Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant have one NBA championship, though hardly anyone believes they won’t win a second within the next couple of weeks.
With an undefeated run through the playoffs thus far, against three teams that each won at least 50 games in the regular season, the Lakers have been drawing comparisons with the great teams in NBA history.
And O’Neal and Bryant may be earning a unique distinction–the best tandem ever to play pro basketball together.
“I guess you would have to look back on this organization first,” Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. “At Jerry West and Wilt [Chamberlain] when they won 69 games and 33 in a row. Gail Goodrich had a really good year. But Wilt was coming back that year after a knee operation, and he was in his 30s and so was West, at the back end of their careers. Here we have two guys in their 20s, even though they are almost a generation apart, at the top of their games.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything quite like this.”
Bryant and O’Neal are simply dominating these playoffs.
Despite their regular-season feuding, they finished in the top five in scoring–O’Neal third at 28.7 points per game and Bryant fourth at 28.5. And with the competition tougher, they’ve been better–Bryant is averaging 31.6 per game in the playoffs and O’Neal 29.4.
“There’s not much you can do with Kobe and Shaq,” San Antonio guard Avery Johnson said. “Shaq is so much smarter on the court than he was. The old tricks that used to work on him, he’s ready for them now. With Kobe, it’s not showtime anymore. You get those two guys playing like that, and there’s not much you can do.”
There wasn’t anything a very good Spurs team could do in getting swept. The question is how much anyone in the NBA will be able to do if the two of them continue to play in harmony, as they have in the playoffs.
O’Neal and Bryant had personal differences that appeared to divide the Lakers all season. But that seems to be forgotten now as the two have worked together as well as any duo in playoff history.
Jackson has played a part in that by virtually scrapping his long-favored triangle offense, particularly against the Spurs. Rather than have Bryant run into the triangle and through its options, Jackson gave Bryant the ball to make plays for himself and his teammates.
It’s what Bryant had been lobbying for all season, and he began to make the plays as Jackson had hoped, looking for teammates first. In fact, during Game 3 of the conference finals, Jackson said Bryant had overpassed. Jackson also installed more traditional NBA screen/roll-type plays to give Bryant more freedom with the ball and to isolate him on less mobile players.
“Usually you can just say, `We’ll go and take the ball out of so-and-so’s hands,’ but this is a different deal,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “You can’t always find Kobe in transition, where he really kills you in matchups, and are you going to leave Shaq?”
The combination of the game’s best center and best perimeter player is evoking historical comparisons. O’Neal is generally regarded as the game’s most dominant big man. That has certainly been clear in the playoffs thus far as O’Neal went against Chris Webber and Tim Duncan and had them retreating.
“Duncan was playing like a small forward by the end of the series, shooting jumpers, and Webber kept going outside,” Jackson said. “I think Shaq really intimidates these guys.”
This comes a year after O’Neal had a Chamberlain-like Finals against the Indiana Pacers with three 40-point games and averages of 38 points and 16.7 rebounds as the Lakers won in six games. Larry Bird, then the Pacers’ coach, called O’Neal the most dominating player in the NBA.
Bryant didn’t have a major role in last year’s Finals because of a sprained ankle, but he was exceptional in an overtime win after O’Neal fouled out, taking over the game as Michael Jordan once did.
There have been the inevitable comparisons with Jordan, but they are premature. Bryant has just one title and is only 22. Jordan, however, never played with anyone like O’Neal. And no great offensive center in his prime has played with anyone like Bryant.
When Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was dominant in the early 1970s, he teamed with an aging Oscar Robertson to win a title in Milwaukee in 1971. When Abdul-Jabbar was in his 30s and no longer the league’s dominant center and scorer, he played with the young Magic Johnson on great Lakers teams.
Jordan never had better than a supporting Scottie Pippen, who got most of his offense from defense.
The great Celtics teams of the 1960s were built around Bill Russell’s defense. And the great Celtics teams of the `80s relied on the inside play of their Big Three: Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. They didn’t have a Jordan or a Bryant to create from the perimeter.
When West finally won a title it was with an aging Chamberlain. And when West was in his prime with Elgin Baylor, there never was a more potent 1-2 scoring punch, but they never won a title together because they lacked the power game.
Moses Malone and Julius Erving? Perhaps when they were younger. Willis Reed and Walt Frazier? Bob Pettit and Cliff Hagan? Wes Unseld and Earl Monroe? There have been great duos, but if O’Neal and Bryant continue in harmony, there may be no comparisons.
“You’ve got the most dominant player in the game in size, who changes the complexity of the game entirely,” Jackson said. “Then you have a player like Kobe, who makes it almost impossible to leave Shaq. So you have to pick your poison. It’s the combination I envisioned it could be.”
