A Few Boo-Birds, Mainly Happiness

The floor was Kobe Bryant’s.

Four months to the day after knee surgery, four months and a day after his chartered jet touched down in Eagle, Colo., Bryant played a regular-season basketball game on Saturday night.

A conflicted -- and traditionally soft -- crowd booed him when he touched the ball, cheered him when he scored, booed him for being a Laker, cheered him because he was wearing purple like some of them were.

The Lakers defeated the Phoenix Suns, 103-99, at America West Arena, but the focus again was Bryant, and how he tried to pull bits of his old game out of emotional distraction and physical frailty.

He played 37 minutes, nearly a full quarter more than he and Phil Jackson had predicted. But the Suns were close, and Bryant was game, and the Lakers of Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Gary Payton and Karl Malone are 2-0, thanks in part to an early 15-point lead and a late 6-2 run.

Afterward, a clearly pleased Bryant, a red ball cap turned backward on his head, said his knee was fine and, for the moment, his head was clear. If there were moments this summer when he wondered if he would play again, wondered if the game ever would be important to him again, it might have been momentarily lost in the pounding of 21 second-half minutes and of a last horn blowing with the Lakers ahead.

“You know something, that was about the easiest 37 minutes I ever played,” he said. “To be out there playing with so many great players, it made things so much easier.”

He said he felt “no pain at all” in his knee. He is, by his own guess, maybe two months from being himself again.

Bryant is still fluid. He is still elegant with the ball in his hand. He is not yet explosive, not entirely sturdy even. He has predicted full-bore basketball by late December, which ought to be good enough for the Lakers.

Around five other Lakers who scored in double figures -- O’Neal (24), Payton (19), Malone (18), Derek Fisher (13) and Devean George (12) -- Bryant scored 15 points. He made four of 12 field-goal attempts and seven of 10 free throws.

And while he iced his right knee in the minutes he spent on the bench, there were glimpses of the old Bryant, spliced between the floor-bound, measured Bryant. There was the fade-away on the right baseline early in the third quarter, the 18-foot pull-up in the first, and his ability to get a defender in the air -- Penny Hardaway, notably -- for the lean-in, and the foul.

“It felt great to be out there playing and competing,” he said. “You know I love playing. So it felt good to get out there and get some competition and, playing on the road, you know how much I love [that].

“I’m just going with the flow. Once we really start rolling, my game’s going to revolve around cutting, passing and cutting, not really doing too much with the basketball.”

A few seconds into the second half, Jackson turned to trainer Gary Vitti and asked how many minutes Bryant played in the first. Sixteen, Vitti told him. So, it was important enough for a vague idea, not so important he’d count the minutes as they fell away, even with the Golden State Warriors in Los Angeles tonight.

“He was fine with it,” Jackson said.

Bryant was on the floor for all of the critical moments. He started and was replaced by Fisher late in the first quarter, with the Lakers on their way to a 28-13 lead. He was on the floor at the end, when the Suns took their only lead at 94-93, tied the score, 97-97, and then missed their final four shots. With the Lakers ahead, 102-99 -- Bryant made three of four free throws and Gary Payton made two of two down the stretch -- Amare Stoudemire missed a straight-up three-pointer that would have tied the score with under 10 seconds left. It banked, caromed off the rim to Shawn Marion, who missed point-blank, and Malone took the rebound, his 12th.

So, Bryant patted a few heads on his way off the floor, got a few pats back. There were plenty of boos, at least some because of his pending trial, but nothing vicious, and less than what Bryant had prepared for, which was the worst. Indeed, pockets of Laker fans chanted his name, though they eventually were drowned out.

“Kobe looked good to me,” Payton said. “And wait until he gets his legs back. ... He’s playing like this and just cruising. I can’t wait to see what it looks like in a week.”

Bryant left the floor with a wave for the yellow-clad fans who hung over the tunnel, and they answered with shouts of support.

“To hear anybody cheering felt good,” he said.

O’Neal said he’d hardly noticed.

“We’ve been booed before,” O’Neal said. “A boo is nothing new to Kobe, it’s nothing new to us. So, nothing’s going to break him. He’s a tough little kid.”