Chemistry Class Just Beginning

Winning 75% of your games with an offense that dumps the ball to the dominant big man in the league?

Now it gets hard.

Beating only four winning clubs with a mellow clubhouse where everyone knows his place?

Now it gets hard.

Phil Jackson has done marvelous things in his first two months with the Lakers, setting a tone of credibility not heard here in years, molding a winning atmosphere.

But Kobe Bryant is back.

And the team that imploded last spring--with all its egos and eccentricities--is together again.

This is where Del Harris struggled. This is where Kurt Rambis fumbled. This is where the Lakers have been enigmatic and uncoachable.

This is is where it gets hard.

Tonight’s visit by the Portland Trail Blazers will mean little in the grand scheme, but plenty as a first step.

Tonight, Jackson must begin the important work of matchups. Not matching up the Lakers against their opponents, but the Lakers with themselves.

How will he fit Kobe with Shaquille O’Neal? At least, so that they are still talking to each other in the morning?

How can he help Glen Rice be productive with fewer touches, fewer shots and a lot more trade talk?

What happens to a rotation that was just getting comfortable? Does this fastball suddenly start spinning like a curve?

In some ways, coaching the Lakers so far has been as predictable as a sitcom.

Now let’s see what Phil Jackson does with a soap opera.

“We’re a little bit of a different team now,” said John Salley, a Jackson disciple. “It will be interesting to see what happens.”

Here’s what the new coach has done . . . and what he has to do:

* Jackson has regained the Lakers’ long-lost edge with the officials. Now he needs to do the same with Kobe.

Nowhere is Jackson’s credibility more evident than in how the striped shirts react to his complaints.

For the first time in recent memory, a Laker coach can publicly gripe about officiating one day, and receive better calls the next.

It happened during the first week of the season, when he said the officiating was “awful” against Portland, then watched his team get many good--fair?--breaks in ensuing games. Talk about $5,000 well spent.

A few games later, an official Jackson had been berating walked over to the coach and asked, “Are we OK?”

Said Salley, “The referees have to pay attention to Phil.”

Just as Jackson now must pay attention to Kobe.

How is he getting along in the locker room of a team that will not forget it went 11-4 without him?

How is he reacting while sitting on the bench after being pulled?

This will happen. In a preventive sort of way, it has already happened, as Jackson refuses to start Bryant tonight even though he was a great counter to Scottie Pippen in last year’s playoffs.

“I want to get back in there. . . . Being in the starting lineup has spoiled me,” Bryant said.

Let the unspoiling begin.

* Jackson has figured out how to get the most out of Shaq. Now he has to figure out how to get the most out of Rice.

There are probably plenty of reasons that Shaq has been the league’s best player this season.

But one of them is certainly that Jackson has not been afraid to tell him he can be one of the league’s worst players.

He’s the first Laker coach to act like Shaq’s sergeant father.

Usually it’s behind closed doors at practice. But once after a game in Dallas, the locker-room door swung open and observers could see Jackson standing in front of Shaq, pointing and gesturing.

“Phil is all over Shaq, all the time,” Salley said. “But Shaq can take it. It works for him.”

What will work with Rice? This is particularly important now that Rice must accept a lesser role with Kobe’s return.

So far, Jackson has tried public reproaching, ripping Rice in the newspaper after a lousy game in Denver. The results have been mixed.

“I didn’t approve of it,” Rice said. “If you have something to say to a man, say it to his face.”

But, noted Salley, “I think that helped Glen play better after that, even if he won’t admit it.”

* Jackson has devised a steady and happy rotation. He now must make those adjectives apply with all three stars on the floor at the same time.

Salley says that, so far, the Lakers have viewed Jackson’s moves with the understanding that if this philosophy was good enough for Michael Jordan, it’s good enough for them.

“All those championship rings really say something to players,” Salley said.

But now there are potholes, the first created by the needs of Rice and Kobe.

Both players say that, unlike last year, they can play together.

The popular perception is that they can’t, and that Rice must be traded for a power forward.

Jackson must make sense of it all.

Here’s guessing that, because it will be difficult to get proper value for Rice, and because there is no rule that says champions can’t have three stars--Magic, Kareem, Worthy--Rice will stay.

Provided, of course, that he plays a little transition defense.

“Last year, the offense was stagnant, but this year, with all the movement, it can work with Glen and I,” Kobe said, then related a story about the exhibition game in which he scored a layup when his defender was looking over at Rice.

“Glen had an assist without ever throwing me the ball,” Bryant said.

Said Rice, “Whoever says we can’t play together, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Then there is the subtle, yet dangerous, mixture of Kobe and Shaq.

So far, they have made nice. But so far, they haven’t lost a close game in which one guy wanted the ball, and the other wouldn’t give it to him.

“I just don’t think it will be a problem,” Jackson said. “Everything I’ve heard about, I haven’t seen yet.”

Just wait. So far, Phil Jackson hasn’t seen anything yet.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.