A Maturing Bryant Is Man of Moment

He joyfully chews his gum. He chillingly shakes his head.

You don’t have a chance, the gesture says. You think you do, but you don’t.

He is the same self-assured, baggy-pants jock who five years ago walked directly from high school to Hollywood’s biggest sports stage.

Only now, Kobe Bryant is actually as good as he thinks he is.

The kid has become The Man.

And what a sight it has been, this springtime bloom, sort of like walking into your teenager’s room and suddenly discovering he is a full head taller than you.

The San Antonio Spurs did this Saturday and fell over from the shock, losing a 104-90 decision to the Lakers in the first game of the Western Conference finals.

Bryant chomped, and grimaced, and disdainfully shook that head while scoring 45 points with 10 rebounds.

The Spurs would go on a run, and he would laughingly trip them. The Spurs would cut the deficit, and he would furiously wrestle away the blade.

Bryant didn’t just score, he silenced. He deflated. He disillusioned.

Everything that his early struggles in Los Angeles threatened to do to him, he did to somebody else.

If the Spurs lose Game 2 here Monday, essentially ending this series almost before it starts, then Bryant will have destroyed.

This, after several years during which many wondered if he would be the one to wilt.

Seemingly in front of our eyes, Bryant has gone from being a character to possessing it.

“At times, the road was rough,” Bryant said late Saturday, fingering his new silver diamond wedding band, smiling, a contented old man at 22. “Even earlier this season, times were really tough.”

Then he returned from several injuries, not to mention injurious comments from Coach Phil Jackson, to hand out 23 assists with only six turnovers in the first-round series against Portland.

With an average of 37 points in each of the final two games of the Lakers’ second-round series, Bryant then finished off the Sacramento Kings.

None of which compared to Saturday, in a tougher spot against a better team.

Seemingly unstoppable by any of the Spur defenders--poor Antonio Daniels looked like a church-league player--Bryant wiped the taunting asterisks off the banners among the Alamodome crowd of 36,068, not to mention causing the jaws of their favorite Spur to drop.

“Kobe was incredible,” said Tim Duncan. “It seemed like he made every shot out there.”

Not every shot; he missed 16 of his 35 attempts. But every suck-the-air-right-out-of-the-building shot.

Midway through the fourth quarter, in a timeout, Lakers leading by 10, but the Spurs making such a run, an old Clint Eastwood clip is played on the scoreboard.

“We have to be plumb, mad-dog mean,” Eastwood’s cowboy character says.

The crowd roars, upon which Bryant leaves the bench, runs downcourt, leaps about two stories, catches an alley-oop pass from Robert Horry, and dunks.

A few minutes later, the lead back to 10, the loudspeaker plays the theme from “Jaws” even while the game is ongoing.

The crowd roars, upon which Bryant takes the ball, dribbles through three defenders, misses a layup, but grabs the rebound and dunks again.

Some will point to Bryant’s seven baskets without a miss early in the game as his biggest swath.

But those who were courtside would probably point to his three dunks in the first part of the third quarter that helped the Lakers turn a nine-point lead into a 16-point advantage from which the Spurs could not recover.

When Bryant finished that run with a two-handed job after a steal from Danny Ferry, Jackson found the sudden agility to leap from the bench, while his veteran teammates found sudden reason to bow.

“I told him, ‘You have to stop this!’ ” Rick Fox said with a smile. “It was getting beyond borderline comical.”

It is also beyond borderline great.

During a postseason featuring huge numbers from the likes of Allen Iverson and Vince Carter, no guard is making an impact like Bryant.

“He played like number 23,” said Horace Grant, a former Chicago Bull who should know.

Not that Bryant will ever become another Michael Jordan while playing for the Lakers. Last anyone looked, Shaquille O’Neal is much bigger than Scottie Pippen.

Many openly wonder what Bryant would be like on a team in which he is the main star. But Bryant, in perhaps the biggest sign of his maturation, is seemingly not one of them.

Be like Mike? It has apparently become enough for him to simply win like Mike.

Amid last week’s furor over O’Neal’s third-place finish behind Iverson and Duncan in the league MVP voting, who was the voice of reason? The only person to say it really didn’t matter, as long as the Lakers won?

Yep. It was The Man.

“I just want to play with the flow, stay in the moment,” Bryant said Saturday, as careful with his comments as he is daring with his shots. “I just want to go where the game takes me.”

Against the Spurs, who decided to swarm shooters Derek Fisher and Fox outside, the game took Bryant right down the lane.

“They left Kobe the entire middle of the floor,” Fisher said.

On Monday, maybe it will be different. Maybe the Spurs will force Kobe outside. Maybe they will blanket him at every touch.

But that will only leave more room for O’Neal, who acknowledged Saturday that his locker room rival is currently the best player in the league.

No matter what happens, this much about Kobe Bryant is certain.

He will chew his gum. He will shake his head. We will nudge one another in the wonderment of watching someone grow.

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