After a Year When He Feuded With Shaq, Got Married, Won a Title and Lost His Grandfather, Kobe Bryant Is Clearly ...

Who is to know what is in Kobe Bryant’s heart today, with the complexities of a life spent so publicly and held so privately?

Six months have passed since he slumped in a bathroom in Philadelphia, a heavy leather jacket and a long, trying season dripping from his shoulders, his face smothered in his hands. He could have smelled the champagne with which his teammates doused each other, and he could have touched the NBA championship they celebrated.

But he did not, or could not. Not then.

A photographer wedged a trophy under Bryant’s left arm and stood back, stepped in and adjusted it so, and then took the pictures that would hold the moment forever. Bryant hardly noticed. His chest heaved and his shoulders shook.

“I had a lot of things going on, man,” he said. “It was a long season. I was drained. I was exhausted--emotionally, physically, mentally. I had to sit and recuperate.”

When it was time to leave that musty place, he left empty-handed, no trophy and no revelation. The only truths were basketball truths, and they would have to do.

“I was too tired to come up with any conclusions,” he said.

Who is to know, really? But, it would appear that about the time Kobe Bryant decided to live for himself, he began to play basketball for everyone else.

The Lakers play the Philadelphia 76ers tonight at Staples Center, a Christmas evening game that will measure seemingly divergent franchises, the champion from the vanquished.

Early in the best of his six NBA seasons, Bryant is expected to play despite a strained right rib. Shaquille O’Neal is doubtful, according to a Laker official, because of the recurring soreness in his right big toe and a new pain in his left foot.

The Lakers may have to go on without O’Neal, the most valuable player of the NBA Finals, for a while, which would leave Bryant and O’Neal’s Superfriends to fend off regular-season MVP Allen Iverson and the 76ers, among others.

They have Bryant, and they can be comfortable in that, if necessary. Of course, it wasn’t always so, and that is what drew Bryant to his lonely corner.

His fifth NBA season had turned so often. His spat with O’Neal over control of the offense became national news, and everyone chose sides, teammates included. Every road game meant newspapers carrying retold tales of the feud, with the same stinging quotes and accusations. Signs in arenas poked at them, one Bryant recalled saying, “It’s OK, Kobe. I hate Shaq too.”

The Lakers did not play well for long stretches of the regular season. Bryant played on sore ankles, making the game a physical burden on top of an emotional one. He was married in April, and there were persistent rumors of growing differences within the once-tight Bryant clan, the support structure of which Kobe so often spoke in his first seasons out of high school.

Last week, Bryant, who turned 23 in August, sat at a locker before a game in Houston and admitted it was more trying than he made it look, and that it is quite possible he is a better player and a more complete person because of it.

“If you were to walk in my shoes last season, and then go through the ups and downs, to play well, to be criticized, the stuff with Shaq, the playoffs, it’s like an emotional roller coaster,” he said. “I got to a point where, during the playoffs, we were playing well and I was happy and everything was going fine. But the hurt from the season was still there. You’re trained to stay in the moment and not think about that. You’re always from one moment to the next, to the point where you can’t enjoy the successes you’ve had. And you can’t think of the pain that you went through before. So, after the finals, when all that was over, I said, ‘Oh, man, I don’t have to do that no more.”’

The second he was allowed to leave the moment, the weight of the season, of his personal traumas, spilled from him. Nothing showy, not like Michael Jordan rolling around with a basketball, but wholly real nonetheless.

“You’re drained, because you have so many emotions, a combination of hurt and pain that I refused to let myself feel, because I had to stay in the moment,” he said. “It was also joy, because of how well we were playing. Going to the playoffs, and in the regular season, I didn’t let myself enjoy it.”

It appears different now. The death of his grandfather, John Cox, just as summer ended hurt him terribly, but it appears to have served to reset his relationship with his family.

Bryant seems pleased with his basketball and content in his personal life, both of which now involve O’Neal. O’Neal calls Bryant “Ice,” and Bryant calls O’Neal “Diesel,” and no longer do they avoid each other’s eyes, as they did most of last season, up until the time O’Neal inhaled and called Bryant, “my idol.”

“I’m not going to say he’s turned 180 degrees,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said of Kobe, “but there’s certainly been a 90-degree swing of character, from his receptivity to his communication with his teammates and the working people in the organization.

“I think there’s a number of events that go into it. There are so many events that go into a young person’s life, especially when you’re 22 and making big decisions, like getting married, when to get married, your basketball team and how you’re going to play. And your coach is attacking you half the damned time when you’re playing the way you want to play.”

Bryant is doing that, playing his game, except that it’s different now. His scoring average is down, to 26.3, and his assists and steals are up. In training camp O’Neal pronounced him the league MVP, and Bryant has done nothing to discredit that prediction. In fact, Jackson at times has asked Bryant to shoot more often, and one league scout honestly wondered if Bryant hadn’t lost his appetite for scoring.

“How about that?” Bryant said, laughing.

Bryant perhaps decided that other things would validate him. His championships, for one. His life. His love. His family, again.

“There’s a sense of security and maturity when you’re finally at the helm of your own ship, so to speak,” teammate Rick Fox said. “You talk about growing into manhood. Some of us never move out of home, figuratively speaking.

“Yet, in order to be a man, to be married and be responsible for yourself, you kind of have to move away and start making your own decisions. That means you reap the benefits--or the consequences--of your choices. It’s something to finally get that sense that you’ve made your decision, and what you do with your life, really you are responsible for.”

The result, ultimately, is a game that is comfortable for everyone, a 19-4 record for the Lakers, and an easier Bryant to be around.

“He definitely finds a true joy in the game, which is being the best team, and winning, and being a champion,” Fox said. “He’s sensed the joy he’s created for his teammates by his unselfish play, and by the fact he can go out and carry us on a given night and lead us to victory. He sees the appreciation we give him because of that. We appreciate who he is as a person and as a basketball player. There’s a lot of love in that, beyond the love you get from your family. He not only now is open to receive it, he gives it. It’s not only made him a great player, but a great teammate.”

Bryant guards his affairs against outsiders, but did not deny his life recently has changed for the better. He had said that his grandfather never had a bad day, and never held a grudge, and that he loved that about him.

“I learned something from the passing,” he said. “I’d much rather have him here. But I learned from him, how he lived his life.”

That, he said, solved other issues, about his life, and his game.

“I’ll put it to you this way,” he said. “My life is in such a good balance right now. I am enjoying life.”