Kobe, Phil and the ghosts who haunt them.
Posted by: SPQR on Mar 11, 2009 - 01:06 PM
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As the Lakers grind their way through the last part of the 2009 season the prospect of the winning the NBA championship stands in front of them like an elusive chimera to be grasped or once again slip so agonizingly through their fingers like an insubstantial mirage that one cannot get firm purchase on.
For many of the players on the team, the chance at that ring means vindication, success and the ultimate prize in the sport they play. For two members on the team it would mean so much more.
Throughout history and literature, great events have taken place when protagonists have been moved and inspired by the ghostly images and accomplishments of predecessors or rivals. Sometimes the motivation is so strong it can result in madness, as in the literary character of Captain Ahab in Moby Dick. Driven and haunted by an earlier encounter with the White Whale, Captain Ahab would stop at nothing to exact his revenge on his tormentor. If he destroyed ship and crew in his quest, so be it.
Men like Caesar and Pompey were driven in their quests to protect Rome and conquer new lands by the unequaled legacy of Alexander the Greats triumphs. His ghost always hung large over the generals of marshal Rome, fueling the conquests of Caesar and Pompey of Gaul and Pontus.
George W Bush, fueled by what he considered his fathers unfinished business in Iraq and the death threats leveled by his father’s foe was determined to see the end of Saddam Hussein long before he took the oath of office.
To exact revenge or to equal past brilliance is motivation that can lead to extraordinary pursuits by driven and determined men.
Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson are two such men who are haunted and driven by their own personal ghosts. One suspects neither will truly be happy with their legacies unless each can achieve an exorcism of sorts against these past specters.
Why does one coach, who has accomplished so much, continue on when the bank account is so full, his outside interests so varied and satisfying and his age and body betraying him? For Phil Jackson, there is one more mountain go climb, one last legendary ghost to put to final rest: Red Auerbach. Phil at this late game stage in his career stands one win away from surpassing Auerbach at the coach with the most championships. While he is a calm and stoic man, there is ample reason for him to feel strongly about that one last hurdle. Sharing may not be a bad thing, especially when you have won as much as Phil has, but sometimes it is who you share with that is the rub.
Yes they have a history and it is not a friendly one. Phil’s coach and mentor while he played for the Knicks was Red Holtzman. Phil has frequently paid tribute to Hotlzman as the man who shaped a lot of his thinking and coaching philosophy. Holtzman’s and Jacksons Knick teams were hated rivals with Auerback’s Celtics back in the late sixties and early seventies, dueling for supremacy and championships. Hotlzman made no bones about his antipathetic feelings for Auerbach, his methods and demeanor. He felt him both a poor loser and arrogant winner. Can their be much doubt that these intense feelings Holtzman had, hardened and set in the fiery crucible of championship competition were not passed on to his impressionable charge who competed against Boston on the court?
Leap forward many years. Here is a much different Phil Jackson; now a winner of nine rings as coach, surpassing his mentor in achievement and acclaim. Not without warrant is the coach proud of his vast accomplishments. Tied with his old foe Red Auerbach with nine rings to his credit, he could not help but look back at his career with pride. Yet for Red, it was only another chance to stick the needle in. Reaching across the breadth of they years, across the miles of a continent from the east coast to the west, dredging up the bitterness of pride and old rivalries, as Phil approached his record of championships he began to belittle the new king. He decried Phil’s record and said he had never built a team, never had to work for his rings. He said it often and he said it loud and he made sure the media reported his opinion. It is impossible for this not to sting even a man of Phil’s equanimity. It was a slap in the face to everything Phil accomplished.
So does one wonder why a man who has done it all, who is richer than Midas, who does not need to drag his ailing body through endless camps, practices and airplane flights, who must baby-sit overgrown kids with overweening egos continue on when he is one ring away from sticking a posthumous knife in his ancient enemy? When one more title will set him forever apart from the ghost who he has fought for well over thirty years now in one fashion or another? For Phil, it would be the ultimate victory and complete exorcism of his rival to win that last, surpassing championship with a team he helped to build refuting the last claim of that old man now buried but never forgotten.
For Kobe the ghosts are much more alive than visceral. He is driven by a rivalry with two great NBA players, both contemporaries. One an all time great- the other a figure of mythology.
Once a friend of one, now he competes with his legacy after a vicious falling out, always a friend of the other, yet he has always eyed him as a king, an absolute ruler he always wanted to supplant.
Kobe played Robin to Shaq’s batman. The dynamic duo was good enough to bring a three peat to life and terrorize the NBA landscape in their pursuit of history and glory. Not compatible by nature, they were a lesson in synchronicity of sweet music on the court they ruled. Once the good times stopped on the floor, their individual differences and mutual dislike quickly ended the collaboration. For Shaq-the batman of the duo-it was no big thing. For Kobe-the Robin-it left a ghost that he still battles to put to rest. While he won three rings, in his mind, and on the MVP trophies, they were Shaq’s rings. While it is no crime to be the second best player in the league, it was when the best was on your team and he led your team to those wins.
After Shaq left the Lakers, he went on to win another championship, throwing more salt on the wound. He can now make the claim, “I won a ring without Kobe Bryant.” He can say it and he has said it. For Kobe, this is intolerable. To rid himself of his Robin image, to show that he is what Shaq was, he too must lead his own team to championship glory. For a player who has it all, money, rings, adulation, the ghost of Shaq and a championship won but not led by him, still haunt and fuels his desire. One ring, one parade in LA with him as Batman is all it would take to put this ghost to rest and bury Robin for good.
The other ghost that drives The Great Man is something else entirely. It is the ghost of legend, a mountain so vast it dwarfs even Shaquille’s immense shadow. This ghost is truly the Colossus of Rhodes in the pantheon of NBA legends: Michael Jordan. He stands astride the NBA landscape of greats, looking down on all else, rightly or wrongly but certainly by acclaim, considered the singular avatar of greatness; the best there has ever been. The black hole of ghosts, so powerful it does not allow the light of other NBA stars to escape its pull or interfer with its brilliance. It is the place Kobe aspires to be.
Once when asked who he would want to play against in the ultimate game of one on one, Kobe responded, “Michael Jordan.” For a man who is so like Jordan, who aspires to be nothing short of the best, the answer was no surprise. His closest friends speak of Kobe’s obsession with the legend, how in fact he has done nothing short of play a career game against him through the years and dizzying array of accomplishments.
Despite all he has done it almost seems like Don Quixote tilting at implacable, impenetrable windmills, this mad quest to topple the king. Already the recipient of two championship losses that Jordan will never have, and three rings where he was not even the best player on his own team, the odds are stacked against him. Jordan’s legacy, with the softening glow and gentle massaging of times passage seems perfect now. Who remembers the first seven years of frustration? Did he lose to Detroit over and over in the playoffs? Did he ever miss a shot? Did he come back, old and slow a shadow of his former self? He is forever unbeatable, always young, the MVP who could not be stopped by any team, any game plan, any mere mortal. He could pluck rings as easily as fruit from a tree. Is he given the title of greatest by acclimation a bit too easily? Yes, but the perception is reality. That is how this thing works.
So is his joust with this ghost madness? The forlorn hope of a man who cannot achieve his greatest desire or accept less than first place?
Perhaps not. If anyone has the drive, the blinders in place, the will to say “damn to popular perception and all the experts with it”, it is Kobe. If one man has the audacity and confidence to say, “It is not to late, I am just beginning my assault”, it is Kobe. He is not one to fear ghosts, legends or even the great icon that is Michael Jordan. It is part and parcel of what he is and what makes him a force of nature, a man who will not abide being in second place, not to Shaq or to the man who is already more myth than human.
If Kobe can win some more rings. Say he can string together his own three peat, leading the way this time instead of following, could he not then say, “See, I can do as Jordan did! I could have been as he was given the same circumstances. I could have been undefeated as well and led the Bulls to six.”
If he can do this, would he not at least be able to sit comfortably at Jordan’s side on that high, high mountain peak and share equally that vista, enjoy that very same view from above? When dealing with Jordan, perhaps even the Great Man will be satisfied with that accommodation looking back on his own legacy long after his uniform is hung from Staples along side LA’s other basketball gods.
So as you watch the 2009 season wind down, remember, for the players, it is a chance renewed a spark at redemption and the ultimate prize. For two very rare men on this team, it is a chance to put two legendary ghosts to rest in one fell swoop. And for Kobe, a time to begin launching his climb to the mountain top and share a place with a third much larger thing, a man, a myth and an iconic American image, and in so doing, become a ghost for some future NBA great to compete against; perhaps a young boy who may have just received his first basketball this year, or is not even born. Or a young man in highschool, just done with ball practice or a pickup game, still in his sweats and now bathed in the glow of his tv and mesmerized by Kobes next twisting, turning, electric move to the hole for two more magical points and thinking just like that long ago boy Kobe watching MJ and thinking, "Someday I'll be better than he is!", only with vague, inchoate intimations in the deep recesses of his childs mind of the talent and career which someday will quicken the pulses and drop the jaws of his future oppenents and a whole new generation of fans.
It is how the legends of the future, both coaches and players, are inspired and made. It is how ghosts are laid to rest.
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