KOBE OR NOT KOBE?

Don’t worry, Phil Jackson is on the case, aren’t you, Phil?

Phil?

He has been, even if it was hard to tell as the Lakers moped toward Thanksgiving with insiders confirming the return of their internal battle of wills. Kobe Bryant was split off from everyone. Shaquille O’Neal was casting baleful stares at him, waiting anxiously for Jackson to put the Golden Child back in his place, which is, of course, behind Shaq Daddy.

Phil, however, was serene as a Buddha or Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Newman, author of the immortal words “What, me worry?”

Urgency? What urgency?

If Jackson was asked about the problem directly, he’d shrug it off. If he was asked about Bryant, he’d acknowledge he had been wild.

In the loss to Denver, with O’Neal out because of injuries, Jackson gave the last shot to Isaiah Rider, probably to make a point as much as anything, knowing it would get Kobe’s attention as surely as if he had torn his uniform off. Jackson then produced a laundry list of reasons afterward: ‘One, [Bryant] had plenty of opportunities. Two, every time he gets double-teamed, he tries to dribble through the whole team. . . . Three, after I told him to take the ball to the basket, after he had taken three outside shots, he charged.”

But the next night, Jackson shrugged off Bryant’s erratic effort in a lethargic victory over the Chicago Bulls, noting confidently, “He’s going to find his way back into it.”

This is standard procedure for Jackson, who is casual to the point of yawning early in the season, when he stands back, providing bemused commentary and letting events and personalities run their course.

The technique has always worked for him. The issue becomes public and tension builds on the player who’s out of line, until he comes to understand the wisest and easiest path is getting back in line.

Indeed, the gracious Bryant put a two-day freeze on the media a week ago, emerging to announce, grinning, “I get ticked off too, sometimes.”

The reporters actually laughed at that, which tells you something about the relationship.

“Big shocker, huh?” Kobe added, sheepishly.

The central mystery is how Bryant can be so nice yet so detached from teammates. It goes back years; in high school, his best friend’s mother teased him that he was nicer to reporters than anyone else.

If Kobe hungers for fame as surely as stardom, however, he’s not governed by reviews. Raised in a protective family on foreign turf when his father played in Italy, Bryant worries little about what outsiders think. He’s hard to scare or reach, with his unshakable confidence and belief in a destiny he says came to him when he was 6.

Not that Jackson hasn’t seen this before.

When he hears venerable, blunt-spoken Tex Winter telling Bryant to pass and Kobe answering, “Why? No one can stop me,” it’s similar to his days in Chicago, when Winter trotted out that hoary “no ‘I’ in team” stuff and Michael Jordan replied there was one in “win,” though.

Not that Kobe is Mike.

Bryant was actually further along than Jordan at 18, but when Jordan reached the NBA, he’d had three years under Dean Smith at North Carolina. (You can skip down a paragraph if you’ve read this before.) As headstrong and personally ambitious as Jordan was too, he’d grown up in the game within a system he not only accepted but revered.

The biggest thing standing between Bryant and his destiny is his difficulty in understanding that at its highest levels, basketball is a team game, not a one-man exhibition. Everything else, the skill, athleticism, work ethic and hunger, he’s swimming in.

Suggesting that Jackson, indeed, reached him, Kobe’s shots dropped after the Denver game, from the 25.5 he’d averaged in the previous six, to 19 and 20 as the Lakers rolled up 111 and 115 points on Golden State and Minnesota.

He made better than 50% and had 12 assists. He went back to looking for O’Neal on drives.

Jordan had Smith, Bryant has Jackson. It might not be the same--Jordan was working for room, board, tuition and books while Bryant is almost as rich as an oil sheik--but it’ll have to do.

FACES AND FIGURES

Cuckoos’ Nest Chronicles (cont.): Seattle’s Gary Payton, who quelled a player uprising and persuaded Coach Paul Westphal not to resign two weeks before, tried to fight Westphal during a win at Dallas. Depending on whom you believe, Westphal told Payton to shut up and play and let him do the coaching, or just to play and let him do the coaching. The SuperSonics then suspended Payton for the next night’s game at San Antonio--but rescinded it when Payton apologized. The shaken SuperSonics were then blown out by 27. . . . Meanwhile, Vin Baker, who blames Westphal for everything bad that has happened to him, is on a sit-down strike, averaging nine points and five rebounds over the last three games. In other words: Someone will be leaving soon, and it won’t be Payton, their best player, or Baker, their former second-best player.

Are you still here? Boston’s Rick Pitino, smarting from a 24-point home loss to the Philadelphia 76ers, with his team already dropping into the also-rans in the NBA’s Dogpatch, a.k.a. Eastern Conference, told his players he’ll quit after the season. When the Boston Globe reported his remarks, Pitino, of course, said he was doing it to fire everyone up and had planned it ahead of time. “Was I upset? No question about it,” he said. “Was I emotional? No question about it. I’m emotional after every loss. It bothers the hell out of me. It really does. Emotion for me is a great vehicle for teaching the game. It’s a great vehicle for motivating, and I’ve used it all my life for 25 years. . . . My remarks the other day were well thought out. I wanted them to help on defense or it’s going to be a 35-36 win season if we don’t do something about our defense now. I believe we will now.” . . . Translation: He’s out of there.

It’s way too soon to start rating rookies--but it’s always nice if your No. 1 draft choice is ready to play. Some of the lottery picks who aren’t include the Bulls’ No. 8 pick, Jamal Crawford, who’s averaging 7.7 minutes and playing behind two No. 2 picks, Khalid El-Amin and A.J. Guyton; Vancouver’s No. 2 pick, Stromile Swift, averaging 8.7 minutes; and Cleveland’s No. 7 pick, Chris Mihm, 8.4 minutes. . . . Resolute Grizzly President Dick Versace, who drafted Swift, says he’s backing his coach, Sidney Lowe, for a few more weeks, anyway. “If we used him [Swift] a lot, he’d be putting up huge numbers, but he’d make large numbers of mistakes as well,” Versace said. “Sid wants to win, and you can’t blame him for that. I’m going to take a look at this at the 20-game mark, but up until then we’ll let Sid do his thing with the kid. You can say he hasn’t earned it [playing time], but then you can look at it another way. Maybe he earned it by being the No. 2 overall draft pick.”

Last act, hopefully, in the Joe Smith saga: NBA Commissioner David Stern’s attempt to make this poor guy the poster boy for everything that has gone wrong since Jordan retired, extended to working behind the scenes to bar Smith from returning to Minnesota on a minimum one-year deal, forcing Smith to sign with the Detroit Pistons. “I got some bad advice and it hurt my [Minnesota] teammates,” Smith said, making it plain he still wants to go back there. “You know, we were right there. We were maybe a year or two away from breaking through. I feel like I left some unfinished business back there.” . . . If you’re such a genius, why can’t you spell s-h-u-t u-p? Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban was fined $5,000, $15,000 and $25,000 in nine days for blasting referees but got Utah’s Karl Malone suspended for a game for pushing Christian Laettner too. The last time they met, Malone, irritated by Cuban’s yelling, scored 35 points. The next time, we’ll put the over-under on Mailman at 40.

The Golden State Warriors didn’t appreciate Shaq’s break-dance move in last week’s rout but stopped shy of vowing revenge. “It’s embarrassing, that’s all you can say,” Antawn Jamison said. “When you’ve got guys spinning around on the floor like they’re in the middle of a club, it’s embarrassing.” Said Warrior Coach Dave Cowens: “Shaq does his little break-dance thing. In the old days you could do something about that.” Comment: Even in the old days, there was no one Shaq’s size, so they’d have probably confined their protests to complaining in the press.