Zen master, four big egos, one tall task

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The Zen master is wedged between Kobe Bryant's legal mess in Colorado and the championship-seeking desperation of Karl Malone and Gary Payton.

His assignment is to manage the Bryant fallout, try to instill harmony among four massive egos and win another NBA championship.

If he pulls it off, Red Auerbach finally might have something nice to say about him.

The Zen master's tranquility is certain to be assailed along the 82-game march, starting perhaps this week at training camp in Hawaii, where the Lakers will line up in support of Bryant and reduce the serious claim before him to a "distraction."

The Zen master already has stepped on one verbal land mine, suggesting in an interview with ESPN that Bryant's fight to stay out of prison just might serve to be a team-bonding mechanism.

That is an interesting theory, even by the loopy standards of the Zen master, considering the high number of NBA players who hang out with lawyers out of necessity and rarely end up inspiring their teams.

If being a danger to society was beneficial to a team, Rod Strickland would have been a paragon of NBA citizenship. At the peak of his powers, Strickland was usually up to the challenge of one roadside sobriety test a month. Unfortunately, this remarkable intangible failed to rally the various teammates who played alongside him in Washington.

As always, the Zen master is considered a deep thinker by the limited thinkers entrusted with evaluating the one-game-at-a-time tenets of the playpen. The Zen master is said to take it one book at a time, as one who both reads and writes books.

All his intellectual muscle, overstated or not, will be necessary this season. Dennis Rodman, by comparison, will come to represent the good old days of placating a high-maintenance diva in short pants.