. There's a moment when Shaq releases one arm and hits me in the head. And I was just separating... seriously, if he had fully let go, he would have killed Kobe. I'm not exaggerating. He wanted to end him."
But Kobe kept shouting at the center: "You're soft! Is that all you got?" Blount asked him to shut up because he wasn't helping. Jerome Crawford, Shaquille's bodyguard, was the one who eventually ended the brawl and Polynice turned to Mitch Kupchak, the Lakers' general manager who had witnessed it all, and told him, "You should hire me just to thank me for this." In the following season, the 1999-2000 season, the Lakers won the first of their three consecutive championships with Shaquille and Kobe as superstars. To achieve this, they had hired Zen Master Phil Jackson before the start of the season, who managed to bring enough harmony between the two for that legendary threepeat to happen. (D)