Mike Segar / Reuters

The Lakers are one talented bunch, but not so good they don't need the occasional wake up call. The team's recent slide gives coach Phil Jackson a chance to work his motivational magic.

Mike Celizic

So forget the displeasure that Lakers’ guru Phil Jackson is professing following back-to-back losses to the Nuggets and Suns. While he’d rather have won the games, you can bet that Jackson is embracing the coaching hammer that his team just handed him.

Jackson didn’t get to be one of the best coaches his game has ever seen by telling his players everything’s just peachy keen. You can bet he’s been telling the Lakers all year that they’re not as good as they think they are, and if they want to get themselves a ring this year, they’d better listen to him. These two losses just prove his point, and you can bet he’ll mention that to them over the next days and weeks.

In the long run, these two losses may prove to be just what Jackson and the Lakers needed — a wake-up call for a team that never looked as if it was asleep. Denver is what can happen when they fail to take an opponent seriously. Phoenix is what can happen if the Suns slip into the playoffs and face the Lakers in the postseason.

You can make the argument that Jackson has already done as good a job coaching these Lakers as he has with any team he’s ever had. That’s been especially true since Bynum went down for the season, when Jackson managed to turn Lamar Odom from a disappointment into a key component.

Whether he ever gets full credit for his greatness as a coach is not the issue. Whether he can get that 10th ring that will put him one ahead of the sainted Red Auerbach of the Celtics is.

There is no question that Jackson has built a team that is capable of competing for the title. Now, we get to see if he can flog it to the finish line. And his work toward reaching that line is going to depend to a large degree on what he can do to revive Odom’s interest.

One of the biggest reasons why the Lakers lost Sunday was Odom’s failure to report for duty in any meaningful way. He got bullied and abused by Shaquille O’Neal and fouled out early, leaving barely a trace of his presence behind in the box score.

“Lamar just really had an awful day,” is all Jackson said afterwards. “I mean, there were a couple of really bad calls against Lamar that limited his time.” And there was some serious lack of interest on Odom’s part.

The big man can look forward to another dose of Jacksonian motivational lectures. The coach may even find an inspirational book for Odom to read. He does things like that, and we’ve always liked to have fun with some of Jackson’s many quirks.

But if you’re looking for a reason why players still respond to Jackson, just look at the book thing. Yes, it’s strange for coaches to give players reading material. But what it demonstrates is that Jackson genuinely cares about his players. He takes the time to learn to know them as people. He goes out of his way to try to introduce them to books and ideas he thinks may help them — not just in basketball, but in life. If there’s a better way to show he cares, I don’t know about it.

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Nathan Denette / AP

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