Bryant Leaves a Chill

The realization became apparent midway through the fourth quarter Monday, with the next Michael Jordan sitting glumly by the bench like the next Eddie Jordan.

Maybe we are expecting too much.

Maybe Kobe Bryant will one day be one of the guys out front as the Lakers hike through the prickly brush of the playoffs.

But maybe that day is not now.

After Monday’s 106-92 loss to the Seattle SuperSonics in Game 1 of the second round of the NBA playoffs, maybe we need to remind ourselves of some things.

This is a guy whose most important number is not 8, but 19.

This is a guy who could be easily finishing his sophomore year in college instead of hanging out with the Lakers during important moments of an important playoff game.

Which is what happened Monday, when this happened:

With the score tied at 82-all, the SuperSonics’ Gary Payton stole the ball from Elden Campbell and flipped it to Greg Anthony, who missed a fastbreak layup.

But by then, there were already two other hustling SuperSonics around the basket. Vin Baker easily grabbed the rebound and scored to give Seattle a lead it never lost.

Bryant and Eddie Jones, meanwhile, never even crossed midcourt.

Moments later, with Jones wide open and expecting a pass, Bryant drove the lane, was surrounded by SuperSonics, yet threw up a shot that was blocked.

Jones was visibly upset. Bryant waved his arms and said, “Chill.”

Coach Del Harris was obviously thinking something else, because, within a minute, Bryant was benched.

He plopped on the floor and remained there until the game was essentially over.

Sixteen minutes, four points, on one-of-five shooting.

Afterward, it was even tough for the NBA’s best smile to smile.

Bryant dressed in the trainers’ room, answered a couple of questions in front of a TV camera and hustled out the door toward the team bus.

Thank goodness for autograph hounds. Bryant is still not jaded enough to ignore his fans, whose cries he heeded before boarding.

When he stopped to sign, he was asked if he was frustrated.

“Probably,” he said.

He was asked why.

“Because I’m still not able to take over the game,” he said.

He was asked about the misunderstanding with Jones.

“I just told him to chill out,” Bryant said. “It’s a long game.”

He shrugged. “We’re gonna learn this.”

He was speaking of incorporating himself during crunch time into an offense built around the game’s best center.

“We have to do something,” he said. “We can’t let them just freelance out there defensively, all shagging back on Shaq.

“We have become way too predictable.”

But it doesn’t seem like Bryant yet has the ability to change that.

This was going to be the postseason in which Bryant was going to make everyone forget the four airballs he shot as a rookie in the final minutes of the Lakers’ final playoff game last year, a second-round loss in Utah.

Yet, in three of five playoff games this spring, he has scored only four points. In another, he scored 22, but most of them came in the fourth quarter of a clinching blowout in Portland.

For only several minutes of the five games, in the fourth quarter of the opening victory against the Trail Blazers, has he made any significant impact.

“I have to be patient,” he said.

As hard as that is for him, it is probably harder for us.

You see a guy on more playoff commercials than pizza, you figure you will still be seeing him after the commercials end.

It is difficult to imagine that he had handled nothing more deftly this postseason than, well, a Sprite.

But deal with it, we must.

“Hey, it’s tough, the guy’s been built up so high, there’s nowhere to go but down,” said Nick Van Exel, who counseled Bryant on the sidelines after he was benched. “It’s like, what do you do now?

“It’s like, if he only scores two points in a game, he becomes a bad guy. It’s not fair.”

Del Harris admitted that, “He didn’t have a Kobe game tonight. But not everybody is going to have a good game every night.”

Increasingly, it seems as if the Lakers’ attitude with Bryant is this:

He is a blast to watch, and may one day be one of the greatest players in the game. But anything he does that can win a playoff game is gravy.

The Lakers look at Kobe like everyone looks at most kids. He is fun to be seen, but does not necessarily need to be heard.

“He knows he’s young,” Van Exel said, pausing for a bit of reality. “But I want to win it now.”

It is time to realize that those two concepts are less compatible than we thought.