Laker Turmoil Hogs All-Star Spotlight

Those drama queens of the NBA managed to turn the league’s annual gathering of its best talent into just another Laker game.

We know the drill around here. We’ve seen it every spring. Laker coverage routinely has focused on three subjects: Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson, with the occasional intrusion by Robert Horry.

Well, two dozen participants in Sunday’s All-Star game marched into a ballroom at the Century Plaza Hotel to meet the media, and what were the topics of the day?

Shaq, Kobe and Phil.

Sorry, Kevin Garnett, the reigning All-Star most valuable player whose game is better than ever.

Too bad, all you foreign-born players who are influencing the league’s balance of power.

So much for the raging controversy about whether LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony deserved to be in Sunday’s main event instead of Friday’s rookie-sophomore challenge.

Nope, this Valentine’s Day weekend was about remembering three special words: “I don’t care.”

Bryant’s response on Wednesday night to a question about whether it mattered to him if Jackson coached the Lakers next season was the buzz of the town. Before the Lakers’ last game heading into the All-Star break, the Lakers announced that Jackson would finish the season without a contract extension, and Bryant gave his strongest public hint yet that he’ll use his free agency to bolt the Lakers.

There went the rest of the All-Star story lines. Normally this is a time for reporters to take advantage of this one-stop shopping opportunity to collect opinions from a variety of sources on a range of subjects.

The huge media crush around Bryant, rivaled only by a large gathering around Philadelphia’s Allen Iverson, reminded us once again how much the Lakers are the lead story in the NBA. Nothing else is even close. Baseball’s New York Yankees at least have the jealous, frustrated Boston Red Sox to help carry the plot. Nothing fascinates the pro basketball world as much as the inner turmoil among the Lakers.

On Friday, Bryant said he really wanted to stay with the Lakers. O’Neal said he was sure Bryant would make whatever decision was best for him and left it at that.

Jason Kidd, Baron Davis and Peja Stojakovic might as well have been Devean George, Kareem Rush and Slava Medvedenko for all the attention they received from reporters.

What they had to say meant far less than what O’Neal and Bryant did or did not have to say, especially to each other.

Before heading to his booth, O’Neal was talking with former Laker Cedric Ceballos. Bryant went up and greeted Ceballos. Bryant and O’Neal never even looked at each other, then O’Neal left.

The silence spoke volumes.

During Wednesday night’s game in Houston, Bryant tried to offer O’Neal a high-five after feeding him a pass for a basket. O’Neal barely grazed Bryant’s hand as he passed by.

At Friday’s media session, the interview table for two-time MVP Tim Duncan was as lightly populated as the highest-stakes blackjack table in a casino.

You know who actually generated heat? Derek Fisher. That’s because he was the first Laker available, when the participants in the shooting stars contest had the floor. Fisher has always been a go-to guy for reports on the state of the Lakers. He is a neutral observer who has been around since Bryant and O’Neal arrived, and always offers a reasonable perspective. So Fisher was bombarded with questions about Jackson, about Bryant, about O’Neal, about the looming demise of the Lakers.

“It’s a possibility,” Fisher said of the end of the Lakers as we’ve come to know them. “We lost Robert [Horry], we lost Mark Madsen. There aren’t as many faces around of the guys that kind of helped us build what we have and been a part of so many memories and things. With so much at stake and so many individual situations that we have going on, I think the focus has to come back to just taking care of your day-to-day business. Your leverage as a player and your leverage as a coach are winning. If we do that, everybody actually ends up coming out better.”

Fisher and O’Neal insisted that the Lakers can still make a run at the title if they can keep their intended starting lineup on the court. Meanwhile, the rest of the world thinks they’re done and is delighted that this season, and their time, is unraveling in front of everyone.

Even by Laker standards this is a dramatic, public exposition; the equivalent of part of Janet Jackson’s bustier being torn off.

One agent for a Laker player said the drama was driving his client “crazy.” Another longtime member of the Laker family said he’d never seen anything like this.

Oh well, at least the tribute to Magic Johnson went well.

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