Los Angeles, Staples Center.
On the night of Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals, the atmosphere inside the arena was completely different from two days earlier.
There were no relaxed pregame jokes, no rap music blasting from O'Neal's locker room, no tentative air as reporters gathered around Kobe's locker and carefully posed their questions.
There was only a silent, taut focus, like a bowstring drawn to its limit.
The Lakers players arrived at the arena an hour earlier than usual.
When O'Neal entered the locker room, he carried no sports drink, chewed no snacks, and no rap beat pulsed through his headphones.
He walked to his locker, silently changed into his practice gear, then sat in his chair with his arms folded across his chest and closed his eyes.
He was doing something he rarely did—calming himself down.
Not because he was nervous, but because he was angry.
Angry about Game 1, angry at himself, angry that three old men with a combined age of over a hundred had taken a win right over his head.
Kobe was already on the court.
When the arena staff opened the doors, they found a soaking-wet number 24—Kobe Bryant. His practice jersey could have been wrung dry, and the fingers of his shooting hand were wrapped in bandages, rubbed raw from practicing at the training facility until dawn the night before.
He had already taken at least three hundred shots, from the baseline to the forty-five-degree angle, from the forty-five to the top of the arc, from the top of the arc to the opposite forty-five, then to the opposite baseline. Fifty shots from every spot. Every release was textbook-perfect, and every make produced that signature crisp sound, like the beat of a rhythmic drum.
Phil Jackson stood on the sideline with