Stars Are Not Aligned Just Yet

The old cliches are the best cliches, and so we find the coaches and the anchors again insisting the playoffs are as much about matchups as who’s best.

Happily, this is Matchups R Us with Shaquille O’Neal versus Yao Ming, Big Chief Triangle (Phil Jackson) versus the Mouse Who Roared (Jeff Van Gundy) and the greatest, longest-running of all:

Lakers versus Lakers.

Of course, it’s not the way it was, circa 2000-03. If things seemed difficult then, the Lakers now pine for those days as a golden age.

They would need a period of negotiation, also known as the season, but they lighted up like the Las Vegas Strip for the playoffs, even last spring, when they tunneled to No. 5 in the Western Conference but opened with a 117-98 victory in Minnesota.

This postseason is more of a voyage in self-discovery, as in, “OK, who are we this week?”

Everything now revolves around Kobe Bryant, with all the Lakers determined, at last, to make the best of things, at least for as long as the Lakers last.

Unfortunately, Bryant faces larger challenges, and little about his life now suggests ease or balance.

As a player, he has never been more brilliant and more feverish. Nor has the world around him ever been so loony.

He’s adored and pilloried, depending on whether he takes one shot in the first half of a loss to the Sacramento Kings, or does the same thing in a victory over the Rockets.

In eight days, he supposedly “tanked” at Sacramento, wrought his little miracle at Portland where he made those two incredible three-pointers and tried to summon the lightning again Saturday as a Staples Center crowd chanted “Kobe! Kobe!”

Trailing, 71-70, he tried a windshield-wiper move, driving right with two Rockets on him in the sure knowledge he would shoot, reversing direction and driving back the way he’d come, launching an off-balance 27-footer that hit nothing but Shaquille O’Neal for the game-winning dunk.

“He can make some of those shots he missed,” said Derek Fisher of Bryant, “but I don’t think those are the type of shots that he consistently wants to have to try and take. And as a team, I don’t think we want that either.

“Kobe’s a really good shooter, and if we can execute offensively and get guys in the right spot, he’ll be able to get better shots at the basket where he can catch the ball and be squared up and get a really solid look, as opposed to having to pump-fake [with] guys flying by and having to lean in.

“As talented as he is, it’s tough to be consistent doing that.”

According to Laker priorities, which start with healing their wounds, the extremes of Bryant’s performance (five assists, four steals and one of one from the floor at halftime; three of 18 from the floor after that) were little noted.

Sunday’s operative phrase was “mud wrestling,” as Jackson sought relief from the physical Houston defense from the next officiating crew, a standard piece of agenda-setting. Van Gundy hasn’t complained about O’Neal’s camping in the lane or knocking his players out of the way, but the series is young and most Laker opponents get to that.

The greater Laker task is settling down and finding their productive selves.

Despite 56 regular-season wins, they have only two relatively short periods to look at.

The first was a six-game stretch from Nov. 23 to Dec. 4, during a 10-game winning streak, when they defeated the San Antonio Spurs, Indiana Pacers, Memphis Grizzlies and Washington Wizards here by an average of 23 points and won at San Antonio and Dallas.

The second was a five-game stretch from March 24 to April 2 during an 11-0 run, starting with a 24-point rout of the Kings and a 17-point romp over the Timberwolves.

Unlike past springs, the winning streak ended before the playoffs, so instead of going in with momentum, they went in with their issues intact, or revived.

If this feels different, welcome to this season.

“Yeah, it does,” Fisher said, laughing. “It feels a little different starting out, but we have to learn how to do it with this particular team, though.

“It’s not about teams that we had before, it’s about taking this personnel and figuring out how to win in the playoffs, and because of everything that’s looming later, in terms of the summer and who does what, the focus really comes to, there’s no tomorrow....

“This team has definitely been forced to deal with a lot of different things.... Our team was really disconnected throughout the year, never really got a chance, two, three months, every day, practice, playing, bus, really get the feel for who we are, not just on the court but off the court....

“We don’t have an opportunity to see what happens. We have to go out here and win. I think we can do that.”

The crowd’s cheers died Saturday, and a 20-person mini-press corps surrounded Bryant’s cubicle, including two camera crews with sound men and portable ladders to get better angles in a crowd.

They spent a half-hour there, with everything they needed for a great interview, except the interviewee.

Bryant, who has rarely failed to talk after games, has boycotted the press since the Sacramento game. So even if the weather’s warmer and the flowers have poked their little heads out, you wouldn’t want to say the annual Laker renaissance is at hand just yet.