If Bryant Is an Empty Vessel, Their Ship Will Never Come In

In October, in a sweltering gym in Honolulu, the Laker season began with a suffocating question about an unexcused absence.

Where’s Kobe?

It only figures that this weekend, their playoff run will begin precisely the same way.

Where’s Kobe?

Seven months into a joyless ride, the Lakers still don’t understand Kobe Bryant, no longer trust him, and are nervously twitching with the realization that their championship hopes rest on him.

In October, Bryant missed the team flight to training camp for unexplained reasons.

On Sunday in Sacramento, amid the same sort of mystery, he again never left the ground.

Only this time, his disappearance may have cost them a championship.

Talk about your ugly bookends.

Bryant was on the court, but he wasn’t, in a 102-85 loss to the Kings that probably robbed the Lakers of home-court advantage after the first playoff round.

In a game the Lakers desperately needed to win, they instead wondered if they had lost their young star forever, Bryant’s finally being swallowed whole by his voracious ego.

In the most vacant 42 minutes of his career, Bryant didn’t shoot, didn’t penetrate, didn’t create ...

Didn’t care?

That’s what it looked like. Although nobody in the organization will say it publicly, it appeared Bryant, hurt by recent comments about his selfishness, was tanking the game to prove that the Lakers cannot win without him.

It was as if he was sending a message to patron saint Jerry Buss about the dangers of letting him opt out of his contract this summer.

In his cold on-court callousness, one could almost hear him screaming, “If you pick Phil Jackson and Shaquille O’Neal over me, this is what you will get!”

If it was a power play, it was inexcusable.

If it was a pouting play, it was unconscionable.

If this is the type of play upon which Buss wants to build the Laker future, heaven help us.

Certainly, Bryant’s lawyers have acknowledged that the pressures of his sexual-assault trial have worn him thin, and his teammates have quietly endured the erratic behavior born of that turmoil.

But the basketball court is supposed to be his refuge, right? Not his place of revenge.

Bryant denied the slacking charges, but Laker fans aren’t stupid, and by the middle of the first quarter, many of them figured something was terribly wrong.

By the time the embarrassment ended, the statistics supported the charges, several teammates quietly believed them, and even his own coach was so aware of the perception that, for one of the few times in his five years here, he refused to answer any questions after the game.

“I didn’t want to get into the Kobe issue,” Jackson explained Monday.

Jackson, treading lightly like everyone else around the stressed-out star, emphasized that he didn’t see anything wrong with Bryant’s behavior, but he knew others would disagree.

Like, um, nearly everyone in Los Angeles?

Surely, even the most avid Bryant fans were able to wipe those number 8s out of their eyes and see.

In three previous games against the Kings, Bryant averaged 21 shots.

This time, he took one shot in the first half and only 13 overall, most after the game already had been decided.

In those previous games, he averaged 26 points.

This time, he scored only eight points, the lowest total of his career in a game in which he played at least 40 minutes.

Bryant was so completely uninterested, when Gary Payton pleaded with him on the bench, it wasn’t a request for points or assists or rebounds.

Payton simply asked him to, um, er, show up.

“Are you gonna get involved?” he asked.

Bryant gave credit to the Kings’ defense, saying he couldn’t work through the double- and triple-team effort.

Right. Isn’t this like a snowplow operator blaming his lack of activity on the snow, or a lazy knife pointing a finger at the butter?

This means the Kings’ defense did something no other defense in the NBA in the last nine years has been able to do.

The Kings’ 25th-ranked defense.

Considering Bryant has a history of reacting to criticism by publicly pouting, this was all too coincidental.

Just last week, in a three-game stretch that featured awful losses to San Antonio and Portland, Bryant hit less than a third of 72 shots, and some co-workers finally came down off their tiptoes.

The coaching staff questioned his insistence on driving to the basket through unbreakable traffic. Teammates called for more passes.

Bryant responded by snapping back at Jackson during one sideline exchange against Portland.

Bryant’s actions spoke even louder against Sacramento, and his teammates now wonder.

Is the monologue finished?

Has he made his point, and is he ready to return to playing basketball?

If Bryant is, the Lakers can still win this championship.

He is still the guy who should have the ball in the fourth quarter. He is still the team’s top passer, most tenacious defender, best hustler.

On many nights, Kobe Bryant is still the best player in the NBA.

But for the first time in his career Sunday, he was also one of the most nonchalant, inattentive, uncaring players in the NBA.

Fans who have sided with Bryant over O’Neal have long trumped any arguments by correctly noting that Bryant has always given 100% on the court.

Today, those fans have one less appendage upon which to stand.

The one constant about recent Laker postseasons has been that, with sheer will, Bryant could turn spring into summer.

That, too, has changed, with the Lakers now wondering whether there is even room for them on shoulders so crowded with chips.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.