O’Neal Rises, Rest Easy

Imagine, for a moment, that Kobe Bryant had attended college.

Gasp.

Imagine, now, that he had actually remained there all four years.

Laughter.

You know what these next few weeks would mean, right?

Yep.

Graduation.

Turns out, based on his defense Sunday against the Phoenix Suns, it’s happening anyway.

Or didn’t you notice the pomp with which Bryant stuffed it down their circumstance?

That smart kid in the front row picked up more required credits in the Lakers’ as-exciting-as-a-Latin-lecture playoff victory in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals.

The score was 105-77.

The course was Advanced Ball Hawking.

The Suns wilted like a bad scholastic metaphor.

“We just ran into a buzz saw today,” Penny Hardaway said.

He could have been talking about Shaquille O’Neal, who landed on Phoenix as if he were Southwest Airlines.

Against the horseshoe-like Suns--you figure it out--O’Neal’s 37 points and 14 rebounds are figures he’ll probably exceed three times before this series is finished.

But Hardaway was probably also talking about the other guy.

The one who last week was named to the NBA’s first-team all-defense.

The biggest surprise about that award being, it was absolutely no surprise.

Bryant’s offense was mere garnish during an afternoon when he slapped and lunged and chased the Suns into perhaps wishing they had turned back at Yuma.

“I love playing defense,” Bryant said afterward with a smile as big as any you’ve seen on him at the three-point line. “Because the other team has you at a disadvantage. You don’t know what your man is going to do. It’s more of a challenge than on offense.”

His first challenge was to guard Sun playmaker Jason Kidd.

Nope, not the quicker-detonating Hardaway, but Kidd.

That’s because the philosophy of Phil Jackson’s staff is to put their best defensive guard where the best defense always starts.

“It starts with the ball,” assistant Jim Cleamons said. “Kobe guarded Jason because we wanted to stop the ball.”

Sometimes it was stopped. Other times it was stolen. Then there were the times it was knocked into somebody’s salad.

Kidd, making just his second appearance after rehabilitating an ankle he broke in late March, spent most of the day with his nose pressed against his offense’s front-room window.

He occasionally sneaked inside--seven assists.

But he usually didn’t--no offensive rebounds.

And when Kidd tried making a racket from where he stood, Bryant often shut him up--four more turnovers (five) than field goals made (one).

Explained Kidd: “Kobe is at the top of his game and, unfortunately, I’m at a point where I’m just trying to get back into it.”

While the explanation makes some sense, it doesn’t quite jibe with how, in his first game back earlier this week against San Antonio, Kidd handed out eight assists in the fourth quarter of the playoff-clinching win.

But Bryant kindly agreed anyway.

“I didn’t get anything out of that matchup, because Jason wasn’t 100%,” he said. “It doesn’t unless each man is 100%.”

On a day when the Staples Center crowd reverted to its usual late-dash sleeping self, Bryant got the fans going with his other challenge, that being Phoenix’ entire perimeter game.

If the Suns have a chance to win this series--psst, they don’t--they must do it from the outside. But with Bryant covering enough ground to pick up three steals and record three blocked shots, there was no outside.

The Suns made just three of 18 three-point attempts. Their three-guard rotation combined to commit as many turnovers (11) as the entire Laker team.

“We were really into a flow,” Bryant said of an unselfish defense that was missing in recent years.

“I was so caught up in it, one time I rotated into guarding Corie Blount at the three-point line and I’m thinking, ‘Dang, what am I doing, he’s not going to shoot from there!’ ”

Not that it’s difficult trying to dribble and pass around a 6-foot-7 guy who moves like a 6-3 guy with the apparent arm-span of a 7-footer.

But on Sunday, it was exhausting just watching Bryant play defense.

One minute he would be on Kidd. The next minute he would be chasing the ball to where Rodney Rogers held it in the corner. Then back over to Shawn Marion.

Then he would flail his arms across the middle, tip a pass, grab it, and the fast break was on.

“During training camp, Phil was getting on me because I was always chasing the ball,” Bryant said. “But that’s just me.”

Ron Harper laughed and put it another way.

“Sometimes we have to say to Kobe, ‘Hey, slow down . . . stay home!”’ he said. “But we know he’s a guy who plays hard every play of every game.”

And on defense, nothing is as important.

Not that Kobe didn’t contribute in the usual way.

It’s just that, for once, it’s going to take us to the last lines of this column to write about it.

OK, OK, he scored 25 points.

But throw those away Sunday, all of them, every last fall-away jumper and spinning layup, and the Lakers still win by three.

That’s not a statistic, it’s a commencement address.

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