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NBA FINALS: LAKERS v CELTICS

June 14, 2008

Phil Jackson

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Practice Day

Q. You've always had that ability to keep your team focused on what they need to be focused on despite the adversity that they face. How are you going about that this time knowing exactly what is at stake?
COACH JACKSON: This is new territory for me even, this type of thing, and so we're talking about the most basic thing that we always talk about, which is you have to do what's right in front of you. You have to be right here in the moment and take care of what's right in front of you in basketball. You can't think about the ifs and whats and what could have been.

Q. Is there something positive about sort of saying we had an historic collapse in Game 4 but now we have a chance of making history if there is a way of sort of picking up the positive there?
COACH JACKSON: We haven't said those words, but we've said we have to do it the hard way. We just have to do it the hard way. That's what we've talked about.

Q. The Celtics talk a lot about how they came together this year sort of ready-made to sacrifice and do whatever it takes. I guess if you could talk a little bit about first of all if you believe that, how rare that might be, and if not, maybe some of the things that do go into pulling a team together, knitting a team together. You've done it several places, how things shape out from start to finish in the season?
COACH JACKSON: I can't speak for them. I can only say that any team that's come together and won the championship is not by accident. You don't back into them. You have purpose and we always say one step follows another and so you have to set yourself up for success by having success immediately in the early part of the season.
We've had some interesting Finals in the course of my years in the NBA. You look at teams that were five over .500 that got to the Finals or won the Finals with four over .500 records, but that usually doesn't happen. Usually if you set yourself up and you're successful you're going to have a great opportunity for success in the Finals and that starts right from the beginning.
We had our own very intense meeting about what it was going to take and what we wanted to get done, that is, what we wanted to be and where we wanted to be when we started out. And that's been a real positive thing for us this year.

Q. Do coaches convince players to set egos aside for the bigger agenda, or do players allow a coach to do that for them?
COACH JACKSON: No. It's a sacrifice. They have to sacrifice themselves, and every coach is trying to do that in his own way, sell a team on the idea, sell the stars on the idea, and it's how much you can hold their feet to the fire a lot of times the way it works.

Q. Kobe seems to evoke great passion on both sides of the argument. People see him as the greatest player in the game or people have a lesser opinion of him. Why do you think he's such a polarizing figure in the NBA?
COACH JACKSON: His intensity. The intensity he plays the game with. The intensity that he carries himself with, that he has no quarter for failure basically. And he responds to that in an aggressive way and I think that a lot of people see that as polarizing up there. Maybe the fact that he drives his teammates forward. He's a person that drives them forward a lot of times, and it's his energy that carries a ball club and that's a tremendous thing. And he does it sometimes by force and sometimes by priming. This year he's done more by cajoling or by his partnership or comradeship, I would say, than any other time in his career.

Q. Phil, just kind of wondering how much sort of a rebounding attitude you saw in the last 24 hours in the players and is it where you want it to be or would expect it to be at this point?
COACH JACKSON: Yeah. I think it's where I'd expect it to be. I think there's still a space for us to come out of our collective shell and move forward into an aggressive way of being back where we want to be. And I think that's, you know, what I left them with the message on the court today because that's where I want to see them tomorrow morning when I get in tomorrow at 9:00, 10:00 in the morning.

Q. Is there a slight window because of the Boston injuries with Perkins missing most of the second half and Rondo only playing a few minutes in the second half?
COACH JACKSON: That turned out to be a benefit for them. Whether there's a window or not, it turned out to be something that we weren't as adept at defending as we felt we could defend the other way around. And we should have been ready for it. We saw some of it in the third game and we just didn't make that adjustment individually staying attached to some of the shooters that came in the game as opposed to some of the power players they had in before.

Q. Phil, you talk about Kobe's intensity. A lot of times when he meets with us after losses, you kind of mask that. You don't see the anguish that he has inside. What was he like after the last game with you guys behind closed doors?
COACH JACKSON: He was -- I thought his mood was uplifting. I guess that's the best. I think he sensed the fact that he had to be the one that, you know, brings them back in this situation, that says, you know, "Hey, we're going to take this thing on back to Boston. We're just going to keep standing and keep playing." So he was very supportive of that and I didn't feel there was any kind of dark or angry mood about him at all.

Q. Phil, with all this attention paid to Kobe, his expressions, vis-a-vis his teammates, I remember asking you the same thing about Michael Jordan in the 1991 finals. I think at that point Michael had stopped calling the other players "my supporting cast," but there still seemed to be some anger about him. How would you compare Michael and Kobe in that respect?
COACH JACKSON: Very similar. Very similar in that respect. A certain sense of responsibility when players get the ball to complete plays, to make plays. I think that's an energy that a lot of players can't stand up to, but we try to find players that can. It's very challenging and I think it's very aggressive and I think it's good. Having lived with it for a period of time with two different types of players, you know, I can endorse it.

Q. Phil, if you're leading by 18 at the half and Kobe hasn't hit a field goal, is there a problem?
COACH JACKSON: No, there really isn't. You know, the problem was is the energy that we didn't come out to meet with on the court. It was a team thing. And I think that was the problem. We didn't come out -- we let them get rolling on the floor offensively, and that energy, you know, carried over to the defensive end, and they had four completions right off the bat. I think that's where we've always come back with the emphasis is you've got to come out and play.
And I know there's a lot of subscribe, too, Kobe hasn't gotten the scoring done or whatnot, that we're going to go there, but in watching the tape, we have pretty balanced attack for the first six, seven minutes of the third quarter. So I felt like we did the right thing when we came out on the floor.

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