Kicking sand in the sandbox

Sporting News, The, Jan 22, 2001 by Dave Kindred

At 6-10 and 200 pounds, too skinny to be of use inside and not quick enough or clever enough with the ball to work outside, Joe "Jelly Bean" Bryant was a 'tweener who in the 1977-78 season played behind Julius Erving, George McGinnis and World B. Free on a 76ers team that lost the Eastern Conference finals to the eventual NBA champion Bullets.

Jelly Bean couldn't shoot. He couldn't pass. He lost the ball about as often as he gave it to somebody who could score. He didn't get enough rebounds to persuade his bosses that he could make it a habit Still, it can be argued that, early in the winter of '77-78 he made a significant contribution to NBA history.

For late in the summer of '78, his wife gave birth to their son, Kobe B. Bryant, of whom we have heard much lately.

Mostly we've heard the whimperings of Shaquille O'Neal, who always has taken to mewling and sniveling at any suggestion by basketball astronomers that he is less than The Sun Around Which All Else Revolves.

This time there's a difference. This time O'Neal not only has been eclipsed, he has been transformed into the satellite. He now orbits a player so good that even O'Neal shines only when Kobe Bryant deigns to smile his way.

The truth is, Shaq has seen the future and despises it. Anointed by the league as one of its 50 best players ever, O'Neal now finds himself upstaged by a 22-year-old kid who came out of high school to the NBA.

The great wonder is that Bryant gets better every night. He's a delight to see in flight, equal parts elegance and enthusiasm, and he makes thrilling good sense when he says, as he did to THE SPORTING NEWS' Sean Deveney, "I'm just trying to maximize my potential.... If maximizing my potential is gonna mean that I'm the best player in the NBA, so be it."

Meanwhile, O'Neal mutters that the Lakers were invincible last year with the ball coming through him but this season, with Bryant "maximizing," they are vulnerable even to, gracious, the Clippers.

Together in spirit as well as fact last season, O'Neal and Bryant led the Lakers to an NBA championship in such dominant fashion as to suggest that the Zen master/Triangle genius Phil Jackson might build a dynasty in Los Angeles to match what he abandoned in Chicago.

He can yet do it Bryant and O'Neal may have wrapped one hand around each other's throat. But with the free hand, and despite what Jackson has described as his stars' "juvenile" and "sandbox" petulance, the two have created enough brilliance to show that the Lakers, if untroubled, can be the NBA's best team.

The question is, do O'Neal and Bryant want detente? Or will each insist on being, in Reggie Jackson's self-description, "the straw that stirs the drink"?

Not that O'Neal and Bryant need be buddies. That's probably impossible, given the inevitable jealousies created and nurtured, even needed, by competitive people. No less a saint than Stan Musial once asked a sportswriter, "DiMaggio didn't really get the $100,000, did he?" It was important to Musial that he be the first at that salary, just as competition moved Joe DiMaggio to say, "(Ted) Williams is a disgrace in the outfield. How can anybody compare him to me?"

Those times when Joe Frazier called Muhammad Ali a phony or Ali suggested Frazier was ignorant, Howard Cosell threw himself between the gladiators. As old lions grown toothless, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer finally embraced. Steve Garvey's righteousness irritated most Dodgers, though only Don Sutton rolled on the clubhouse floor with him, reminding observers that former manager Walt Alston once said, "You know why these guys don't like Garvey? He visits hospitals."

Any little essay on Famous Feuds needs to include the original Clash of Lakers Stars. From the start, those guys didn't like each other because their games were mutually contradictory.

One guy, the big guy, the 7-footer who frightened mortals for miles around, wanted the ball delivered to him ... NOW!

The other guy was a slasher, quick with the ball, a wraith who could do anything anywhere as long as you gave him the ball ... NOW!

Working from this standard recipe for basketball jealousy and envy, these Lakers stars, ostensibly adult human beings, took to engaging in childish behavior: "needling each other in card games, trying to top each other with pranks, jockeying with each other for the limelight, both on and off the court," to quote the big guy.

It culminated in a locker room dispute at once so juvenile and so sandbox-y as to provoke an ultimatum from one of the stars.

Yes, in 1968, the big man, Wilt Chamberlain, didn't like the Gatorade or Coca-Cola served in the Lakers' locker room. So he told management he wanted 7-Up.

A few days after the flow of 7-Up began, Chamberlain's teammate and rival, the elegant Elgin Baylor, said, "I want grape soda, or I'm not going to play."

Grape soda it was. Still, only after Baylor retired during the 1971-72 season did Wilt's Lakers win an NBA title.

Oh, one more thing. Kobe Bryant is as near a thing to Michael Jordan as we'll see. But in his war with Shaq, we might be well served to remember he is the son of Joe "Jelly Bean" Bryant. The same Jelly Bean who after eight nondescript NBA seasons found work only in Europe. The same Jelly Bean so delusionally full of himself he explained his release by saying, "I guess they just don't want another Magic Johnson in this league."