Lakers Get a Taste of the Past

This just in: NBA announces Lakers and Heat will meet in the Finals too!

What, you thought they were going to let this audience get away?

Sure enough, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant met and nothing untoward happened. No one fought or was posterized, and no Corvettes smashed into any brick walls.

They even exchanged greetings, if perfunctorily and solely at Bryant’s initiative, while Shaq gave him the thousand-yard stare and looked like he wished he could beam himself out of Kobe’s path.

If you’re wondering, O’Neal does harbor hard feelings, managing to even get through this without mentioning Bryant’s name.

Of course, Shaq can do a lot with a pronoun, as when he was asked whether his no-dunk, no-layup edict applied to all the Lakers.

“Basically ... “ O’Neal said. “Especially him.”

Nevertheless, it was exciting for the Lakers, except for the ending, coming as close as any regular-season game could to their old Finals atmosphere with a Denzel-Dustin-Samuel L. crowd there.

This was nice for the Lakers, who may not be in the actual Finals soon.

Few Finals games got run-ups like this one. By the actual game, “Shaq and Kobe” had replaced “Red Sox” and “I just want to race, Daddy” as the phrase most likely to make your eyes roll back in your head.

Everyone pitched in, but ABC’s partner, ESPN, deserves special mention for its five-part series, which obliged it to interview half the local press corps. J.A. Adande, Mychal Thompson, John Ireland and I had a great time giving our opinions, even if we didn’t get $500 a show like the guys on “Around the Bend” or whatever it’s called.

It still beat not being asked. That would have been like being the one lawyer in the nation who didn’t get on TV during the O.J. Simpson trial.

I was secretly hoping to come out of this with my own show like Greta Van Susteren, but I don’t think it’s happening. I wanted to wear a fringed buckskin jacket, like Gerry Spence, but those things retail for about $700 and ESPN wasn’t springing for wardrobe, either.

I was getting concerned when my 11-year-old daughter awoke early Christmas morning, ran downstairs to see what time Shaq and Kobe were on and asked, “What’s that tree doing in the living room, and who is all that stuff for?”

Nevertheless, as a member of the media, I have to point out that we can’t do this if people don’t want it, or we’d do it more often. We can certainly help a nascent folk movement along, but the overriding principle is: If people don’t want to buy something, there’s no stopping them.

“Story lines are good,” said Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban last week. “There’s a reason why people like to watch cars go around in circles. And it’s not because they like watching cars going around in circles.”

This story line was the Shaq and Kobe Myth that says they not only hated each other, but didn’t have a clue between them.

They actually got along for years at a time. Even in the worst of times, like last season, they put everything aside at crunch time. That’s how they won three titles and got so close to a fourth that might have, amazingly enough, kept them together.

So anyone who thought they hated each other so much that they were going to rumble or do anything more than play hard against each other was bound to be disappointed.

The real significance of the game was as a rite of passage for both teams, one a former power, the other a rising power.

The Heat went home in first place in the East, with an 11-game winning streak. The Lakers remained in the fight for No. 8 and the last playoff slot in the West.

On the other hand, this isn’t just about this season. The Lakers should have known that all along but if they didn’t, they must be getting suspicious by now.

O’Neal is in a good place, spiritually and geographically. The Heat just announced it will raise ticket prices next season, which means he’s getting his extension.

Shaq now pins the other team’s defense down, Dwyane Wade slices it up, Damon Jones, the league leader in three-pointers, bombs over it, and Eddie Jones, another three-point shooter, is coming around. That could be good enough to win the East by 10 games, and they’re already up by five.

Nevertheless, if this is the best O’Neal we’ll ever see, it’s still not the ultimate weapon of 2000 to ’02.

He has never gotten his old explosion back, he no longer puts up his old numbers, and that calf injury is one more reminder of the stress 325 pounds (he says) puts on his wheels. Once MDE (Most Dominant Ever), he’s SIEW (Still In Everyone’s Way) and CBFY (Can Be For Years), if his attitude is right.

But then, his attitude was always the question, wasn’t it?

Bryant was gracious through the hype, demonstrating, if everyone forgot, he has the resources to dig himself out of the hole he’s in.

His grace didn’t dent O’Neal, who thought it was just for image. Actually, Bryant would be a lot better off if he worried about his image more often. If judgment is a problem for Kobe, insincerity isn’t; if he doesn’t believe it, he won’t say it.

Bryant’s challenge is intertwined with that of the Lakers, and it’s formidable.

They had high hopes the package they got for O’Neal put them well down the road. Now it’s obvious the transition won’t be seamless and isn’t inevitable.

When Laker owner Jerry Buss gambled on letting O’Neal go, he was hoping to reenact Showtime, but as he told ESPN, “Maybe I was too influenced by the ‘80s.”

In fact, no one can run as the Showtime Lakers did because coaches keep more players back now.

Nor are Bryant and Chucky Atkins about to make them go up and down as Magic Johnson did.

Then there’s the continuing Lamar Odom mystery. Odom is great around the basket, but they rarely post him up. On the perimeter, he’s very good in some games, such as Saturday, when he made four of six three-point tries. Overall, he’s a 27% shooter from beyond the arc, and disappears more often than a No. 2 option should.

“We’re trying to get our own identity, and we’re close,” said Coach Rudy Tomjanovich after yet another close loss to a good team.

“We’re close. I don’t know if it’s a process that we have to go through. I sure would like to skip it and get there....

“Maybe the way the process works, it does take time. I’ve seen a situation where you change a couple guys and just, there’s nothing there. But we’ve got something here....

“Then you’ve got to deal with not having that standing in the standings. You’ve got to deal with what people say. That’s all a part of getting better.”

Longtime Laker assistant Bill Bertka recently told Tomjanovich how heartbreaking the process was in Showtime, when the Celtics humbled them in the 1984 Finals and wiped them out in Game 1 of the 1985 Finals before it all turned around.

However, those Lakers had Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy and Byron Scott. Greatness was clearly a possibility.

The Shaq-Kobe Lakers had their own agony before the ecstasy, but with Shaq and Kobe, greatness was clearly a possibility.

However, if the current Lakers are getting their hearts broken too, greatness isn’t yet clearly a possibility.

For Christmas, the Lakers got to see the way it was, but that day is over.