O’Neal, Bryant & Co. Thinking Even Bigger

The significance of four, probably, is simply that it is more than three, and way more than none, which is what it had become before Phil Jackson came along, and before Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant hugged and meant it.

The Lakers have won three consecutive NBA championships, and so the organization is stout on the floor and turning a massive profit off it, enough for owner Jerry Buss to permit Devean George an annual salary of $4.5 million, judicious for the Lakers but a turn-about sentiment for Buss, who once sermonized on living beneath the luxury tax for the good of the game.

They are closing in on the Boston Celtics in accumulating banners, and Jackson is one title away from surpassing Red Auerbach, which would ruin yet another spring for the smoldering Celtic coach, architect and smokestack. Bryant, who added perhaps 10 pounds of muscle this summer and enters the season mulling a change of shoes and a three-year, $55-million contract extension, has done more by 24 (in August) than most basketball players do in a lifetime, and O’Neal is close to ending the best-center debates.

There is the slight complication of O’Neal’s arthritic toe, the summer he spent agonizing over its treatment, and the surgery he had less than three weeks ago. But, it’s O’Neal’s world and the Lakers live in it, especially in June and generally without back talk. It is unlikely his hesitation will sabotage the season if he is playing by Oct. 29, when the Lakers get their rings and begin defense of their three-peat (Commissioner David Stern might even attend this time), or within a week or two of that.

So training camp opens Tuesday with all of the usual faces, though sadly lacking one very familiar voice.

It opens with the usual questions at power forward, and the usual subtle turnover on the bench, but nothing that would stress Jackson, who does placid like George Karl does unfathomable defeat.

It opens three months after the last of the confetti was swept up along Figueroa Street, nearly four since the 27-free-throw fourth quarter in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals and the frantic overtime of Game 7 in Sacramento.

On Tuesday morning, after today’s media day--which should put him in a fine mood--Jackson, coach of nine NBA champions, will open a side door, look to the gym floor, and find O’Neal and Bryant nearby. It will please him that his run of fortune has not passed in a summer spent in Montana and Hawaii, among other paradoxical paradises.

The Lakers will try for four, and for the first time since he arrived in Los Angeles, Jackson has only a notion of what he’s getting into. Not even the inarguably great and often condescending Jackson has won four in a row. Until now, he has won titles in threes, drifting on once without Michael Jordan, and then without a job, leaving General Manager Jerry Krause to sort through disaster in Chicago.

What’s out there are the Sacramento Kings, presumably still indignant over the officiating in Game 6 and their own free-throw imprecision in Game 7, the cumulative effect leaving them out of the NBA Finals and a four-game series against the patsy New Jersey Nets.

As O’Neal, sweat rolling from his head, observed at the end of that 16-day series against the Kings, “They felt it was their time. It was not their time.”

No, it was the Lakers’, still, by the breadth of a few in-and-out free throws, and the usual Laker stuff: O’Neal’s force, Bryant’s game, Robert Horry’s three-pointer, Jackson’s hand ...

Of course, Sacramento still mourns, and the Kings still have only proven they can play with the Lakers, and not past them.

But, while the Lakers only tinkered--General Manager Mitch Kupchak added shooter Tracy Murray and rookie Kareem Rush and re-signed George--King counterpart Geoff Petrie signed Keon Clark, a 6-foot-11 wisp from Toronto. Having Clark would mean someone other than Chris Webber could defend O’Neal after Vlade Divac and Scot Pollard fouled out, if nothing else.

The Kings get the Lakers on Oct. 25 in an exhibition game at Staples Center, but not in the regular season until Christmas Day, and O’Neal should be hale by the holidays.

Until O’Neal is O’Neal again, the Lakers belong to Bryant, and he apparently took the responsibility into an off-season workout plan that included martial arts training and bordered on maniacal. Yet, it was Derek Fisher, on two good feet for the first time in years, who was the team’s most diligent summer worker. Rick Fox also is in phenomenal condition, and even leaner than he was last season.

Funny thing--already basketball minds are looking for the next Kobe Bryant, when the existing one is barely in his mid-20s. He has become a moving target too, having integrated his game into Jackson’s vision, having chosen to play alongside O’Neal rather than around him.

It has been 36 years since an NBA team won more than three titles in a row, and these Lakers--Jackson, O’Neal, Bryant, Fox, Horry, Fisher, the key players--have the opportunity, starting in April, to separate themselves from everyone but the Celtics of the 1960s.

There is plenty of life left in it too. Jackson has two seasons left on his contract, O’Neal four on his (with an opt-out in three) and Bryant three on his (with an opt-out in two). O’Neal got his extension two years ago. Bryant has a standing offer, and an extension offer to Jackson, while expensive, can’t be far behind.