近日，Gary Payton接受了採訪，
針對當年湖人組出F4爭奪冠軍最終卻失敗的事發表看法
“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受傷，當時我們18勝3負，
大家都討論我們是否能夠追上公牛的紀錄之類的事。但之後人們就不明白事情的發展了。
我們隊上有個小伙子叫Kobe，他那時還是孩子，遇到了點麻煩。
他每天都在想「完了，我想我要坐牢了，不知道接下來會發生什麼。」
他當時頻繁地來往於球隊和丹佛之間。他在球隊時間不長，
突然之間Shaq和球隊就發生問題了。
Payton went into more details about the injury issues the team faced and the
problems they caused, though his numbers were a little off:
隨後Payton透露了一些球隊面對各種狀況的細節，不過他給的數字與實際略有出入：
“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.”
馬龍缺陣了40場比賽，Shaq缺陣了15場，Kobe缺陣了17場，
我是當中唯一打滿82場的人。
隊上有許多球員從板凳席挺身而出，但當時他們還不怎麼清楚自己的定位，
例如：Derek Fisher、Rick Fox、Horace Grant。
我們整合起來這麼一個陣容，進入到了季後賽，打出一波連勝。
當時馬刺是聯盟三號種子，我們六場就拿下了系列賽，然後挺進總冠軍戰。
但在那之後所有事情都開始不順了，Malone努力回到球場卻傷了膝蓋，
然後Kobe和其他人都忙著處理自己的事，我們在底特律輸給一支優秀球隊，
當時活塞狀況正好，最終4-1擊敗我們。
https://goo.gl/GWBXgt