Jeff Pearlman - Three-Ring Circus

To Gary Miller

Whose selfish need to be Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley nearly ruined a friendship

(Some 40 years ago)

Copyright 2020 by Jeff Pearlman

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pearlman, Jeff, author.

Title: Three-ring circus : Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the crazy years of the Lakers dynasty / Jeff Pearlman.

Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019057830 (print) | LCCN 2019057831 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328530004 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781328530660 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Los Angeles Lakers (Basketball team)History. | Basketball teamsCaliforniaLos AngelesHistory. | Basketball playersUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC GV885.52.L67 Pff 2020 (print) | LCC GV885.52.L67 (ebook) | DDC 796.323/640979494dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057830

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057831

Cover design by Brian Moore

Cover photographs: David Sherman/Nbae / Getty Images (Shaq); Steve Grayson / Getty Images (Phil); Jeff Gross / Allsport / Getty Images (Kobe)

Author photograph Catherine Pearlman

v2.0920

To men and women who want to do things, there is nothing quite so driving as the force of an imprisoned ego. All genius comes from this class.

M ARY R OBERTS R INEHART

On the morning of January 26, 2020, I was sitting inside the Corner Bakery in Irvine, California. My laptop was open. A hot bowl of oatmeal rested before me, alongside one of those sugary crisp biscuits and a cup of coffee.

At exactly 11:37 a.m., my iPhone made a noise. Ping. I lifted the device from the table. The text was from my friend Amy Bass...

News reports that Kobe Bryant is dead

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

What?

Kobe Bryant couldnt be dead. There are things in this world that are possible, and things that are impossible. This was impossible.

Kobe Bryant was just 41 years old. He was a husband, a father of four, an entrepreneur, a youth coach, a regular church parishioner, an active and involved Orange County resident. His videos were all over social media. Kobe shooting hoops with Gigi, his 13-year-old daughter. Kobe snuggling with his wife, Vanessa, and their newborn. More than 15 million followers hung on @kobebryants latest tweets, and with good reason. His was a simultaneously comforting and electrifying presence.

Kobe Bryant couldnt be dead.

He just couldnt.

Over the previous two years, I had worked nonstop on this book, Three-Ring Circus. And while this is a chronicling of the 1996 to 2004 Los Angeles Lakers, it is alsoin a sensethe story of Kobe Bryants development as both a professional basketball player and a fully functioning human being.

Upon joining the franchise at age 17 in 1996, Bryant was a typically overconfident, largely insufferable teenager. Like most of us emerging from high school, he believed all the answers resided inside his head, and that his elders were both misguided and out of touch. He thought he could average 30 ppg as a rookie. He thought Shaquille ONeal was lazy and Eddie Jones underwhelming and Nick Van Exel overrated. He thought he should be starting from Day One, and that Del Harristhe veteran head coachknew not whereof he spoke.

Through the eight years that followed, Bryant was as beloved as he was disliked. He could do magical things on the court while behaving as a selfish child off of it. He treated many fans like his closest friends while treating many teammates (especially undrafted rookies) like empty soda cans resting alongside a gutter. He had little use for some coaches and overwhelming respect for others. He was dour and peppy; intense and playful; cruel and loving. He was accused of raping a woman, proclaiming his innocence even as he came very close to serving time.

Jerry Buss, the Lakers owner, viewed him as a son, in the way he also viewed an earlier Lakers star, Magic Johnson, as a son. Jeanie Buss, Jerrys daughter, considered Kobe a brother. Shaquille ONeal eyed him skeptically, wearily. Other teammates didnt know Bryant beyond the court. Hi, Bye. Little more.

You never knew where you stood with Kobe, I was told.

You always knew where you stood with Kobe, I was also told.

When the reality of Kobe Bryants death finally hitwhen we learned that a fiery helicopter crash had not only taken his life, but that of Gigi and seven othersI found myself thinking long and hard about the fragility of existence, about the end of an icons being.

About a persons legacy.

I am fortunate to count several tremendous sportswriters as friends, and this conceptlegacyis something weve broached at length. Its actually (in a way) one of the flaws of the medium. When one writes the story of an era, he is charged not with dishing out hagiography, but an honest, sincere, detailed recollection of a period. In doing so, however, an author asks the reader to understand that a sliver of time is not an eternity.

Or, put differently: A book freezes people.

This is my clumsy way of saying that the Kobe Bryant of 1996 to 2004 is not the Kobe Bryant of 2005 to January 26, 2020. He was not then the contemplative adult who raved of having four daughters. He was not then the doting husband. He was not then the Academy Award winner.

He was not yet comfortable in his skin.

What I hope to supply herefor good or badare not merely the highs and lows of a dynastic basketball team, but the early steps and missteps of a player who arrived in professional sports as a child and, tragically, died days ago as a fully formed human. Just as you cannot explain Albert Einsteins brilliance without first examining his days as a youthful Bern patent clerk, and just as you cannot know Amelia Earhart without grasping her time as a homeschooled child in Des Moines, it is hard, if not impossible, to love the richness of Kobe Bryants life without observing his days of stubbornness and social experimentation and development.

When a legend dies, we feel lost.

Sometimes, I hope, it eases that grief to know how he began.

To celebrate it.

Jeff Pearlman

February 10, 2020

Its February 21, 2002. We are in Cleveland. Only this is pre-LeBron Cleveland, a ceaselessly pewter-skyed city that provides the razzle of an armpit. There is nothing of particular note to do here, so when NBA players come to town, they dolargelynothing. Sit in the hotel room. Flick around the remote control. Eat. Sleep.

Thats why Samaki Walker, Lakers power forward and a man who stands 6-foot-9 and weighs 240 pounds, is in his room at the Ritz-Carlton. Sitting. Flicking. Eating. Sleeping.

Then something catches his eye. Its the red blinking light atop the phone on his night table.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Walker assumes its rote road-trip insignificance. Housekeeping, maybe. A left-behind message for a departed guest. But then, out of curiosity, he presses the VOICEMAIL button and holds the receiver to his ear.

Yo [sob] Samaki...

Is that... ?

Maki [sob], look, youre [sob] my boy [sob] ...

Could that be... ?

I [sob] just... I just [sob] ...

That sounds like...

Man