He Has Four Outstanding Reasons Why These Were Great Moves

Now that the Lakers have become the scariest-looking force in the history of the game, at least unofficially, it’s time for the media to do what we do:

Debate whether this is a good thing.

I know, it’s hard to believe, assuming you remember as far back as

Not that the implications are clear to some of my colleagues, who, while they may be princes (some of them, anyway), came up covering baseball or football, still aren’t sure if a basketball is blown up or stuffed and are taking this everyone-is-entitled-to-an-opinion thing way too far.

As any 8-year-old with shorts down to his ankles could tell them, Payton and Malone are great, hard-nosed, all-around players, even if GP is 34 and Mailman is about to turn 40, or eight years younger than Kobe Bryant’s father.

Or, perhaps my colleagues could ask all those other team officials around the league, hiding under their desks.

“The Eastern Conference has never looked better,” said Indiana Pacer exec David Kahn, whose team, of course, is safe on the other side of the NBA.

“Half their games should be played in Springfield [Mass.], next to the Hall of Fame.”

It’s true that four is a wonderful number of aces in poker but a lot of superstars in basketball. No one knows how a team so loaded will do because there has never been one like the new Shaquille O’Neal-Bryant-Malone-Payton Lakers.

But there’s no magic number. The ‘50s Celtics once started five future Hall of Famers (Bill Russell, Tom Heinsohn, Satch Sanders, Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman) and brought three more (Frank Ramsey, Sam Jones, K.C. Jones) off the bench.

The celebrated 1968-69 Lakers didn’t win a title with three superstars -- Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor -- because of age (Baylor was near the end), injuries (Wilt missed most of their second season together) and strife (Coach Bill van Breda Kolff and Wilt, for starters.)

What decides is attitude, which, in this case, looks promising.

Malone is taking an $18-million cut and Payton $8 million. Both gave up millions, or tens of millions (Malone will get a two-year deal at $1.5 million per, compared to the $14-million, three-year deal the Dallas Mavericks, for one, offered) to come.

Nor can they be confused about where they stand in the pecking order, which, as our 8-year-old could tell them, goes: 1) O’Neal, 2) Bryant.

Malone is leaving Utah, where he would have been assured of breaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring record within two seasons in a program that revolved around him.

As a friend notes: “If Karl wanted to be up on Mt. Rushmore, all he had to do was stay where he was.”

Both Malone and Payton are dogged, grind-it-out competitors, who’ll be welcome additions to the Lakers, who became used to waiting until the All-Star break for O’Neal to get in shape, cruising to April 1 and then throwing their famous switch.

Of course, with or without the new players, the Lakers would surely have come back with a better attitude. How could it have been worse?

Even O’Neal seemed to learn what he called “the rule of humbleness” in a rare postseason acknowledgment of personal responsibility. Insiders say Shaq, who left for his place in Orlando at 358 pounds, is down to 345, which may be his low for a July sighting in his seven years as a Laker.

The answer to the first question -- are the new guys willing to subordinate their egos? -- would seem to be a crashing yes.

Next is the question of whether they have the skills to play with other guys.

That’s another roger.

Payton is a great defender, even if he has lost something, and a big-time scorer who isn’t hung up on scoring. Last season his shot attempts dropped from 19 a game in Seattle to 16.9 after he was traded to Milwaukee.

Malone can play on the perimeter with O’Neal, and in the hole without him, in addition to becoming Shaq’s long-sought backup, meaning the John Salley-Soumaila Samake era is over.

This also brings down the curtain on the days when Tim Duncan scored at will over slender, overmatched Robert Horry or defenses left Madsen and Walker to swarm O’Neal.

Nor will there be a question of who’s in charge.

That would be Coach Phil Jackson, who won six titles with superduperstars in Chicago before introducing the notion of accountability to O’Neal and Bryant, however painfully.

Authority, not the triangle offense, is Jackson’s specialty. With unassailable job security and the credibility borne of his many rings, he has the weight and the wisdom for the job.

O’Neal was 27 and Bryant 20 when Jackson arrived in 1999. Neither was a full-fledged prima donna, but both were strong-willed and rarely confronted. One or the other engaged Jackson in internal struggles, even as they won titles annually.

A rift opened with Bryant in 2001, after Jackson, betraying his own frustration, said he’d heard Kobe kept games close in high school to make them interesting. Bryant considered it a betrayal and took years to get over it.

After that, there were annual spring clashes between Jackson and O’Neal, when Phil would tell Shaq he needed him to turn it up and then let the newspapers in on it.

This led to responses from Shaq like, “Ask Phil, he knows every

Jackson’s priority was making the wild, young Lakers cohesive and he did, at the cost of making them older, sending away players like Ruben Patterson, replacing them with such seemingly used-up veterans as Ron Harper and Brian Shaw.

By last season, the pendulum had swung too far. The roster was creaky and, aside from Bryant and O’Neal, who averaged 57.5 of their 100.4 points, toothless.

Happily for the Lakers, they just got a big shipment of teeth.

Jackson ran a team like this in Chicago, with Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman. Of course, that was merely three superstars, even if one was Dennis.

Here come four and none is Dennis.