One of the most acclaimed basketball writers in the world, Charley Rosen has spent years around the game. He played it at an MVP-level for Hunter College from 1959-62. He played it in the Eastern League (a forerunner to the CBA). And he coached it with Phil Jackson.
Since then, Rosen has authored 15 well-received books, among them Barney Polan’s Game, Scandals of ’51 and Maverick (co-authored with Jackson), a ballplayer-turned-journalist.
With it being the 60th anniversary since the scandals of 1951, and with the retirement of his friend Jackson, I figured it was a great time to talk some hoops with a guy who not only once played against Wilt Chamberlain but still writes about the NBA today for FoxSports.com.
Yesterday, we ran Part One of this interview where Rosen gave the Thunder a recipe for success and dove into the betting scandals that nearly destroyed college basketball. Today Rosen talks about the dysfunction of the Lakers, Kobe-for-Grant Hill rumors back in the day and whether Jackson will ever coach again.
*** *** ***
Dime: Were you surprised at how the season ended for Phil and the Lakers?
Charley Rosen: Yes and no. Yes, the way they went down in four straight. No in that one of the reasons why teams don’t repeat – there are a lot of reasons – but one big reason is they get too cocky, and they think they can turn it on whenever they like. The Lakers had won back-to-back championships so a third, a three-peat, Phil’s teams have done it three times and they subconsciously felt the same thing: “Hey, we can turn it on.” They started off the season playing very well and then it was like “Oh yeah. We can cruise. We can turn it on whenever we want,” which is antithetical to everything that Phil believes as a coach and even when he was a player. You play hard all the time. Someone watching you play shouldn’t be able to tell if you’re ahead by 20, behind by 20 or if the score is tied. You just played hard. That’s the only way to develop endurance, a winning attitude. So after the All-Star break they turned it on again and went 17-1 and that kinda reconfirmed their belief that “Hey yeah, look. We turned it on again and won 17 out of 18. Yes, we can do this.” And then they stepped off the gas again.
So I think what happened is that there was a big disconnect between Phil and his team because they just didn’t buy into that playing balls-out all the time. Where that really shows is in the end game, when you can’t finish games. So the first two games against Dallas, they had a shot at winning those games, but they didn’t execute in the end game. So that didn’t surprise me.
Ron Artest losing another step laterally on defense even though he has quick hands, that didn’t surprise me. Kobe losing his edge and getting injured more and more, that didn’t surprise me. Pau Gasol, that surprised me. Nobody seems to know what was going on, but there was something preventing him from focusing, something that was sapping his energy. There is all the talk about his girlfriend, who knows? He denies it, who knows? They just didn’t seem to have it, but it was still a surprise. It was somewhat of a surprise.
Dime: Do you think it was sad the way he went out?
CR: Well, Phil is an incredible competitor. With all his Zen stuff, calm, underneath that there is a fire raging. He wants to win. I see that. I mean he really, really wants to win. That’s why he got along with Michael Jordan because Phil and Michael were the two most ferocious competitors in the Chicago organization. That’s why he stuck with Kobe.
At one point, there was an offer to trade Kobe – this was when Kobe was really young and doing crazy stuff and making everybody nuts – for Grant Hill. Grant Hill was still healthy and had his game. And a lot of people pushed for that trade, including me. But, Kobe also had this ferocious competitive attitude that Phil identified with. The problem was that Kobe did not know how to turn this attitude into winning a championship. That was a problem.
So going out the way he did, which was humiliating really, especially the way Game 4 ended…I think Odom‘s banging on Nowitzki, that was no big deal at all. That was nothing. A personal foul. But Bynum hitting the little guy was really bad, was dangerous. There was nothing good about that, unforgiveable, and I think it was a sign of Bynum’s continuing immaturity. So yes, it was sad. I think it’s sad.
He wanted to quit last year, but the players convinced him. Fisher and Kobe said “Nah, come back one more time.” Yeah, I think it’s sad. But you win, you gotta lose also. You can’t win forever. You can’t win forever and it was time for him to go.
Dime: You’ve been around him a lot. With all of his different teams, if you had to guess, which team do you think he enjoyed being around the most?
CR: Well, the team I think he enjoyed the most was the team that didn’t win the championship, the one where Michael was playing baseball. That team, where Pippen was the leader on that team, they executed the triangle much, much better than any other team he ever had. Without the superstar to take over in case of emergency, they really had to play totally team-orientated basketball. That was the year they lost that game when the foul was called against the Knicks, that invisible foul. Otherwise, they would’ve been in the championship series and they might’ve won.
Just on the coaching level, he had more fun doing that although that also ended in frustration.
Dime: With all of his star players, was he really as close to them as what’s been reported?
CR: There’s a line that you can’t cross in the NBA between players and coaches. That’s one of the great things about the CBA; you can really connect with your players. You are all in the same boat. In the NBA, everybody has their own sphere of influence, and they are off and they’re gone. In Chicago, the teams were more closely knit. The wives knew each other. They knew when somebody’s child had a cold or was cutting a molar or something like that. In L.A., everybody is a super-duper star and they all go their own way. There was a certain intimacy that existed in Chicago that doesn’t exist in L.A. So the closeness is not quite the same. But at the same time, Phil loves living in L.A.
In Chicago it literally happened, a woman came up to Phil with a sick child and said, “Touch my child and heal him” as if he was Jesus or something. In L.A., he’s just another superstar walking down the street, so I think he’s much more comfortable. He really doesn’t seek the spotlight.
Dime: Do you think he’s definitely finished coaching?
CR: I think it all depends on his health. He needs a knee replacement. He’s had two hip replacements. Knee replacements are tricky. He actually hurt his knee playing against me in a Y at Kingston, New York. We used to play one-on-one on this 60-foot court. I beat him once in about 300 games. I had to knock him down. He hurt himself. He just landed wrong and twisted his knee. I wasn’t within 10 feet of him. I said, “Don’t blame me. Don’t blame me! I didn’t touch you!” That was the last time he played.
I think he’ll miss the game. He is an NBA junkie. He does have to be on the edge. The years in between his two L.A. gigs, he traveled in the South Pacific and did a motorcycle tour of New Zealand and Australia and stuff like that and did some motivational speaking to CEOs. And it was really unsatisfying. There was no razor itch there. He really does miss that, or he will miss it. But will he miss it enough to get back in? I don’t know. I could see him in a year or two years, he just might get bored. What’s he gonna do? He can live in his home in Montana, which is beautiful. It’s an incredible place with the lake. It’s a paradise, but winters there are not easy.
He loves living in L.A. and his situation there, but it’s difficult for him. When he’s there in L.A., he’ll rarely go to games. He’ll watch the games on TV, and it’ll still be his players, still his guys, guys he coached for years and years and years. I think that’ll be difficult for him too. So I could see him in maybe a couple of years getting back with some team, getting in control, making him president of basketball operations or something like that, giving him control of hiring a coach and all that kind of stuff where he wouldn’t be sitting on the bench and having to move around as a coach. I think that was frustrating. He’s a hands-on guy. With his bad knee and his hips, the last couple of years, he couldn’t get in there, he had to sit on the sidelines at midcourt and talk to them instead of showing them in a hands-on way. I think if he can’t do that, then coaching is out of the question.
The one thing I know, I’m 100% certain of this: you can never be certain of what Phil’s going to do.
Dime: What about for yourself? Do you have any plans to write anymore books?
CR: Well, I am currently writing a book for HarperCollins on the Irish in baseball, which is fascinating to me. In the 1880’s and 1890’s, 40% of all Major Leaguers were Irish. There are just so many great stories. They helped modernize the game and they did that by finding every loophole in the game and just busting through that loophole, and forcing real changes. For example, whoever made the last out would coach and you would only have a coach if there was a runner on first – you would have a coach on first – if a guy was on third, the coach would move over to third. There were no steady coaches. And the only rule was coaches couldn’t step into fair territory. But in those days, the 1890’s, home plate was in foul territory.
So there’s this guy coaching at third base, a guy trying to score from second base and he waves the runner in, around third, and the coach – who was also the manager – sees the throw is going to beat the guy to home plate. So staying in foul territory, he runs ahead of the guy trying to score, throws a body block on the catcher, knocks the guy on his ass and the run scores. So after that, they put in coaching boxes (laughs). They did a million, a million things like that. I could tell you stories all day.
Were you surprised by the late-game dysfunction of the Lakers?
Follow Sean on Twitter at @SEANesweeney.
Follow Dime on Twitter at @DimeMag.
Become a fan of Dime Magazine on Facebook HERE.
