Before the Christmas showdown, the Lakers already surpassed the Trail Blazers in standings, ranking second in the Western Conference. This year, they are also the favorites to win the West.
"This year is your harvest season, Bobby, your record is pretty good," remarked Gan Guoyang.
"Come on, Sonny, you know we’re about to achieve something, so why come back now? You’re just making it harder for me."
"This is your chance to prove yourself. By the way, in tomorrow night’s game, let Shaq and I match up more. My son wants to see who’s the top center between him and me."
"Come on... Sonny, why are you doing this again? You don’t know how hard it is to deal with a big guy like Shaq. Oh my god, sometimes I wonder if I’m coaching a middle school basketball team. Shaq, Jide, they’re all like kids, fighting over insignificant things every day. I don’t even know if I’m the head coach or the school’s dean. Four seasons in, and we haven’t even formed a stable system or routine, always trading, always adjusting. The team’s locker room is like a Texan whip being buffeted by Magic’s antics; I swear I suspect our team has caught AIDS... you didn’t bring a recorder, did you? Fack, this shitty team doesn’t even have a permanent training facility. We have to rent someone else’s gym every time to train, two or three hours each time, and we get kicked out if we go over time. The young players can’t even practice extra. This XX boss XXX..."
It’s evident that Beelman’s complaints have increased a lot compared to before. After a few drinks, he started venting like crazy.
In the Lakers, what gives him the biggest headache isn’t tactics or data, but the locker room, the human relationships.
Jide arrived in Los Angeles earlier than O’Neal, but O’Neal earns more and has a bigger presence.
For the top spot, the two often have open and hidden conflicts in the team, and as their head coach, Beelman is caught in the middle, struggling to handle it.
Beelman isn’t a master of interpersonal relationships; he’s a business-oriented, technical coach who excels at spending his working hours watching videos, analyzing data, and setting up tactics.
At the Trail Blazers, he never had to worry about locker room and public opinion issues, as everything was neatly arranged for him. He only needed to complete his rotation shifts.
But it’s different in Los Angeles; here is the flashy world of the West Coast, and he became the center of attention, every move monitored by the media.
Every word, every action, gets compared by the media with Don Nelson, with Pat Riley.
The Lakers also get compared to the past Trail Blazers, and Beelman’s every word and action is scrutinized under a microscope.
In the 1993-1994 season, just when Beelman joined the Lakers, he was ambitious but was told to tank the season because they wanted to grab Jason Kidd.
Beelman could only comply, and the result was the last season’s championship coach couldn’t even lead the team to the playoffs, and he took a lot of the blame first.
In 1994, they fortunately got the second pick and selected Jason Kidd, gaining the next Magic Johnson, and Beelman was ready to show his skills.
He wanted to create a delicate half-court offensive system centered around Kidd according to the league’s trends and team composition, but was rejected by owner Jerry Buss.
Buss demanded that they must play fast-paced offense; the Los Angeles fans were eager to see the return of show-time, and the Lakers needed to sell tickets, not play half-court offense.
Beelman had no choice but to reluctantly design fast-break routines, and Buss also inserted Magic Johnson into the coaching staff as an assistant coach.
Magic was superb as a player, but as a coach, he was entirely an intuitive type, providing no real aid to Beelman—instead, it felt more like Beelman was assisting Magic Johnson.
So Beelman spent a season playing along with Johnson, who soon realized coaching wasn’t for him and quit.
Another season wasted, Beelman achieved nothing in building the system, and the team kept vacillating.
In the 1990s, the Lakers’ fast-break system was very hard to whip up the whirlwind like it did in the ’80s, and they once again missed the playoffs.
In the 1995-1996 season, Beelman pulled himself together, hoping to make a breakthrough in his third year.
But then Magic Johnson announced he was coming back, he wanted to play, and continue his career with the Lakers.
Jerry Buss couldn’t bear to lose his golden goose and the ensuing influence; the Lakers needed to sell tickets.
Beelman had no choice but to place Johnson at power forward and again redesign tactics and adjust rotations for him.
Not to mention having the former king and the new king on the same team, forcing the coach to deal with both parties’ pressures—what a life.
Beelman increasingly missed his days with the Trail Blazers, regretting ever agreeing to Jerry West’s call to Los Angeles to work hard.
"I’m telling you, Jerry returned to Los Angeles for four years, and his depression kicked in again. Can you believe it? He spent a happy four years in the rainy Portland, returned to sunny Los Angeles, and got depressed. Fack, damn Hollywood."
Beelman took a drink and talked about Jerry West’s current situation.
The actions at the draft event in June, and signing Shaquille O’Neal in July, exhausted Jerry West.
In fact, since leaving Portland and returning to Los Angeles over three years ago, West never had a single good day.
Originally, he had his eyes on Kobe and made a lot of preparations for this, but was blocked by the Trail Blazers, which made West extremely frustrated.