Bryant Finally Faces the Tough Questions

Miss Radio Personality began her Sunday morning interview with Kobe Bryant by saying, “Tell me this, Big Baby, sir,” and of course I was taken aback, because she’s not nearly that formal at home.

I was also surprised to hear Bryant’s voice in response, rather than a dial tone.

The daughter wanted to know whether it had been Bryant’s plan on the first play of the game to go right at Shaq, and he said, “That’s what we drew up ... and on the first play I took it at him.... “

Miss R.P. interrupted, just like her mother does: “And he stuffed you,” she said.

“Yeah, he stuffed me,” Bryant said. “He made a great defensive play, and on the way back down the floor I actually started laughing. I found it pretty funny.”

Father knows best, of course, so I took a look at the replay and I didn’t think it was Shaq who stuffed him, and said so. At the very least, I wanted to feel what it would be like to be Jack Haley for a few minutes and suck up to Bryant.

“He just admitted [Shaq] stuffed him,” Miss R.P. shrieked, and I’m not surprised it still isn’t Mrs. R.P.

“It really doesn’t matter; they got the win and that’s all that counts,” Bryant, the peacemaker, said, and if he couldn’t handle father and daughter going at it on the radio for a few seconds, let me tell you, he’d run screaming from a family gathering.

“What happened in overtime?” Miss R.P. wanted to know. “You just became a non-factor.”

I will remind you at this point that during the week the daughter is an accountant who graduated from Notre Dame and can’t cook for herself, so it explains why she’s so cranky most of the time.

Bryant tried to explain that he was looking for open teammates in overtime.

This is where I jumped in, because I had watched the game on the couch at home with Miss R.P., the Grocery Store Bagger and the pregnant daughter with the big butt -- we’re going to need a bigger couch -- and they were all rooting for Shaq. I was the only one pulling for the home team.

When Shaq fouled out, I figured this was Bryant’s chance to score another eight points, finish with 50, lead the Lakers to a victory and put a sock in the mouths of the other family members -- making it a wonderful Christmas.

“Couldn’t you hear me yelling at the TV to shoot the ball?” I asked.

Before he could answer, Miss R.P. did.

“He wasn’t making his shots,” she said. I wonder where she learned to be so blunt?

“If I penetrate and have a teammate open, I’m going to kick it to him,” Bryant said. “I don’t want one of my teammates feeling I don’t believe in him.”

The daughter laughed: “So this is Kobe Bryant, the team player.”

“This is Kobe Bryant as I’ve always been,” he said, and he was chuckling too. “I just got on different shades.” (A Christmas gift, I presume).

*

FOR THE record, Miss R.P. referred to Bryant as the “Ball Hog,” long before calling him a Big Baby. I told that to Bryant, so she would have some explaining to do -- my little Christmas gift to Bryant.

“At the beginning of the season I called you a ball hog, and I think you would agree with me,” she explained.

“That first preseason game, you were a ball hog, right?”

“I don’t agree, but go ahead,” Bryant said.

“You were a ball hog,” she said, stating it as a fact. “But I will stand corrected -- you’re fifth in the league in assists.... “

“Wow, that’s an improvement from you,” Bryant said with a good-natured sigh. “I really appreciate that.”

“I still think you’re a big baby, though,” she said.

*

BRYANT WASN’T feeling well, and it had nothing to do with Miss R.P. He apologized for his Barry White voice, explained he had been fighting the chills and flu, and although he had the built-in excuse to blow off the interview, he took his medicine.

We haven’t seen much of Bryant’s personality the last few years, for the most part, his own fault. Sunday’s one-on-one with the daughter, however, was as close as we’ve come to the playful Bryant of old.

The daughter asked him about apologizing to Shaq. Bryant said he tried calling him, and Miss R.P. cut him off.

“That’s taking the sissy way out: ‘Hey, media, I made the effort to call him.’ ”

Bryant laughed, and he seems to be doing that more recently.

*

ASKED ABOUT Shaq’s Laker jersey being retired, he said, “How can it not be?” Asked whether he thought the Lakers would make the playoffs, he said, yes, while admitting it would probably be the sixth, seventh or eighth position.

More important, I wanted to know whether he’d paid $4 million for that ring, and he said, “It wasn’t $4 million,” which is now going to get the wife’s hopes up.

*

BRYANT, WHILE admitting public sentiment “is all over the map” when it comes to him these days, said, “I’m a regular dude.”

The Bagger tells me the same thing, and he’s watching TV wearing a Steelers’ hard hat, a Ben Roethlisberger jersey, Steeler sweatpants and cheering for Raider quarterback Kerry Collins.

I still have hope for him. No reason the same can’t be said for Bryant.

But when it comes to making three-pointers to win a game, I know this, Mrs. Bagger wouldn’t have choked on that last shot against the Heat.

“I was shooting off the dribble, had a dude’s hand on my waist and a dude’s hand in my face,” he said, while fortunately catching himself before Miss R.P. did.

“I know, I’m whining; I’m being a big baby right now.”

T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.