近日，Gary Payton接受了采访，
针对当年湖人组出F4争夺冠军最终却失败的事发表看法
“The big reason was Karl Malone got hurt. We were [18-3] and everybody was
talking about we were going to get the Bulls’ record and stuff like that.
But then people don’t get it. We had a kid, Kobe Bryant, he was a kid. He
had just gotten in trouble. He had a mindset of, ‘I think I’m going to
jail. I don’t know what’s going to happen.’ He was going back and forth to
Denver, we didn’t have him a lot. Then, all of a sudden, Shaq and the
organization were having problems.”
最主要原因是Malone受伤，当时我们18胜3负，
大家都讨论我们是否能够追上公牛的纪录之类的事。但之后人们就不明白事情的发展了。
我们队上有个小伙子叫Kobe，他那时还是孩子，遇到了点麻烦。
他每天都在想“完了，我想我要坐牢了，不知道接下来会发生什么。”
他当时频繁地来往于球队和丹佛之间。他在球队时间不长，
突然之间Shaq和球队就发生问题了。
Payton went into more details about the injury issues the team faced and the
problems they caused, though his numbers were a little off:
随后Payton透露了一些球队面对各种状况的细节，不过他给的数字与实际略有出入：
“Karl Malone missed [40] games, Shaquille O’Neal missed [15], and then we
had Kobe who missed [17]. I’m the only guy there who plays the whole 82, and
we’ve got a group of guys coming off the bench who didn’t know who they
were. We had Fisher, we had Fox, we had Horace Grant, and we put it together.
So when we put it together and got to the playoffs, we made a run. San
Antonio was the [No. 3] team in the league that year; we beat them in [six]
games. And then we got to the Finals and everything didn’t click after that.
Karl tried to come back, blew up the knee, and then Kobe and everybody went
on to their own thing. We let a good team in Detroit, who was rolling at the
time, beat us 4-1.”
马龙缺阵了40场比赛，Shaq缺阵了15场，Kobe缺阵了17场，
我是当中唯一打满82场的人。
队上有许多球员从板凳席挺身而出，但当时他们还不怎么清楚自己的定位，
例如：Derek Fisher、Rick Fox、Horace Grant。
我们整合起来这么一个阵容，进入到了季后赛，打出一波连胜。
当时马刺是联盟三号种子，我们六场就拿下了系列赛，然后挺进总冠军战。
但在那之后所有事情都开始不顺了，Malone努力回到球场却伤了膝盖，
然后Kobe和其他人都忙着处理自己的事，我们在底特律输给一支优秀球队，
当时活塞状况正好，最终4-1击败我们。
https://goo.gl/GWBXgt