Jackson Keeps It in the Now

If it is to be this Laker team’s one and only season together, if Gary Payton walks and Kobe Bryant runs and Karl Malone retires, then, Phil Jackson said Friday, they’ll have to make it their motivation.

And when he is through leading this group to believe its opportunity is nearly over, almost before it started, then he too could go, following them all out of an organization left to rebuild from the coach down.

“A lot of what we teach them is about the impermanence of what this is all about,” Jackson said. “You go out and you play and not know if that’s going to be your last game or not. But you have to play like it is. If you’re playing to protect yourself or playing for next year, you’re doing the wrong thing.”

Much of what was built over a memorable eight years, Shaquille O’Neal and Bryant together, Jackson three years later, Malone and Payton after the three championships, could be gone by mid-July, for a dozen different reasons.

“There’s a lot of variables for this team, for whatever reason,” said Malone, at 40 feeling the pull of his children growing up. “It’s not about turmoil. Every guy ... has a decision to make this summer, what they want to do. We don’t want to talk about it sometimes, but this is real. A lot of guys have decisions to make. We don’t want to discuss it, but that’s the way it is.

“In life, all of us reach a crossroad. Which direction do you go?”

As Bryant considers life after 25, Payton considers the system, Malone considers his family and Jackson considers his own private “impermanence,” there is plenty of basketball to play.

While motivations would seem to run deep for a team once believed to be a lock to win a championship, this being its only shot could play well in the locker room as well.

“For these pro players, they know there’s an end,” Jackson said. “We put in our campaign, our seven or eight months, whatever it takes to get through a season.... At the end of it, there’s a restart of the year.

“There’s completion with it. It feels good to finish it up. And you know there’s not going to be everybody that’s on the team that’s the same.”

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The judge in Bryant’s sexual assault case has added a pretrial hearing for Friday, when the Lakers are scheduled to play in Seattle.

In previous scheduling conflicts, Bryant was able to return from Colorado in time to play when the games were held at Staples Center, on Dec. 19 against Denver and Wednesday against Sacramento. A flight from Denver to Seattle, however, would be 300 miles longer.

“That’ll be a tough haul,” Jackson said.

On March 2, Bryant missed a game in Atlanta, but he joined the team the next night in Houston.

More hearings are scheduled for April 26-28 and May 10-14. The Lakers’ regular season ends April 14.

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Horace Grant, who has a bad hip, said after treatment that Friday was “a good day.” The plan is to have Grant ready for the playoff schedule, or able enough to play about 10 minutes over a 48-hour period.... Kareem Rush, who’d experienced occasional numbness in his right foot, was examined by a team physician Friday. Tests were negative.... Rick Fox said he has a bone bruise in his right knee but was not limited by it.