Handling the Case Load

Phil Jackson is trim and apparently fit again, good things to be for the man who will run a basketball team of All-Stars and sure-thing Hall of Famers while one among them faces criminal charges.

Kobe Bryant told Jackson last month that he would attend training camp when it begins in two weeks, that he was recovering from off-season shoulder and knee surgeries, and that his focus would be on basketball as much as it could be.

It is all anyone can know for now, as Jackson and the Lakers initiate one of the great basketball experiments, during which all of the basketball, it seems, will be played around all of the details of Bryant’s legal case.

Bryant, who turned 25 three weeks ago, had shoulder surgery in New York on June 12, knee surgery in Colorado on July 1, and was charged with felony sexual assault in Colorado on July 18. Since, Bryant, so famously protective of his privacy, has seen his life picked through, photographed leaving church and stuffed into supermarket tabloids, and he has appeared once in court.

Meanwhile, Jackson recuperated from his late-season angioplasty procedure, Shaquille O’Neal reclaimed the body that allowed his claims to historical superiority, and veterans Karl Malone and Gary Payton signed on in gestures of career satisfaction over financial security, all of which could serve to energize a team Jackson said grew “fat and happy” a season ago.

And so late on Friday morning, Jackson, in the organization’s first extensive comments of the summer on the matter, took a stab at balancing the whimsy of the game with the gravity of Bryant’s circumstance.

“It’s real hard to digest that,” he said. “First of all, we were real excited about the addition of the players.... Almost on the heels of that sudden coup for us, the Kobe situation arose. Obviously, we were all in disbelief. The idea that it was going to affect our season didn’t sink in right at that moment. It will affect our season, there’s no doubt about it, and we’re going to live with it and we’re going to deal with it. We’re fortunate to have made some moves, regardless of what happens with the Kobe situation.”

Bryant, who has said that the sex with his 19-year-old accuser was consensual, has a preliminary hearing scheduled in Eagle, Colo., on Oct. 9, a travel day during Laker training camp, between games in Hawaii and on the mainland. A trial date has not been set. Few Lakers, other than Jackson, seem to have spoken to Bryant, though at least one teammate has, only recently.

While Jackson attempts to identify a starting lineup (Bryant at shooting guard, Devean George -- or Luke Walton, he suggested -- at small forward), a defensive conscience (Bryant on the ball, per Bryant’s spring request) and an offensive strategy (Payton as something closer to a true point guard than the triangle offense typically requires), and holds discussions with owner Jerry Buss on the matter of his own contract extension, there is only murkiness in Bryant’s season and potential distraction in the attention it will draw.

“I’m making myself very open to the possibilities,” Jackson said. “What’s going to happen on Oct. 9? That’s something we have no idea what’s going to happen, whether he’s going to have to leave and come back to Hawaii to attend a pretrial hearing, or whether that’s called off or not, all those things are going to measure into how we have a ballclub together on the basketball court. We’re going to have to be adjustable and understanding and hope that he can stay as professional and as focused as possible and do the job he wants to do.

“We’d really like to see the court declare a trial date that relieves the pressure from the season, whatever that could be. Next July, next June, whatever it would be. Whatever they choose, we have to live with, but we’d love to see that happen so that we could say, ‘It’s over here. We can play our season and get this over with.’ ”

In the meantime, Jackson said, “I’m going to address the team and try to set down some parameters as to how we’re going to deal with it.... This is something now that we seriously have to take as another kind of an issue. There’s a certain sense of where our privacy lies and where the boundaries lie that we’re going to have to address. We’re going to have to be very serious about it.”

In their conversation Aug. 23, he said Bryant sounded “matter of fact” about the details of his life, his physical status and what may lie ahead. He said Bryant told him he hadn’t played basketball all summer, having concentrated instead on the details of rehabilitation, but that Bryant’s tone changed on the topic of starting a season.

“There was a little level in his voice that rose when we started talking about basketball,” he said, adding that Bryant had said, “I’m starting to think about the game, think about playing.”

If the Lakers are to be champions, it appears they will drag Bryant and his story along with them, for at least this season, and the load will be heavy. Training camp alone is expected to draw dozens of reporters, when a few had been the rule. But no one in the organization has suggested Bryant not play, no matter the consequences.

“That’s not a matter for my opinion,” Jackson said. “I really think it’s his choice. I think it can provide a space away from the other things that I’m sure have encroached upon his life and really give him a chance to do what he does best. His genius is basketball. To do that, he’s got to play it at its highest level. He can’t get it anywhere but here, the NBA, the toughest competition in the world. I think it’ll provide him a space in which he can do what he does.”