Kobe, Shaq Need to Put Team First

With so much on the table, from a pending sexual assault trial to a chance for everlasting NBA greatness, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal choose now to argue over who gets the ball. This is more stupid than anything Jessica Simpson ever said.

Shaq thinks Kobe shoots too much. Kobe thinks Shaq’s talking too much about him shooting too much, so Kobe’s talking about leaving after the season.

Once again, it’s on. And as the folks at Fox Sports would say, “This Time It Counts.” Yes, we’ve been through this stuff before, but the difference is that something could actually happen as a result.

No matter how much hysteria had built up a couple of years ago, there was no way Mitch Kupchak was going to trade either one. O’Neal was the reigning most valuable player and Bryant’s game was still growing and glowing, showing so many flashes of greatness that Kupchak was terrified of shipping him out and becoming known forever as The Man Who Traded Kobe Bryant.

Now the clock’s ticking. Bryant can opt out of his contract next summer, become a free agent and leave. He’s sending more and more signals that that’s what he intends to do.

And O’Neal is sending signals as strong as his biceps that it would be fine with him. The sooner the better, actually.

He wasn’t happy about Bryant shooting so often in his first two exhibition games, especially when Bryant is still clearly weakened by his summer knee surgery.

“As we start this new season, [stuff’s] got to be done right,” O’Neal said. “If you don’t like it, then you can opt out next year. If it’s going to be my team, I’ll voice my opinion. If he don’t like it, he can opt out ... I ain’t going nowhere.”

Contractually, O’Neal is bound here for another two seasons beyond this one. But how fun would life in Lakerland be if Bryant leaves and Gary Payton and Karl Malone wonder what they got themselves into and take off as well?

The season hasn’t even started the season yet and Topic A is the end of the Quad Squad, not Tuesday night’s debut.

And it’s all so unnecessary. O’Neal has to realize that without Bryant he wouldn’t have any of his three championships, and he’d still be known as a disappointment despite his dominance. Bryant ought to realize how good he has it, that if you surveyed every player in the league, the person most would want to play with would be O’Neal.

Bryant is smart, talented and strong-willed -- three key components of greatness. But he’s also stubborn.

“I’m not changing my game whatsoever,” Bryant told reporters Sunday. “I take good shots, hit the open man when he’s there. I definitely don’t need advice on how to play my game.

“I know how to play my guard spot. He can worry about the low post.”

Last time things got this hot, in the 2000-01 season, I thought they were both right and both wrong. O’Neal was right to say that he should be the focal point of the offense, but wrong to constantly snipe at Bryant with his not-so-subtle comments. Bryant was right to say that he was the one working hard on his game and conditioning during the summer, and if O’Neal was going to show up out of shape and miss free throws in the fourth quarter, Bryant ought to have a greater role. But he was wrong to think the solution was to jack up shots whenever he wanted, and wrong to escalate the feud by firing back in ESPN the Magazine.

It was hard to applaud O’Neal for anything last year, and difficult to find flaws in Bryant’s season. O’Neal put the Lakers in a hole by delaying toe surgery to the end of the summer, leading to the Lakers’ dismal start. And he couldn’t be counted on during their January/February push for a playoff spot.

That was when Kobe came of age. He managed to mesh scoring with leadership and winning. Not always the easiest thing to do (Ask Dominique Wilkins).

But the end result of Bryant’s best season was the Lakers’ worst playoff result since 1999. What does that tell you? It takes two, and it takes a full-strength Diesel.

This summer it was O’Neal who worked out, while Bryant initiated a sequence that proved to be the worst mistake of his life. Unlike O’Neal, he might have been too eager to have surgery, flying to Colorado to have it on his own without consulting the Lakers. Then he invited a hotel worker to his room, resulting in either a sexual assault or a gross misunderstanding, depending on which version prevails in court. At the minimum he made a decision that altered the lives of two people and those close to them, and reshaped the tone of this season.

You’d think with that backdrop, Bryant and O’Neal could put aside their differences. Nope.

O’Neal wants the credit for bringing three of those “gold balls” (as he calls the Larry O’Brien trophies) to Los Angeles. O’Neal wants the credit for recruiting Payton and Malone. After imitating Superman and Rocky in recent scoreboard video skits shown at Staples Center, I fully expect him this year to appear on the screen soaking in a bathtub like Tony Montana, yelling “Who put this thing together? Me!”

Bryant and O’Neal can co-exist on the court, “Because if he’s open I’m going to give it to him and if I’m open I expect him to give it to me,” O’Neal said.

This isn’t about their ability to play together, it’s about their ability to stay together. They’ve proven before that they can put their differences aside long enough to win a championship. Apparently they can’t put them aside long enough to become a dynasty.

If they split up the end result will leave the Lakers short of the 1990s Chicago Bulls, the 1980s Lakers and the 1960s Celtics when it comes to dominating decades.

Bryant will be shy of Michael Jordan and O’Neal will trail Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the only category that matters: rings.

They would fall short of their ultimate individual goals, and all because they couldn’t handle that most basic of kindergarten tasks: getting along together.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com.