Another View

This is what it is like to watch the prodigies.

An 8-year-old Mozart playing symphonies. Shirley Temple coming alive in front of the camera. That little kid named Bob who talks a blue streak on the TV commercials.

Kobe Bryant should be a senior in college and instead he taught a graduate course in clutch play.

He wasn’t hot, he was sizzling. He didn’t just elevate his play, he rocketed all the way into orbit.

Some day, somewhere down the line, if somebody asks the question whether Michael Jordan was ever as good as Kobe Bryant, this is where the legend will have begun.

Standing on a throbbing left ankle and hoisting the Lakers onto his back. Listening to a thundering crowd of 18,345 at Conseco Fieldhouse and having the ability to create silence.

Time and again, from the left and from the right, slashing toward the hoop and pulling up for long jumpers, this was his game, his night in a 120-118 overtime win.

The question barely an hour before the opening tap was whether he would be able to play at all. And the question coming down the stretch was how anyone could ever stop him.

He limped and then he leaped. He struggled and then he struck for an incredible 28 points in an amazing 47 minutes.

Shaquille O’Neal watched the last 2 1/2 minutes from the bench, having fouled out and appeared as stunned as everyone else packed inside the crazy, delirious throwback barn of a basketball building.

When Reggie Miller’s desperation three-pointer for the Pacers kicked high off the back rim and sailed out of bounds, when the horn sounded, O’Neal was the first one off the bench to wrap up Bryant in a jubilant embrace. Call it the mountain coming to Mohammed.

Time to step it up.

It was a night when O’Neal was like a grain thresher devouring the Pacers with 36 points and 21 rebounds, while setting the Pacers back on their heels with a credible 10-for-16 effort at the foul line.

But it was Kobe’s time to step into the spotlight for his closeup.

There was nothing the Pacers could do to stop him, because he was operating in that zone where the great ones don’t seem to notice the defenders or the crowd or any of the distractions.

All he wanted was the ball.

And all he did was everything right with it.

“I tried to stay relaxed, like playing in the backyard,” he said. “No problem.”

Just his own symphony to conduct. That’s what it’s like with the prodigies.