Bryant Has Become Ex-Factor, so Jackson Must Stay in Equation

Kobe Bryant doesn’t care?

Kobe Bryant doesn’t count.

If Phil Jackson leaves this summer, Bryant will not be among those left to wade through the rubble of a crumbled dynasty.

If Phil Jackson does not coach the Lakers next season, Bryant will not be around to watch a stranger rebuild with only a Shaq and nails.

When Bryant said “I don’t care” Wednesday after being asked about Jackson’s return next season, he wasn’t being rude, but realistic.

Bryant is already gone -- mentally, if not physically -- and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Jackson is still here, and there is absolutely something the Lakers should do about it.

Keep him here.

Pay him as though he’s wiser than Red and tougher than Riles and trickier than Rodman.

Pay him as though he’s the best NBA coach ever, which, with one more championship, he officially will be.

Pay him like you remember.

“Let’s see, before Phil came here, Shaq and Kobe couldn’t win together, right?” John Salley asks. “Then, let’s see, what happened after Phil came here?”

Salley, who was on that 1999-2000 Laker team, knows exactly what happened.

He saw Jackson multiply two of the game’s biggest egos into the first of three consecutive championships, an achievement that was as much Einstein as Tomjanovich.

The Lakers could not have won without Jackson. The Lakers were the Dallas Mavericks without Jackson. The Lakers’ reign over this city -- with it the countless riches heaped upon the Buss family -- would not have been possible without Jackson.

Salley has a word for Wednesday’s news that the Lakers have stopped negotiating with their head coach and might allow him to become a free agent.

“Crazy,” Salley says. “Just crazy.”

Everything about this is crazy, from the tenor to the timing.

Four days before the All-Star game is played in their building, with every NBA cool kid arriving in their town, the Lakers are going to publicly call out the most respected part of their team?

Negotiations have been “suspended?”

So too, apparently, has all common sense.

The Lakers could have saved their breath by simply affixing one sheet to the back of their pants and adorning it with the words, “Kick Me.”

It’s apparently about money, which is like a rainbow hassling with Niagara Falls over water.

Tip: The Lakers could double Jackson’s salary and still not match the gold he has poured into their pockets.

Second tip: If Jerry Buss doesn’t believe me, he should ask his daughter.

So Jackson, who is basketball’s highest paid coach at $6 million a year, needs a nice raise to quell his doubt about the team’s future?

Give it to him. Because if you don’t, somebody in a deep-pocketed place like New York or Dallas will.

Salley, who played for two of Jackson’s nine championship teams, understands.

“He brings a mentality that nobody else brings,” said Salley, a regular on “The Best Damn Sports Show Period.”

“When Shaq bought into Phil’s style, that changed everything. When Kobe sat next to Phil on the bench and understood what he was doing, that changed things even more.”

Leonard Armato is another one who understands. He was Shaquille O’Neal’s agent during the turbulent times before Jackson arrived, and the three championship years afterward.

“The NBA is like a feudal system, all these lords and their fiefdoms,” said Armato, who parted ways with O’Neal before last season. “Getting everyone to work together for the common good is like a crusade. Phil is the best of the best at these crusades.”

Bryant, on the other hand, is someone who will never understand.

His instantly infamous “I don’t care” comment Wednesday is, first, like Maurice Clarett’s saying he doesn’t care who will be taking next season’s snaps for Ohio State.

Of course Bryant doesn’t care. He’ll be in Phoenix or San Antonio or across town, so why should he care?

If the Lakers are waiting for Bryant to make a decision before ponying up for Jackson, they’ll lose them both, because the kid is long gone.

But the distant nature of his words was still strange, considering Bryant had been coddled through this difficult season by Jackson. While watching Bryant miss work because of court dates and shots because of inactivity, the coach has bit his tongue so much it needs stitches.

Bryant has wandered aimlessly through much of the season as if he were a ghost, yet Jackson has not said boo.

Yet when the coach has the temerity to speak the truth and say it’s Shaq’s team, Bryant gets mad?

That’s one of the reasons for Bryant’s latest apathy toward his boss, his feeling that Jackson has not supported him in his constant rift with O’Neal.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m backing the guy with nine bling-blings.

Bryant’s fans will claim that nobody goes to Staples Center to see Jackson coach, nobody buys a jersey with Jackson’s name, nobody made Jackson the leading vote-getter for the Western Conference in Sunday’s All-Star game.

Yeah, well, without Jackson, Kobe Bryant is Tracy McGrady, and Laker fans might as well be sitting in some gym in Detroit.

“Phil is the reason they won those three titles, I believe that,” said Steve Kerr, the TNT analyst who played for three of Jackson’s championship teams in Chicago. “If they want to keep winning, they will keep him.”

If Jackson stays, O’Neal stays interested. If Jackson adds to his contract, Gary Payton and Karl Malone will add to their contracts.

Those who think that foursome can’t win a championship without Bryant didn’t watch them in the season opener against Dallas.

And those who think any current Laker combination involving Bryant and O’Neal can win without Jackson ... well, I’ve got a couple of four-game sweeps by Utah and San Antonio to sell you.

“I think it is so funny when people say that Jackson wins because of luck, that he wins only because he has all the great players,” Kerr said. “That’s so wrong. This team had the pieces before he got there, and never did anything.”

Pieces then. Pieces again.

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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.