Bryant Locks In and Unloads

Ahhh, back to normal in Lakerland. Kobe Bryant taking shots again, tension and dissension, another team coming into Staples Center and taking a big early lead. Standard operating procedure, all on display in the Lakers’ 109-104 victory over the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday.

If this is the way it’s going to be, the Lakers won’t stick around past the second round of the playoffs. There’s too much stuff going on, too little defense being played and no magic wand that can fix it all when the playoffs start.

Whoever thought that Bryant could create such giant fissures in the team by passing the ball?

His passive, so-you-guys-think-I’m-shooting-too-much-huh first half Sunday in Sacramento would have been the talk of the sports world if not for that little golf tournament called the Masters. As it was, the game and the aftermath created enough of a stir for Bryant to go to his teammates at Tuesday’s shoot-around and ask each one if they were the anonymous player quoted in The Times as saying, “I don’t know how we can forgive him.”

Bryant faced so much public second-guessing that he joined Larry Burnett and Mychal Thompson for a half hour on the Laker pregame radio show to address the issue.

Doesn’t exactly sound like the actions of a team that’s getting ready for a championship run, does it?

And none of the 59 points the Warriors scored in the first half added to the Lakers’ credentials, either.

But the curiosity was on offense and what Bryant would do after that one-shot first half Sunday.

We had the answer just over a minute into the game. By then Bryant had already taken three shots. The offense was geared toward him, his teammates looked for him and it seemed they all wanted to wipe Sunday’s game from memory.

Bryant had seven shots in the first six minutes and finished the first quarter with 11 -- only two fewer than he took all day Sunday.

He finished with a season-high 45 points, shooting 14 for 29 from the field.

“Kobe was bound and determined to show you guys what,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said, unable to keep from smiling and chuckling. “Heh, heh, heh. So there.”

Of course, this vivid reminder that Bryant can do what he wants when he wants only made Sunday’s passive afternoon more glaring. Especially telling was when he went baseline, used a fake and a step-through to get past a double-team and elude a third defender to score just before halftime. This was two days after saying he couldn’t get a shot off against the Kings because of, you know, the double-teams.

We’ll never know for sure if he did it intentionally. But sometimes perception can become reality. If enough people -- especially the ones wearing Laker jerseys -- think he did it, then it’s just as bad as if he actually did. Especially telling is this: Bryant is just hard-headed enough that people believe he could do it.

After doing an oncourt interview with Fox Sports Net right after the buzzer he didn’t meet with the media.

On the airwaves, Bryant denied that he was playing with an agenda Sunday.

Bryant had an even bigger problem with an anonymous player spouting off to the paper. His teammates didn’t think much either of the decision to publish the quote. They’d rather keep that stuff in-house. And they didn’t think much of Bryant’s morning interrogation.

In the pregame locker room Shaquille O’Neal, Bryon Russell, Horace Grant and Karl Malone couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous the whole thing had grown. It was reminiscent of Grant’s line during an eventful night in Philadelphia: “The hits just keep on coming.”

Bryant was angry about the quote, the frustration audible in his voice during the show.

“We’re trying to win a championship,” Bryant said. “If somebody has an issue on this team, especially something that’s so preposterous as that, then we need to talk about it, we need to resolve this and we need to move on.”

He’s right.

I’ve asked several players why they don’t just go to Bryant with their complaints. They feel it wouldn’t do any good, that he’s so stubborn he’ll just do what he wants to anyway.

They want Jackson to do something about it. Jackson’s problem is that he doesn’t have any more juice; he has been unplugged by owner Jerry Buss.

First Buss made it clear he favored Bryant during an ESPN interview. Then the Lakers ended contract discussions with Jackson, forcing the coach to finish the season as a lame duck.

Jackson could attempt to use what little remaining power he has and bench Bryant whenever he strays from the program. But then he risks alienating Buss and the Laker fans by depriving them of the chance to watch the team’s most exciting player. That’s not the best way to secure a contract extension.

Is that putting his own interests first? Sure. That’s the way it is for almost everyone around, with so many people’s futures up in the air and so much money at stake.

This isn’t a basketball team, it’s “The Apprentice.”

“This team has always had a lot of drama,” Jackson said.

On the court, the Lakers had just enough Bryant and O’Neal to come back from a 16-point deficit in the third quarter and prevail. So they won even though they were outrebounded for much of the game and they lacked the scoring balance that marked their better victories of the season.

It adds up to a team more likely to hear the famous words from Donald Trump than to get the championship trophy from Commissioner David Stern.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.