Lakers Enjoy Being a Royal Pain

Kobe Bryant stood to the side of the gym in El Segundo on Monday afternoon, having reflected on pending fatherhood (a daughter is due he and wife Vanessa in February), the next Olympics (he’s feeling pangs of participation) and Shaquille O’Neal’s return from toe surgery (everyone, including O’Neal, is rather optimistic).

He covered his shoes (wearing Converse, mulling options, expected to sign big with Nike), the $55-million contract extension (offered by the Lakers, not yet accepted by Bryant) and the yoke-like shoulders he carried through the gym door (“I just went from big to bigger, from thick to thicker, from swoll to swollen,” he said, laughing).

And, while O’Neal’s recovery and Bryant’s game were good places to start on a media day that lacked Coach Phil Jackson, who had a tooth extracted and probably preferred that process to this, most conversations turned eventually and predictably to the Sacramento Kings, convinced Laker nation will be overthrown come spring.

Bryant shrugged and offered a see-you-there smile.

“We ain’t going nowhere,” he said. “We’re right here. They know where they can find us.”

If not at the ring ceremony on Oct. 29, then perhaps on Christmas Day, the first regular-season game between the Western Conference finalists. Then, likely, in a playoff series come May. There will be opportunity to settle this.

Whatever, O’Neal said.

“I don’t think they have what it takes yet,” he said. “They have a lot of good guys, but they have the type of guys that the older they get, their skills deteriorate. We have guys, the older we get the better we get. Me being one. Kobe being one. I don’t think they’ll ever have what it takes, because they don’t have an answer for Kobe and they don’t have an answer for me. They don’t have an answer for Phil. They don’t have an answer for our system.”

He took a breath.

“It’s all about momentum,” he said. “It’s all about luck. It’s all about the way you feel. We’ve been lucky a few times. We’ve been playing good. We have a great organization. One day, it’s not going to be our turn. But I don’t think we’ll lose it to them.”

The Kings don’t view it that way. Just recently owner Gavin Maloof was quoted as saying his club would be “one of the greatest teams ever” this season, so presumably he’ll get to finish that dance atop the scorer’s table.

There’s time for all of that.

The Lakers start camp today with a mind for a fourth consecutive NBA championship. O’Neal, not yet three weeks out of surgery, walked without a limp for the first time in at least a year. Wary of the anti-inflammatory medication that masked last season’s pain, O’Neal hasn’t had even an aspirin since the day after the procedure. He appeared not the least concerned that his recovery would proceed without complication, though he and team officials clung to the six- to eight-week predictions by O’Neal’s surgeon. He could not say he would be playing by opening night, and Laker officials see Thanksgiving as a worst-case scenario.

If camp could accomplish only one thing, it would be to produce a healthy, focused O’Neal. If they could ask for two things, the Lakers would wish for a conditioned O’Neal too. But he appeared trim, almost certainly leaner than he was at any time last season, and eager to play again on two sound feet.

While he admitted there were times this summer when he’d gaze into a mirror and say, “I have three?”, the love ends today.

“Once [camp] starts, nobody cares how many championships we’ve won,” he said. “I want to play like I have no championships at all.”

Which, then, brings us to the World Championship, and the stirring sixth-place finish by a dozen or so uninspired NBA players, a group that lacked both Laker stars. O’Neal and Bryant said they watched the debacle, even as league officials and other observers laid some of the blame for the failure at their vacationing high-tops.

“They can take shots all they want,” Bryant said. “But, you have to know what’s important to you. My family’s more important to me. My wife is expecting a child. You want me to go play in the ... World Championships this summer? I’m not going to do it.”

That being said, Bryant said he would consider playing for the U.S. team in Athens.

“I would say so,” he said.

O’Neal, who has an Olympic gold medal, wasn’t so eager.

“No, no, no, no,” he said. “Especially if George Karl is going to be the coach.”

If Bryant were inclined, General Manager Mitch Kupchak not only would allow Bryant to play, he would encourage it.

“I would hope so,” Kupchak said. “I would hope that’s exactly how all our players feel in this country.

“From our perspective, there’s an obvious risk, in fatigue, burnout. But, can I stand here and say we don’t want our players to participate in the Olympics? I can’t say that.”