Who Will Be Survivor of Long-Playing Series?

Phil Jackson,

Coach,

Los Angeles Lakers

Dear Phil: I’m not sure this meditation stuff is working with these two guys.

What about putting them on a desert island with a camera crew and making it into a TV series?

Good luck, you’ll need it,

MH

You can see Jackson’s problem:

Every time Kobe Bryant would shut his eyes and take a deep breath, he’d see his destiny stretching out before him.

Every time Shaquille O’Neal would shut his eyes and take a deep breath, he’d see Kobe staked out on an anthill.

Having--finally-- taken his complaints public, Shaq is asking all of us to take a side, so we will. We choose . . .

Both.

Hey, Shaq, you ain’t going anywhere and neither is he. Check your $152-million contract and see if you find an escape clause that says you can bail if you’re upset.

Shaq cut out on Orlando and Penny Hardaway because he was a free agent. He has an out in his new Laker extension too . . . in 2005. Until then, color the Big Aristotle purple and gold.

Oh, and those wise guys on “SportsCenter” he thought he got off his back?

He might want to skip the next few weeks (months?) because this is prime-grade material. File under dysfunctional marriages that are fun for the entire media: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton . . . Andre Rison and Lisa (Left-Eye) Lopes . . . Dennis Rodman and whoever . . . Shaq and Kobe.

Six weeks ago, when the first suggestions that O’Neal was unhappy surfaced, Shaq was right.

Six weeks later, with Bryant playing day-and-night better and O’Neal embarrassing himself and his organization by going public, Shaq isn’t so right anymore.

Kobe isn’t just some precocious kid anymore. This is now the consensus choice of peers and coaches as the game’s best player.

Shaq, of course, is its most dominating big man. The game has rarely seen a one-two punch like it. And it has never seen such a family feud out in the open.

There have been many intramural rivalries (Magic Johnson vs. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; Larry Bird vs. Kevin McHale; Charles Barkley vs. every star he played with) but never one that produced headlines daily, not even in the New York tabloids, which would have been happy to oblige.

This one is different. TNT’s Danny Ainge likens it to Michael Jordan coming up on a team that had Wilt Chamberlain.

There’s a rough model--the ‘70s Wilt-Jerry West Lakers, who couldn’t get over the top until Bill Sharman got the aging Wilt to concentrate on defense, after which they won their record 33 in a row and rolled to a title.

Of course, O’Neal is 28, in the prime of his scoring life, and will be harder to persuade than Wilt, who was no pushover himself.

Shaq is fascinating, a little boy in a giant’s body. Like others in the Most Famous of All Club, he has feelings of omnipotence, alternating with suspicions that people are out to get him.

In a trophy room in his Orlando home, he has eight-foot replicas of the monsters from “Alien” and “Predator,” as well as his personal hero, Superman. He has S logos everywhere: tattooed on his biceps, etched into the glass windows of his front door, emblazoned on the grill of his van.

In literature, heroes have tragic flaws. In the comics, Superman has Kryptonite. In real life, Shaq can’t make free throws.

Last season, he shot 32% in his first nine games, which was deemed a calamity. Then he brought in a tutor and made 59% the rest of the way.

This season, he’s at 39% after 2 1/2 months. He has a new tutor, but his stroke still looks grisly.

You have to feel for him, obliged to stand up there, naked in his failure. Now opponents, who used to be embarrassed about hacking him, don’t even wait until he gets the ball in the fourth quarter; they just grab him.

A year ago, he shot 10.4 free throws a game. Over the last eight, it was 16.7.

Bottom line: He’s right, the ball has to go inside--until the fourth quarter.

These days, superheroes are surrounded by entourages as kings were surrounded by courtiers, assuring them that all they wish for, they’re supposed to have. You knew that if Kobe passed him in scoring, Shaq and Co. wouldn’t like it, but no one suspected it would happen for years.

The first stories appeared in the press, criticizing Bryant, although in much softer terms than the distraught courtiers wanted.

Shaq kept saying, write what you see.

OK.

Kobe’s game smoothed out. By Christmas, he was moving the ball as well or better than he ever had, although his shots and points (and shooting percentage) were still up there.

Shaq skulked around. His defense, as Jackson has suggested, didn’t compare to last season’s personal crusade. (How about two defensive rebounds against the Clippers, who outrebounded the Lakers by 14?)

The Laker defense fell from top 10 last season to bottom 10. Jackson zinged O’Neal’s effort. Shaq said the right things but fumed privately, which may have produced this “I don’t have to coexist with anybody” outburst.

O’Neal had always shied away from confronting Bryant, perhaps wondering if one of them had to go, which would it be. So Shaq’s outburst was actually a landmark on their way to reconciliation or oblivion, not to mention a better understanding of what’s expected.

According to Shaq, “I wasn’t brought here to rebound and do that stuff. Jerry West brought me in here because he wanted me to play. I can put numbers on the board.”

He was actually brought here to win titles, plural. Nothing else, not scoring titles or MVPs, will do in their place.

In “Superman III,” Robert Vaughn, playing a rich villain, muses: “A wise man once said--I think it was Attila the Hun--’It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail.’ ”

In real life, if it isn’t enough that you succeed, you’ve got problems.

What’s the good of being Shaq or Kobe if it isn’t any fun?

FACES AND FIGURES

Rick Pitino, the aftermath: His few defenders went after Antoine Walker, who was said to have complained during an infrequent win that he wasn’t getting “enough touches.” Critics, who were more numerous, shuddered at the memory of Pitino arriving, lifting Red Auerbach’s ceremonial title of president for himself, renouncing nine players including David Wesley and Rick Fox to sign Travis Knight and Chris Mills and giving players a book of rules, including 36 violations for which they could be fined, such as failing to inform the coaching staff if they had a visitor in their hotel room. . . . Fans are eager for owner Paul Gaston to sell the team to a Larry Bird group, but Chief Operating Officer Dick Pond said, “No one has offered anything for the team and that includes Larry’s group. There’s no rush to sell the team on Paul’s part.” This didn’t sound like a denial to anyone. . . . Pond also said if Bird wants to run the organization under Gaston, “I can see that happening. I mean, they both have to have a cleansing period, I’m sure. But time goes on and people change their feelings, or adjust them, so I would not say that that’s a complete absurdity.” What Pond means is, if Bird wants to come in and save Gaston’s bacon, Larry would be welcome. Since Bird has already worked for Gaston and didn’t like it, it looks more like a complete absurdity. . . . Noting the local indifference and wondering whatever became of the Celtic Mystique, the Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan wrote: “If Paul Gaston were to call a press conference this afternoon to announce he had sold the team to a group from Oklahoma City . . . the public outcry would be muted. The 16 championships would not be a factor. For the average sports fan, the Celtics’ 35 years of success (1957-92) would be treated as a curiosity, but people would miss neither the team nor the sport itself. After all, Harvard was once a major force in college football too, but that was all in another time.” . . . Who says nobody cares: When Pitino quit, the Celtics’ publicly traded stock jumped 22%, from $7.75 to $9.44, its biggest one-day gain since the lockout ended in 1999.

That’s our guy: Nick Van Exel’s name never surfaced when the Nuggets mutinied, but as everyone in Denver knew--and Coach Dan Issel now concedes--he was at the heart of the action. “You choose to think of Nick as the immature player he was in L.A.,” Issel told Sports Illustrated’s Ian Thomsen. “You can choose to say he was the one who led the revolt. I choose to look at him as one of the best point guards in the league. Was he the ringleader? But he is also the ringleader of everything that goes on in the locker room and that’s because he has the guts to make a stand. I wouldn’t trade Nick Van Exel for any point guard in the league.” . . . Personal to West: Remember when you dumped Van Exel and spent the next year looking for a point guard? It was still worth it.

Oops: As a No. 2 pick, Golden State’s rookie center Marc Jackson has a one-year contract and will be a free agent. Because the Warriors will be capped, they can offer only their top exception, about $4 million a year. Unfortunately for them, he may get bigger offers. The Clippers, for one, could offer twice as much. . . . They don’t have enough problems?: Accused by such outsiders as Darius Miles of banning cornrows, which they deny, the Chicago Bulls are now accused by their own players of banning headbands. Ron Artest said Coach Tim Floyd cut his minutes because he was wearing one, telling him, “Headbands are for guys who are soft.” Floyd denied it, but by now he must be getting the idea that his situation is truly hopeless.

Orlando Coach Doc Rivers, lamenting former Hawk teammate Dominique Wilkins’ omission from the top 50 players: “The difference between James Worthy and Dominique is that James had Magic Johnson and Dominique had me.”