With practice canceled for both teams on Friday, head coaches Phil Jackson and Stan Van Gundy participated in phone conference calls with reporters on the line.
Here are the two head men’s responses to varying questions on the heels of L.A.’s dramatic 99-91 Game 4 victory over Orlando:
Lakers Head Coach Phil Jackson
THE MODERATOR: Welcome, everyone, to today’s conference call featuring coaches from both teams, the Los Angeles Lakers and Orlando Magic. We’ll begin now with Coach Phil Jackson of the Lakers. Would you like to just make an opening remark?
PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, I just wanted to inform our listeners and participants that having won that game, which was obviously a big push for us and a great advance towards winning a championship, we recognize the fact that we still have a big battle, big game to win before we can do anything more or claim anything. I have not watched the full tape. I have seen up to the third quarter, but I will respond to any questions about the game and the future games.
Q. I’ve been assigned to place you in context, in your place in history. I know you’re just stuck at nine titles so you’re tied with Red right now, but just on a general notion, how do you feel when you hear yourself asked about a, quote, place in history?
PHIL JACKSON: Well, you know, we try to work under the assumption that you’re only successful the moment you perform a successful act, and in that regard, this has not been accomplished yet. So talking about futuristic things kind of throws me for a loop. Talking about Red Auerbach’s record and what he accomplished as an NBA coach, I can again as a young player in the NBA looking at those records of the Celtics and realizing and thinking about how unattainable they are, how remarkable 11 championships at that time were, and the fact that Red coached nine championships, world championships. So I do know that it’s a momentous thing.
Q. Do you have a theory on whether you should foul or shouldn’t foul based on how much time is left in the game?
PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, I do. I usually go with anything under five seconds and if the ball is taken out in the half court area, guys coming away from the basket, you want to foul them and make them restart again. You know, usually if there’s somewhere over eight, nine, ten seconds, you want to make them put the ball on the floor, use some time maybe before you give a foul. But that’s not a hard, fast rule. There are times when we have fouled just to say, look, let’s make them start over again, let’s have them reset, have to get the ball back in again and then we’ll go from there. We want to see what they’re going to do. That’s been an option, too. But for the most part it’s usually five seconds.
Q. Your team made a couple of passes and Fish put the ball on the floor two or three times. Were you surprised that no foul ever came?
PHIL JACKSON: Well, once he put the ball on the floor and he was driving the ball up the court, it became difficult for the defender to know whether to foul or not because then he can go into his shooting motion, and any time a guy comes to foul at that point when no one was there with him, and obviously they had thrown two guys at Kobe to double team him and get him off the ball in that situation, that put Derek in the driver’s seat.
Q. How do you keep the emotions in check, even the excitement in check, that the players are feeling the next 48 hours with the knowledge they’re one win away from a championship?
PHIL JACKSON: You know, I don’t know if I have the expertise in that department. This is something that really has got a lot to do with how Orlando plays. We just have to go out there and assume the fact that we’re going to have to play at a very elevated level to win this game. The big key is that if we can match that play and the energy that they throw out there on the floor, then we give ourselves a chance. To do that we have to be focused, which is always a coach’s cry, get focused. We have to reach the energy level or the emotional level of the game in a way that matches what the crowd and the Orlando team put out there on the floor.
Q. Did you sense any over excitement on the players’ behalf after the game last night?
PHIL JACKSON: Oh, without a doubt. They’re excited about the possibility of winning, and they’re thrilled to have won that game. Yeah, there’s no doubt that they’re excited about it. This morning we had a short team meeting just to kind of clarify what we’re going to get accomplished in the next day and a half here sitting around waiting, getting plans made for tomorrow, et cetera. And you can sense the mood of the team is they’re really excited about it. But what I told them is there’s a chance tomorrow’s practice may be the last practice of the season. That’s also something that gets them pretty excited because practice for players is something that is at this level of the game, having gone through hundreds or probably more than a hundred some practices, they’re excited about not having to come to practice again.
Q. Considering how important Trevor and Lamar have both been to your postseason run, what do you think about what lies ahead for you guys in the offseason, potentially having to make a decision between those two players?
PHIL JACKSON: You know, I don’t know if that’s actually what’s going to happen. I mean, that’s not written in stone, that we have to make a decision between those two players. I don’t think that’s a case at all. This is just part of the NBA, what level the NBA has brought to the game at this point, is you have players that you have decisions to make in the free agent life, and last year Boston lost one of its key players in James Posey and they had to go on and let him go to free agency. I think that didn’t bother him. I think it hurt him in the course of the season, but that’s what you have to do is you have to maintain discipline and whatnot. So we’ll discuss that and a number of other things with personnel in a couple of weeks.
Q. I know you’ve talked about Trevor’s development over the last year several times, but especially after his third quarter last night, can you just talk about the player he’s become in the short time that you’ve had him?
PHIL JACKSON: Well, Trevor is a player that we thought was a developing player as we got him. I mean, this is a young guy that obviously we felt came out of college early in hopes of getting drafted and ended up in New York and never got fully developed as a player in college or in the pros because he didn’t stay in one organization long enough to do that. We thought that his ability to develop as a player was going to be key. This is the year that he’s really shown that development as a player. The big key with Trevor is you have to learn how to shoot the shot, and this year he’s learned how to shoot the shot to go along with his drive, his slash game. And here he is in a position that every player envies, having an opportunity to perform on a championship team and be in a free agency situation behind it.
Phil Jackson addressed assembled media following L.A.’s Wednesday morning practice:
The last time L.A. played a Game 7 at STAPLES Center, George W. Bush had just taken office, Y2K had failed to ruin the world and Andrew Bynum was 12 years old.
Fisher’s Confidence Not Faltering
On the Block
What exactly is Phil Jackson hoping to accomplish with his team heading into Sunday’s first round playoff matchup with the Utah Jazz?
