THE trapeze artists and bearded ladies began to pile off the bus just after 5:30, weaving their way inside Madison Square Garden. Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey generally doesn’t arrive in these parts until the winter, but, then, they’ve been forced to cede their title as Greatest Show on Earth for the time being. To the guys in the gold and the purple.
“You think it’s as crazy as it can get,” said Rick Fox, injured this year but still in possession of the best seat in the house night after night. “And then it gets even crazier.”
The man at the focus of the craziness did his best to look calm, serene, and ever worry-free last night, an hour before the Lakers would face the Knicks at the Garden, L.A.’s only visit to New York City this year (barring a Knicks run to the Finals, of course).
“I have my good days, and I have my bad days,” Bryant said into the mass of cameras and notebooks. “You have to believe that God will carry you through.”
These must be the best of days in Bryant’s world now, days not only occupied by basketball games but also by other folks elbowing for space on the front page of the newspaper. Big as Kobe Bryant is, even he can’t compete for the world’s attention when Michael Jackson stands accused of fondling another child.
Blessings can come in many forms.
“I love playing in this city,” Bryant said. “I love playing in New York, on this stage, in front of great basketball fans. When I get the chance to play, it makes everything seem better, at least for a few hours. That’s where I find my relief.”
The Lakers are the great carnival act of basketball now, and would be even without the Kobe sideshow. You walk into the cramped visiting locker room at the Garden and it’s all but impossible not to trip over a future Hall of Famer. Not even the vintage Bulls had close to this array of talent in the room at any one time, and in this diluted age of expansion and expulsion, it’s a wonderful throwback of sorts.
Really, you have to go back to the mid-’80s, when the Celtics still had the Big Three – Larry Bird, Robert Parish, Kevin McHale – up front and Dennis Johnson in the backcourt, with Bill Walton coming off the bench. That’s the last time a team showed this kind of basketball bling-bling to the ticket-buying public every night.
Rare has been the time when you get this kind of circus traveling from basketball city to basketball city. Don Chaney knows what it’s like to be on the other side of it. Back in 1972-73, Chaney was a key component on another batch of Celtics, led by Dave Cowens and John Havlicek and Jo Jo White, that won 68 games and could have won a lot more, since 10 of their 14 losses were by seven points or fewer.
“It was a great, unique situation,” Chaney said yesterday morning at the Knicks training facility in Westchester County. “Every game we would see teams get fired up for us like it was Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Fans reacted the same way. When you have a great team with a lot of great players on the floor, you have an inescapable energy in the arena that’s hard to beat.”
Of course, basketball New York misses being the focus of such national basketball attention. The old Knicks used to be that way, of course, the hit-the-open-man Knicks who virtually taught the rest of America how to play team basketball in the ’70s. But even the better Knicks teams of the ’90s were that way. They often uglified and routinely brutalized a beautiful game, and there have always been a lot of basketball fans who get a big kick out of watching Patrick Ewing lose, so that was certainly an appealing aspect to that team.
Now, the Knicks are merely foils. They are guests at their own party. But they aren’t alone. In the NBA, in 2003-04, there are the Lakers, and there is everyone else. When the circus comes calling, everyone comes to watch. To gaze. To gawk. To cheer. And to boo.
Kobe’s travel log
The Kobe Bryant trial has created a sideshow atmosphere at Laker road games this season. But except for his field-goal percentage, the All-Star guard’s stats are better on the road than at Staples Center thus far. Here’s a look:
DATE SITE PTS. ASST. REB. RES.
Nov. 1 at Phoenix 15 4 6 W, 103-99
Nov. 4 at Milw. 31 8 7 W, 113-107
Nov. 6 at San Ant. 37 2 5 W, 120-117
Nov. 7 at New Orl. 11 3 4 L, 114-95
Nov. 10 at Memphis 19 4 3 L, 105-95
Nov. 18 at Detroit 19 3 2 L, 106-96
HOME AWAY
4 G 6
20.8 PTS. 22.0
3.5 REB. 4.7
3.3 ASST. 4.2
.545 FG% .406
4-0 W-L 3-3
