In Retrospect, It Was Right Move

We have all been here before, all right. We are all coming here annually. We may never get to leave here.

This is getting to be like a Harry Potter sequel where Harry is in Hogwarts, even if he looks like he’s 25.

“Shaq and Kobe” has morphed into “Shaq vs. Kobe,” an even bigger attraction, even if the game isn’t the compelling part. Miami won in overtime last Christmas after the Lakers fouled Shaquille O’Neal out but the highlights that ran last week were Kobe Bryant walking out to greet Shaq, Shaq offering only a half arm around Kobe’s back and Shaq hip-checking Kobe on a drive.

Of course, if trouble ever really breaks out, Shaq and Kobe can figure on seeing each other for the next four Christmases, or longer if Shaq lasts.

If it’s only a basketball game, it still has meaning, just not for the soap opera angle, just as Phil Jackson’s return was important but not because of the old feud angles with Bryant.

The event means an obligatory review of the events that led up to it. It’s less important for the Heat, which will one day come to a crossroads of its own but should be an elite team in the short (to intermediate?) run.

It’s something else for the Lakers, who stepped out of the elite class when they traded O’Neal in the hope of a better Laker-style tomorrow.

Which leads us to three questions:

Did Jerry Buss Do the Right Thing?

Yes ... but not for the “purely financial” reason Buss gives.

O’Neal is right when he laughs at that. If money was the only problem, even with Shaq demanding a three-year, $81-million deal with the Lakers at two years and $45 million, it would have been looney tunes to let him go.

With Shaq already at $27 million a season, the Lakers were turning profits of more than $25 million. Even with conditioning and injury issues, he was a safe bet to play 60 games. They could have kept finishing No. 4 or 5, the road to the Finals would have run through them and their mad whirl would be whirling.

The problem was Bryant, who was ready to bolt as a free agent and had been signaling the Clippers for months.

Perhaps to protect Bryant, Buss insists he made the decision on O’Neal on its own merit. Indeed, Buss was prepared go without Shaq and Kobe if he had to ... . and for two weeks that summer, after Bryant ignored their request to opt out early so they could keep Jamal Sampson off the expansion list, and then opted out the very next day, the Lakers were terrified that they might.

You can’t say Bryant ran O’Neal off since Kobe actually thought he was leaving until the end. In his meeting with the Clipper delegation a week before making up his mind, a source says Bryant told them, “Print the uniform, I’m coming.”

Bryant had decided he wanted to get away from O’Neal but Buss set it up so that by the time Kobe had to choose, Shaq was gone. So Buss’ decision wasn’t “purely” financial. It was more like, “There’s no way I’ll pay Shaq all that money and watch Kobe leave.”

On that basis, how can you argue? Bryant was about to turn 26, O’Neal had just turned 32.

Buss didn’t understand it was a lose-lose decision, thinking they could do well enough to avoid massive pain with Rudy Tomjanovich and a running team, but it didn’t work out that way.

In any event, Buss didn’t go the safe way or the way to keep milking his cash cow. He went the hard way and the smart way.

Did Mitch Kupchak Mess This Up?

No.

I once wrote that Kupchak was “in over his head” -- with the proviso that “Jerry West might have been in over his head, too.”

It’s not easy to rebuild while following a legend. However, if West had been here and he had had to move O’Neal within the same time frame, the Lakers would probably be right where they are.

(Whether West could have talked O’Neal and Bryant into staying is another question. West had great influence with both; he was a calming influence on Bryant in the spring of 2001 when Kobe was estranged from the entire team and it may have been West’s advice that persuaded Kobe to stay in 2004. Nevertheless, it would have been like trying to re-route two supertankers from a canoe when O’Neal and Bryant decided they had had it with each other.)

The Lakers might have gotten more for O’Neal if they had room to maneuver, but they didn’t. Miami President Pat Riley said later he “couldn’t be left at the gate” if he could get O’Neal, suggesting the Lakers might have been able to get Dwyane Wade instead of Lamar Odom. However, that would have meant drawing out the talks to see what Riley did, which would have left O’Neal on the Laker roster ... while Bryant was making up his mind.

Everything else Kupchak is beaten up for is silly, like Sasha Vujacic, a No. 29 pick who looked overmatched but now looks OK. Kwame Brown may not pan out but his deal is only two years and on his worst day, he’s 6 feet 11 and 275 pounds to Caron Butler’s 6-7, 220. Andrew Bynum looks like a shot worth taking.

Kupchak isn’t West, a problem 28 other teams share, but as for messing this up, Kupchak didn’t do it.

Just Who Is Kobe Bryant, Anyway?

Now, there’s the question.

We used to think we knew. Wild though he was, his career tracked up for his first seven seasons. At that time, he was shooting 45% and averaging 5.9 assists with a 2-1 assist-turnover ratio.

Then his world came undone. Three seasons later, his game has yet to settle back into any single pattern.

When he plays the right way as he did Friday in Orlando, making teammates better (yes, even he needs them), confining himself to good shots, waiting until crunch time to take over, he’s right there with anyone who ever played the game.

That leaves all the other times he does it some other way. Of course, being Kobe, there are moments when he can make it work his way, as in Tuesday’s mind-blowing 62-point game.

To see that, or his two impossible three-point baskets at Portland in the spring of 2004, a day after raging at teammates for ripping him anonymously, or the walk-up three he shot in Richard Hamilton’s face to force overtime in Game 2 of the ’04 Finals, is to understand this isn’t a basketball player, this is a force of nature. You can’t coach Kobe, you can only point him in the right direction.

Bryant is a better shooter and ballhandler and no less of a competitor and big-game performer than the greatest there ever was, Michael Jordan, lacking only one all-important thing that Jordan had, the Old School virtue of restraint.

Bryant is the best high-wire artist there ever was, capable of anything at any time ... and seemingly intent on realizing every last possibility.

Happily for Bryant, the Lakers have a winning record or his 62 points (and no assists) might have been seen in another light. As it was, he turned the league on its ear.

A headline in the next day’s New York Times, quoting Riley, said: “ ‘Outrageous’: Bryant’s 62 Points Are Talk of the League.”

In Philadelphia, Allen Iverson said, “I had my popcorn just like probably everybody else. I was watching and I was actually calling people up on the phone to make sure they were watching it, because I watched the game from beginning to end.”

“Been there, done that,” said Houston’s Tracy McGrady, who scored 62 once but had to go four quarters. “I was tired last night and I wanted to go to bed but I couldn’t. That was really impressive. Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen anything like that, 62 in three quarters. That was big time, Kob.”

Bryant had already been named to the 2008 Olympic team. Nike, which began an edgy ad campaign around Bryant last summer, is unveiling its first Kobe shoe, marking another turnaround in a field in which one strike used to mean you were out. A year ago marketing people thought Nike would pay him his $40 million without using him.

This has been a long time coming. Bryant’s rape case was what it was but in basketball he was bashed far beyond what he deserved.

With Kobe now reduced to an underdog, leading a team that is no longer an object of ridicule, the comeback is on.

He’s Kobe, so this could go any which way, including up. We’re all just along for the ride.