LAKE SHOW

The Lakers roll by a simple motto: IDGAF.

They are now 10 years from their last title, and their center is drinking Ginseng, and their point guard is saying grace, and their coach is talking about Vietnam, and their choreographer is writing memos, and maybe the drought is about to be over.
The Los Angeles Lakers have come together in May, of all times. They are a Shaquille O'Neal who is dying to be yelled at, and a Nick Van Exel who puts Phil. 4:13 on his game sneakers, and a Del Harris who loses phantom elections, and a Jerry West who is about to quit. They were the only ones who could have saved themselves from themselves, but they're all grown up now, and they're in the Western Conference finals, and it is a tribute to & IDGAF.

Their turnaround started on the first day of training camp in Palm Springs, during a meeting of wayward minds. The season before, their choreographer (West) had signed the best center money could buy (O'Neal), and he gave this center to a cerebral coach (Harris) and his moody point guard (Van Exel), but the point guard said "f- you" one day to the coach in practice, and that was that. Out they went in the second round of the playoffs, after their teenager (Kobe Bryant) airballed in Utah, and onto the telephone went West.

West tried to trade the point guard, and he asked a retired point guard (Magic Johnson) what he thought, and he told West you'll never find a better Van Exel than Van Exel. And so West called Van Exel, and they ironed it out, and Van Exel ended up crying on one end of the phone, and West ended up crying on his end, and now we take you back to Palm Springs.

The team is sitting there in a 100-degree locker room, and the 315-pound center clears his throat. He tells them he has a new nickname this year, and they are amused because they know how he is about names. They know that his pet rottweiler is named Thor and his pit bulls are named Rocky and Thug Passion, and that every one of his six cars has vanity license plates: SUPER34 on the Bentley, 7XLARGE on the 7XL Mercedes, DUNKONU on the Expedition, HOOP-T on the 1965 Chevy, MNOVSTL on the Navigator and STEEEEL on the 600 Mercedes.

So they are absolutely quiet when he gives them his nickname for the 1997-98 season. "Just call me IDGAF," Shaquille O'Neal says. They ask him what that means, and he tells them, and they laugh. Then they see IDGAF written on his luggage and IDGAF on his locker, and they start believing it.

They win their first 11, and an import from Boston (Rick Fox) who is sitting on the bench during one of these blowouts tells a teammate (Jon Barry) the team can win 75. Four of them become All-Stars, but then they start believing the headlines and stop believing in defense. Team play begins to suffer. West thinks they need a more consistent perimeter game, not to mention a veteran who can stimulate the half-court offense, so he offers one of the young All-Stars (Eddie Jones) to Sacramento for Mitch Richmond. It is virtually a done deal, but then West calls back saying his owner's new accountants vetoed it because Richmond is about to be a free agent and with what they're already paying O'Neal, they can't afford it.
Suddenly, West is working under a budget for the first time, and the way his owner (Dr. Jerry Buss) is paying him-only $1.25 million a year-it isn't worth it. West goes public and says he needs a sabbatical, and that he could "very easily'' see himself running another team. The retired point guard decides he will try to mediate, which is a smart gesture considering every person in that locker room bows down to Jerry West, including the center, who can opt out in 1999, and the teenager, who's a free agent that same year.

In between all of that, the team goes 3-3 on a late-February, early-March road trip, part of a 5-7 three-week slide, and it's reported that there is a unanimous clubhouse vote to have Harris fired. It all seems so Generation X, except it isn't true. "I'm leader of all families on this team," the center says. "I run the forward families, I run the guard families, I run the big man families. All families must come through me for anything to go down, and nothing went down." Nevertheless, the players are stereotyped as just another overpaid bunch of prima donnas, and it is suddenly the right time for them to look up at Shaq's locker again and remind themselves what IDGAF means. I don't give a f-.

"Day One in Palm Springs, that's what he said," says Barry, the reserve guard. "He said his nickname was IDGAF. He said, 'I don't care about anybody else or what anybody else says.' He said, 'I want a ring. You're my teammates, and if anybody messes with you, I'll take care of it. Let's go win it.' "

And so here they are. Here is a center who is quadruple-teamed, and a point guard who wants to be benched, and a coach who used to sell pots and pans, and a choreographer who isn't happy unless he's miserable.
Here they are-in May, of all times.

It's his team. West assured the center of this the day he signed, and it is precisely why he calls the other 11 Lakers "my guys.'' In his formative years in Orlando, some of them were his guys, and some of them were Penny's, and that's why Orlando is in the lottery now.

But life goes on, and he's not running a democracy here. And no one minds, either, because he truly has their backs. In Game 1 of their series with Seattle, Sonics guard Greg Anthony barked to Van Exel, "I'll flagrant foul you,'' and O'Neal stepped in immediately to say, "No, you won't.'' In the previous series against Portland, Isaiah Rider told Barry, "I'll kick your behind,'' and O'Neal said, "That's my white boy, don't you mess with him."

These opponents listen, too, and and it might have something to do with Utah's Greg Ostertag, whom O'Neal tipped over at the morning shootaround on opening day. In last year's playoffs, Ostertag had moderate success dealing with O'Neal, and O'Neal says Ostertag spent the summer bragging about it. "I was flipping through the Internet and saw he said, 'I own Shaq,' and 'I killed him in the playoffs,' and that's why I was kind of upset."

The Jazz then happened to be the Lakers' season-opening opponent at the Forum, and O'Neal-on the injured list with an abdominal strain-confronted Utah's seven-footer. "I just told him, 'Hey, yo, watch your mouth, and just play. You don't gotta talk,' " O'Neal says. "He said, 'F- you.' I said, 'Oh, f- me? Okay.' I didn't swing at him, I didn't punch him. It was a mush, you know, a push. Maybe it was just like a testosterone reflex. I'm in my house, and he tried to jump in my house, and I just had to show him he really wasn't that tough. If I'd hit him, I probably would've gotten eight games. I didn't punch him. I haven't punched a person in a long time."
T
he Ostertag "mush," which resulted in a one-game suspension, was O'Neal's last immature act near a basketball floor. Fox, his new teammate, says O'Neal is fouled more than any player alive and should shoot 18-20 free throws a game (instead of 11.35)-yet the center rarely argues with officials. "If they blew the whistle as many times as he's fouled," Fox says, "he'd average 50 points." In the Portland series, Arvydas Sabonis shoved and trash-talked-"I heard him curse me in Russian," O'Neal says. But the center kept his cool. George Karl accused him of walking and elbowing in the Seattle series, and the center stayed cool (other than calling Karl a "woman"). Four Sonics would hack him at once, and the center still stayed cool. "I'm a nice guy and all," he says, "but one day, I'm gonna get fouled the wrong way, and I'm gonna turn around and I'm gonna break somebody's eye socket. I promise you. That s- with Rudy T. and Kermit Washington? I'm gonna do it again, and if they want to suspend me for 20 games and fine me, I don't give a you-know-what."

The truth is, referees are finally starting to give him a break-six years into his career. In Game 5 of the Seattle series, referee Ken Mauer called an early travel on O'Neal, only to see Dick Bavetta rush in to change it to a Seattle foul. O'Neal has never been called for more than four fouls in any playoff game this season because he has been wise enough not to reach in. He is the smart player no one thought he would be, and he is playing the best basketball of his life. He passes beautifully out of double-teams, and he runs the floor, and he can finger roll, and he does it all with an abdominal strain, and this is why-this is exactly why-he can get away with his locker room dictatorship.

That, and the fact that he's amusing. On skipping the final Seinfeld: "I don't like to watch people who make more money than me." On being unafraid of catching Kobe Bryant's flu: "I'm un-sickable." On never winning a league MVP: "If I get it, great. If not, I'm not moving down to the CBA." On the origin of his last name: "Irish." On the Ginseng: "Helps your sex life. Just kidding." On IDGAF: "It means 'Ideally Dominate Games Always and Forever.' " (Big wink.)

On the other hand, it's not a game of one-on-four. O'Neal needed a little help to beat Seattle, and Eddie Jones was Basketball Jones, going for three straight playoff highs. But more than Jones, the Lakers needed Van Exel. They needed him to handle the ball, to hit the big threes and to leave Del Harris alone.

Three-for-three ain't bad.

But Van Exel is still an enigma. He injured his knee this season and when he returned, the coach said, "Let me know when you want back into the starting lineup." The coach is still waiting to hear. It is confusing, but so is the kid. Van Exel was asked one day why he preferred coming off the bench, and he said, "Less pressure." When Bill Fitch was fired by the Clippers, Van Exel said he wouldn't mind playing for the Clips. Asked why, he said, "Less pressure & our management people are too uptight."

He is a contradiction. This is the same guard who says he wants the last shot of every game, but also gets quite nervous shooting free throws on technical fouls. This is the same guard who once shoved a referee and once told Harris where to go, but is desperately trying to find God. Last summer, after his well-publicized playoff blowup with Harris, he finally went for help. He lives near Spurs guard Avery Johnson in Houston, and he asked Johnson for a ride to church. He always had a spiritual side (his grandmother always ordered him to say grace over dinner), and now he was suddenly reading the Bible and watching gospel television.

"I just thought it was time to try this," Van Exel says. "Thinking about the things I'd gone through, I know there's probably only one person in the world that can help Nick, and that's the man upstairs. I'm not saying I'm a bad person off the court; it's on the court where I have problems." In the Portland series, he almost backtracked when Harris benched him in the fourth quarter of their only loss. He made a snide comment about the coach, caught himself ... and found a Bible. "Last year, Nick would have exploded," assistant coach Larry Drew says. "Absolutely exploded. Just goes to show you."

Of course, what if the coach exploded one day? He writes notes to himself in bed, and he wants to coach in a sixth decade, and he has to somehow get Kobe in, and so Del Harris has a lot on his mind too. Maybe they need to know that he earned $2,750 in 1959 selling pots and pans, and that his rent was $40 a month and that it took him 11 years to earn his first $10,000. He was winning games in Indiana at Earlham College, and the most influential people in town were the mayor, the town marshall, the school superintendent, the high school principal, the minister and the coach-not necessarily in that order. "In the old days, we weren't seen as an antagonist so much," says Del Harris. "I wanted to be like all of my coaches.

"It's different now. Now you're the SOB who tells me how I ought to play my game. I remember when that first came out, we as older coaches resented that. A coach would say, 'Did you hear what he said? I'm affecting his game! I told that SOB he doesn't have a game, we've got a game-a team game.' Vietnam tended to change everything. Prior to the Vietnam War, there was kind of a trust there. That hey, politicians are good guys, and the coaches and the teachers and the police are out there to help us."

Oh, well, he's not in Kansas anymore, or in the '50s, so Del Harris prays every morning that "I'll be the kind of coach my guys need." What that is nobody knows, but the good thing is that he's a gentleman and the players recognize it, that he's superb with X's and O's and doesn't play the kid too many minutes, and that he has not had many run-ins with O'Neal.
"Me and Del had an argument only once this year," O'Neal says. "It was in Phoenix, a guy flopped two times in a row and got two calls, and I was mad. So next time I came down and tried to run Rex Chapman into a wall, and I got a foul. Del was upset, and I was kind of upset too. I just asked him, 'How come you don't stick up for me?' So we had a little argument. No bad blood, though. I respect him. He and I are in this together. If we lose, Del gets the blame first and I get it second. Nobody gets it third."

Meanwhile, back to Jerry West's ledge. The team had its 5-7 slide, and they weren't going to win 75. There were rumors of Harris' demise, and West picked up the red phone. "Shaquille, come and see me," he said.

West was angry and had written a memo, and he knew there was only one player who actually liked tongue-lashings, and so in walked the center. "I got an earful," O'Neal says. "I got the homeboy version. I got the 'duh, dah-duh dah-duh' version. Forty-five seconds of terror. Then I went downstairs and I gave it to the team. Double homeboy style."
The memo began, "Each of you are on the verge of letting this season slip right through your fingers." Jerry West had been sick to his stomach writing it, and now he knew why people were calling him "Jerry Stress." He went to see a doctor, and he continued to read self-help books, and he decided a hiatus-or a new organization-would do him good. The players were always whining, and his owner was paying him less than Rick Pitino ($5.75 million less, in fact), and his staff was underpaid too. He paid some of them out of his own pocket, and it rankled him that it had come to that, so he dropped the bomb that he might be leaving.

Just in case he goes through with it, Buss' son Jimmy, a 38-year-old horse trainer, is being phased in. He has already been on two scouting trips with West, and family members say he will deal with player agents and the new Lakers arena and be a locker room liaison to his father. But West is the front office's liaison to O'Neal, and if West goes, the center says he is "going to be pissed." He says he "loves coming down and getting scolded and cursed out by Jerry West,'' and, what's more, the 45 seconds of terror worked out, didn't it? After that memo, the Lakers tried defense and won 22 of 25. Van Exel bit his tongue, and Harris substituted better, and O'Neal began averaging 30 points, and the guard and forward and big man families finally came together.

They took Portland in four and Seattle in five, and Utah was next, and the Lakers began believing their headlines again and not believing in defense again, and they lost Game 1 by a franchise-record 35 points, and they have to be extra careful about suddenly giving a f-.

Can't start now.

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