Vindicated: Kobe Wins Without Shaq

ORLANDO -- There is much to dislike about Kobe Bean Bryant, from the bursts of conceit that verge on megalomania to the 57-page transcript detailing the sex, lies and disgrace of his one-night stand with a 19-year-old in Colorado. But never, ever deny him this: He is a basketball savant who, in one definitive swoop Sunday evening, quieted those who said: a) he'd never win an NBA title without Shaquille O'Neal, and b) he has been trumped by LeBron James as the sport's most dominant force.

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If he isn't and never will be Michael Jordan, we can conclude that the Kobe brand is gleaming more radiantly today than ever thought possible. He needed time to grow up and was forced to do so in the scrutinous public eye, but we finally observed a human being's raw, heartfelt emotions in the final seconds of the NBA Finals. On the Lakers bench, he broke into a gigantic smile, something rarely seen on a face etched with a wild, angry snarl throughout the series. He wiped tears from his eyes, chewed on his fingernails, literally bit the top of his jersey and, when the buzzer sounded, leaped up and down uncontrollably in a hushed enemy arena, pumping his fist several times before joining his teammates in a moving, hopping scrum.

At last, he was a real leader of men, an earth-mover who could sacrifice his ego just enough to maximize the talent around him. At last, Kobe Bryant had willed a championship on his own, detached from the problematic, polarizing brat who once did more to enrage America than endear himself.

"I just couldn't wait for the clock to tick down," he said. "I was waiting and waiting and waiting so we could release the emotion and celebrate. It really feels like I'm dreaming. It doesn't even seem real."

This was the moment Bryant never was supposed to have as a selfish ogre, a child characterized by his coach in a tell-all book as "uncoachable" and "a callous gun for hire." But there they were after the Game 5 clincher, Kobe and Phil Jackson, embraced in a powerful, stare-into-each-other's-eyes hug that seemed like it wouldn't end. Their relationship once was so destructive that it led to Jackson's departure for a season, so he could flee to Australia and get away from the petulant superstar who drove O'Neal out of Los Angeles. But more than anyone else in Bryant's life, Jackson helped him mature into a better player, teammate, husband, father and man. Not a minute after his fourth ring -- and Jackson's record 10th -- were in the books via a 99-86 victory over the overmatched and outcoached Orlando Magic, Kobe was on the court with his wife, Vanessa, and his two daughters, giving them the biggest hugs of all. His life could have been ruined by the case in Colorado, where a rape charge was dismissed after a summer of hell. Instead, his life came together and got better, with this title and his first Finals MVP award symbolizing his redefinition.

"I think you just grow as a person, you just grow as a man," said Bryant, still grinning on the interview podium. "To win this title, it felt like a big, old monkey was off my back. I was trying not to envision it too much, not to get too excited and make sure we just play the game. But when that moment comes, man, it's at the top of the list."


For the first time, he readily admitted that much of his satisfaction comes from burying, once and for all, the can't-win-without-Shaq rap. Their divorce was so contentious, it led to a national referendum on who was right and wrong. When O'Neal went to Miami and won his fourth title with Dwyane Wade in 2006, he rubbed it in Bryant's face, even asking Kobe in a rap lyric how Shaq's "a** tastes." It led Bryant to grow frustrated with mediocre teams and demand a trade two years ago, an act that was roundly ripped. But the rant worked. It prompted a sleepy general manager, Mitch Kupchak, to make the trade for Pau Gasol, reacquire Derek Fisher, nurture Andrew Bynum, build a solid bench and provide just enough of a supporting cast for Bryant to successfully carry. "Got a new point guard, a new wing, a Spaniard, and then it was all good," he said. "I had a bunch of Christmas presents that came early." Indeed, the reason Bryant was spilling tears and smiling, deep into the night, was because he'd shot his critics down.

"I don't have to hear that criticism, that idiotic criticism anymore," he said. "That's the biggest thing. It was annoying. It was like Chinese water torture, where they just keep dropping a drop of water on your temple. I would cringe every time I heard it. It was just a challenge I was going to have to accept because there's no way I'm going to argue it. You can say it until you're blue in the face and rationalize it until you're blue in the face, but it's not going to go anywhere until you do something about it. I think we as a team answered the call because they understood the challenge that I had, and we all embraced it.

"From the standpoint of responding to the challenge, from people saying I couldn't do it without him, that feels good because you prove people wrong. But I also think people can look at the special teams we had together. We're great as individuals, but it's probably the first dynamic duo that had two alpha males on one team. And we managed to make it work for three championships. [The criticism] was just silly. Every team has a dynamic duo. I think it's a shame."

That's why Bryant's fourth championship is the sweetest, because it is HIS. It accompanies a surge in acceptance that prompted Forbes to rank him as the world's 10th-biggest celebrity and second-biggest athlete, ranked behind only Tiger Woods (fifth) and ahead of Jordan (18th) and James (19th). The others in the top 10: Angelina Jolie, Oprah Winfrey, Madonna, Beyonce Knowles, Bruce Springsteen, Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt. He also made $45 million in salary and endorsements last year, not bad for a guy who five years ago was sobbing on his wife's arm after admitting adultery at a nationally televised news conference, then buying her a $4 million makeup-call ring.

"He's grown. He's grown up," said Fisher, his longtime teammate and friend. "He's doing everything that we ever could ask him to do in terms of leading the team and performance on the court during games and in practice. He's trying to be the type of guy that guys will follow as opposed to just dominating performances by himself and then expecting everyone to catch up to him. He's really done an unbelievable job of getting everybody to believe and buy into what we're trying to do."

Of course, so has Jackson, who passed Celtics legend Red Auerbach as the most decorated of NBA Finals coaches and promised to smoke a cigar in Red's memory. But much as Sunday night was about Jackson's place among the all-time great coaches in sports, he, too, realized the magnitude of Bryant's feat -- and how much he has matured in his 13 Lakers seasons.

"There was a point in Kobe's [early NBA years] when we sat together and watched tape," said Jackson, wearing a hat with the Roman numeral X made for him by his children. "I wanted him to understand his impact on the game and my feeling about his impact on the game. We had a game in Toronto, and he had gotten hooked up with Vince Carter in the middle of the fourth quarter and they kind of exchanged baskets. I thought it took our team out of their team play, and the game was much harder than it should have been. So I talked to him a little bit about leadership and the quality and his ability to be a leader, and he said, 'I'm ready to be a captain right now.' And I said, 'But no one is ready to follow you.' He was 22 at the time. He was a young guy. In those eight years that have ensued, he's learned how to become a leader in a way in which people want to follow him, and I think that's really important for him to have learned that, because he knew that he had to give to get back in return. And so he's become a giver rather than just a guy that's a demanding leader, and that's been great for him and great to watch."

Jackson also admitted that he never thought he'd win a championship in his second go-around with the Lakers. He originally was contacted during his Australian hiatus by his boss/significant other, Jeanie Buss, in the middle of the 2004-05 season, asking him to return just months after he essentially was run out of his job. "Jeanie Buss called me up and asked me to come back and take the team at that particular moment, and I said, 'No, I couldn't do that. That's just not fair to the team, and it's not fair to the players and myself.' I said I'd have to think about it a long time because this team is quite a ways from a championship even though Kobe always gives you a chance to win. So over the next 2 1/2 months, I spent some time thinking about it and rekindling my energy to come back and coach. But when I came back, I didn't anticipate we'd win. I thought maybe I'd build the steps to a winning team, but I didn't think I'd be part of it. This is much quicker than I thought it would happen."

For a man once blackballed in a league that viewed him as a counterculture freak, Jackson has done the unthinkable. He has coached 10 of the last 19 NBA champions. I'd go out on top if I were him, but Bryant dearly wants him back. And doesn't Kobe usually get what he wants? "You can see how excited he is about it," Bryant said. "You can see it in his eyes that he's ecstatic. It's been a long time since he had a champagne bath, and I knew that, so I made sure he became part of our circle and we got him pretty good. He took his glasses off, threw his head back and soaked it all in."

And, yes, Jackson understands the meaning of his stunning achievement. "Having won 10 championships is a remarkable accomplishment, there's no doubt about it," he said. "Watching those games click down, a championship of all different forms and fashions -- on the road, at home, players that vault themselves into team play -- is a remarkable thing to have watched. I've always said this before: The journey is what's really important, and it's important for the players and coaches to watch these kids come together and form a unit and be supportive of each other."

But when asked if the championship was about him, Jackson knew better. A year after being humiliated in the Finals by the Celtics, he wants the players to have the praise. "I could say that, but I'd like to say that it's really about the players. It's about Kobe Bryant, about Derek Fisher's leadership of the team," he said. "I tried to take them through some of the build-up things that we had to do after last year as a basketball club. They came together this year and were self-motivated, and for a coach, that's always a positive sign. When a team is ready, they're aggressive, their learning curve is high, and they wanted to win. I've always felt as a coach that you have to push your team, but I told them they had to push themselves. I wasn't at a stage of my life where I could get out and do the things I had done 10 years ago or 15 years ago to push a team. And they pushed themselves, and I really feel strongly that this is about them."

Specifically, it's about Kobe Bryant. On the day one of O'Neal's former teams beat another of O'Neal's former teams, word came from Cleveland that the Cavaliers are trying to acquire him to help James win a championship and keep him happy in northeast Ohio. If so, imagine Bryant against Shaq AND LeBron in next year's Finals.

But first, Shaq wants to congratulate Kobe for this season. He did so, naturally, on his Twitter page Sunday night. "Congratualtions kobe, u deserve it. You played great," O'Neal weighed in near midnight. "Enjoy it my man enjoy it. And I know what yur sayin rt now "Shaq how my a** taste?"

Poetic justice. Crude, but poetic.