K-OH!-BE

For anyone who ever wondered what the heck he’s doing out there, other than becoming the best player in the game at 22, well, he’s growing up.

If that looks particularly involved in a town that won’t look away for even a moment, imagine what it’s like in private, in a locker room with 14 other men, held together by championship presumptions, unbending egos and a gangly coach whose tendencies run from the mystically confounding to the mystically precise.

Into that goes Kobe Bryant and a game dying to get out, and every night he lets a little more game run through his fingers, because maybe the team isn’t quite ready for all of it, and sure as heck the coach isn’t.

Bryant hasn’t done this before, not here, and there isn’t always time for a show of hands or a moment to gauge the relative mood of the coach’s soul patch. So, in an offensive system that once was amended for Michael Jordan but not redone, Bryant does what he can and lets his instincts lead him through the rest. There have been rough patches and constant speculation about his relationship with Laker teammate Shaquille O’Neal, and Bryant merely becomes better.

“I know everything is going to straighten out in the long haul,” Bryant said. “I’m very optimistic about that. You know, I rarely get shaken up.

“I let it go. I’m not going to let any of it bother me, true or untrue. I don’t care. What are we going to do? We’re not going anywhere. He’s not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere. So, what are we going to do about it? We’re here. We might as well play together and win.”

Into this afternoon’s game against the Portland Trail Blazers, Bryant’s 29.8 points a game lead the NBA. He shoots more than anybody else, a fact that gets him in trouble because he happens to spend a lot of time on the offensive end with last year’s league most valuable player, O’Neal. His field-goal percentage is 47.3, however, which happens to be a lot better than his career shooting percentage, last season’s percentage and the shooting percentages of, among others, Stephon Marbury, Steve Francis, Glenn Robinson and Vince Carter.

“From watching other guys mature as basketball players, it seems like the better you get the more criticism you have to take, the more responsibility you have to take,” Bryant said late last week, his reedy legs extending well away from an overstuffed hotel chair. “As far as that goes, I take it as a compliment. The louder the uproar, the bigger the challenge.”

He carries himself as if he hadn’t a care. He pushes his chin out, narrows his eyes, lets his arms dangle and, every once in a while, allows that half-smile to push into the light. As the rest of the world strains to know him, measure him, celebrate him and castigate him, Bryant lets it all hang off him like his ever-present Adidas warmups.

The fact is, this shooter has a conscience.

It was Dec. 12, late, maybe 10:30 p.m.

Bryant had just played his worst game as a pro, maybe his worst ever. He missed 23 shots. He took 10 three-pointers and missed all but three. The man he was supposed to guard, Milwaukee Buck guard Ray Allen, scored 35 points. The Lakers lost, again, and their championship seemed forever ago.

Afterward, the locker room at Staples Center was silent. The players dressed quickly after Coach Phil Jackson addressed them. From near the locker closest to the bathroom, Bryant began to speak.

“Fellas,” the shooter said. “That was my fault.”

Slowly, the heads around him raised up.

“I missed a lot of shots,” Bryant said. “I missed shots I normally make. But, I took some bad ones too.”

Bryant looked around the room.

“That was my fault,” he said again, tapping his chest with his hand.

He hadn’t expected an answer. Bryant still spends a lot of time on his own. He has friends in that locker room, but this was a bad loss and players were angry. Maybe not at Bryant, specifically, though a few definitely might have been. But, at the loss, for sure, and he knew it.

“Kobe.”

It was Rick Fox. Bryant turned back.

“So what. You made some mistakes. If you’re responsible for that, then you’re also responsible for the 15 wins we’ve got,” Fox said.

Other players might have let him stew in it awhile.

“I really appreciated hearing that,” Bryant said. “It made me feel better.”

It was the first time many had heard Bryant so honest.

“We’re teammates,” Bryant said. “We’re going to have to be together, period. It’s going to have to come around eventually. If some aren’t with me and we’re not all in it together, we’re not going to win. It’s going to have to come around if we want to win. I’m not afraid to step up and say something like that.”

Later, when the media had picked through the carcass of Bryant’s eight-for-31, veteran Horace Grant put his head near Bryant’s.

“You’re one of the best players in the league,” Grant told him. “But, just relax. Let it come to you.”

Grant, of course, has lived through this before. He played beside Jordan and beneath Jackson in Chicago.

“He had a subpar game,” Grant said. “He took some shots out of the offense. He felt bad. He stood up and took it like a man. We left it at that.

“For Kobe, it might have been a coming of age, so to speak, him coming into a more vocal leadership role.”

Arguably, Bryant is playing the best basketball of his career. Jackson put Bryant’s 45-point game against Houston last week with the best he’d ever seen. O’Neal called it, “phenomenal.” Bryant scored 35 the next night. Teammates are getting shots, the offense is as fluid as ever and, for a few games, the defense hasn’t been better.

It’s not all on Bryant, of course. O’Neal appears to have his legs under him again, and the two appear to be getting along well. They talk frequently on the court again, and they look at each other when they do, and they’ve laughed together during recent practices.

It might have nothing to do with that postgame apology. Then again, it might have turned a lot of things for the better. After the Milwaukee game, there were subtle changes in Bryant.

“I wanted to let my teammates know that I thank you guys for continuing to give the ball to me, allowing me to try to find a rhythm, that I’m not going to forget about you,” Bryant said. “I’m going to keep you guys involved. It’s not about me taking 30 shots. I don’t care about that. I want to win the ballgame.”

My fault, he said.

“He’s going to lead later on in his career probably more vocally,” Fox said. “Right now, he can’t shoulder all that responsibility. He has a job to do. He goes out and is a constant threat for us offensively. He has a night like that. Hey, we have all had nights like that. I just wanted him to know that’s one game out of 20-some we’d played. In my view, if he’s going to take responsibility for that he has to take responsibility for all the good things too.

“It just humanizes the fact that, while the majority of the time he plays un-humanlike, that [apology] can acknowledge that he wasn’t as good that night as he wanted to be or could be. As a brotherhood, it opens up the opportunity to say, ‘You know what? It’s all right.’ ”

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SEASON LOG

Ranking Bryant’s scoring by game:

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Dec. 6 at Warriors 51 Dec. 21 at Houston 45 Dec. 1 vs Spurs 43 Dec. 17 at Raptors 40 Dec. 3 vs Mavericks 38 Nov. 28 vs Pacers 37 Nov. 12 vs Rockets 37 Dec. 5 vs Sixers 36 Dec. 22 at Dallas 35 Dec. 13 at Blazers 35 Nov. 18 at Nuggets 32 Nov. 8 at Spurs 32 Nov. 22 vs Warriors 31 Nov. 16 at Kings 31 Nov. 14 vs Nuggets 31 Nov. 1 vs Jazz 31 Nov. 27 at Clippers 29 Nov. 24 vs T’wolves 29 Dec. 10 vs Pistons 26 Dec. 12 vs Bucks 25 Dec. 19 at Heat 23 Nov. 19 vs Bulls 22 Nov. 4 at Grizzlies 22 Nov. 5 vs Clippers 21 Dec. 8 vs Sonics 19 Dec. 15 vs Grizzlies 17 Nov. 30 at Sonics 17 Nov. 7 at Rockets 15 Oct. 31 at Blazers 14

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By The Numbers

Tracking Kobe Bryant’s scoring this season.

0: Games in which Bryant has scored 0-10 points

5: Games in which Bryant has scored 11-20 points

8: Games in which Bryant has scored 21-30 points

13: Games in which Bryant has scored 31-40 points

3: Games in which Bryant has scored 41-plus points