Day of Capital Gains Begins With Educational Experience

By J.A. ADANDE

May 12, 2001 12 AM PT

SACRAMENTO — Life has a funny way of intruding on the Lakers during their playoff series with the Sacramento Kings.

Last year the theme song was “Having My Baby,” when Rick Fox jetted to the East Coast after Game 3 to be with his wife, who was giving birth to their first child.

This year’s music was “Pomp and Circumstance,” for Jackson’s trip to Boulder, Colo., for his son Ben’s graduation from the University of Colorado.

He left LAX after practice Thursday afternoon, went to a dinner that night, attended the ceremony Friday morning, then got to Sacramento about 3 1/2 hours before tipoff.

“The interesting thing was that as the plane was landing, the plane erupted into ‘Beat L.A. Beat L.A.,’ ” Jackson said. “But the flight attendant said, ‘Finally, folks, as you get off the plane, remember that the Lakers are going to beat the Kings tonight. Go Lakers!’ So, there was the partisan crowd, but we still had the last laugh as we got off the plane.”

Doesn’t Jackson always get the last laugh?

I said before the playoffs that this would go down as either the greatest triumph or biggest failure for Jackson, and right now the scale is tilted toward triumph.

He sure looked good by the end of the game, when the Lakers walked off the court with a 103-81 victory over the Kings at Arco Arena.

The Lakers are up, 3-0, in this best-of-seven series. They have won 14 consecutive games.

Jackson coached a fairly conservative game Friday, as if he felt that he had already used up enough good karma getting to the game on time and he didn’t want to tempt fate anymore.

Jackson called timeouts early to stop Sacramento runs and keep the fans from getting too hysterical.

In Game 1, Jackson played Shaquille O’Neal for most of the first half even though O’Neal picked up two quick fouls. Friday, when O’Neal and Kobe Bryant had three personals, he sat them for the final 4:08 of the second quarter rather than risk either of them getting a fourth before halftime. But the Lakers still took a nine-point lead into the locker room.

Earlier, Jackson was willing to risk all of the dangers of commercial travel--from flight delays to airline food--and potentially miss a playoff game to attend his son’s graduation. He missed the birth of a daughter because of a playoff game when he was with the New York Knicks, but Ben’s graduation might have been even more rare.

“This one graduated with honors, and that doesn’t happen too often in our family,” Jackson said with a grin.

O’Neal could appreciate Jackson’s move. After all, he missed a game during the regular season to participate in winter graduation ceremonies at Louisiana State.

“It was a good, fatherly thing to do,” O’Neal said of Jackson’s trip. “I’m glad he made it back to be here and steer the ship.”

Around Sacramento, they’d probably tell you that the graduation story was something cooked up by Jackson to avoid spending time in the state capital.

You’d be amazed how wounded this town felt after a couple of caustic comments from a basketball coach. But Jackson’s quips last year that the people of Sacramento were “semi-civilized” and “maybe redneck in some form or fashion” still have people in Sacramento feeling defensive.

Don’t they have more important things to worry about in the capital, such as running the state? Or rotating the crops?

Jackson can have some fun with it now and so should everyone else.

“The Junior Chamber of Commerce comes out and shows me some of the outstanding features,” he said of his reception when he comes to Sacramento after the comments. “They talk about what a great place this is to live. It’s only an hour and a half from Tahoe, an hour and a half from the Bay, an hour and a half from the wine district, they’re right in the gold district here. It’s a wonderful place to live.”

If anything, he aimed his knife at the assembled sportswriters, riffing on Ben’s English degree.

“It’s all right,” Jackson said. “Some guys turn out to be journalists. I don’t know how good that is.”

The sportswriters laughed. The fans behind the Laker bench weren’t quite as receptive an audience. They yelled and hurled insults at him from the time he walked on the court before the pregame introductions. He stayed cool. Must have been the earplugs he was wearing.

After the game had ended, he simply stood up and went straight to the tunnel, never looking back.

The Lakers are progressing. They took another step toward defending their championship Friday, winning a game in a hostile environment on a night O’Neal couldn’t carry the Lakers.

As all of those mortarboard-wearing students can tell you, if you put in enough hard work, good things happen in May and June.

There’s a good chance another Jackson could be rewarded for his work this year. Receiving a shiny gold trophy. With honors.

J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: [email protected].