Elite Status Would Leave With O’Neal

Come back, Shaq, all is forgiven.

My definition of a bad season is one that requires me to keep writing after it ends, so welcome to my nightmare.

Rounding up everything we had to deal with last week, Kobe Bryant was going to the Lakers, Clippers, San Antonio Spurs, Phoenix Suns and Chicago Bulls (no, really, they called his agent).

The Suns were going after Bryant. The Suns were going after Steve Nash. Nash was going to Phoenix as a free agent or the Lakers in a deal for Shaquille O’Neal. O’Neal was going to the Dallas Mavericks and the Sacramento Queens, er, Kings.

The Lakers offered the coaching job to Rudy Tomjanovich, Tom Izzo and Mike Krzyzewski.

Karl Malone either retired, or he didn’t.

And ESPN reporters claimed credit for scoops on every one of these possibilities.

Those are the Lakers we know and love, going out in a blaze of headlines. Not that I’m sure I’m up to the challenge, or that anyone is, but I’d like to see if I can make some sense of this.

First, where is this headed?

Answer: South.

To Laker fans conditioned to expect greatness, good luck. They’ll be good but not great. You’ll still be paying $175 for a seat in the lower bowl, assuming they don’t raise prices.

What should the Lakers have done?

If they had to choose, they had to go with Bryant. But first they had to be certain they had to choose. They had to see if Bryant and O’Neal could be persuaded to go on together.

Instead, all indications are that Jerry Buss merely threw in with Bryant.

Buss reportedly left Detroit after the Finals, muttering darkly about O’Neal. Team sources say letting O’Neal go was a business decision too.

Everyone was aware of Bryant’s free agency, but O’Neal had his own deadline, two years from the end of his deal and focused on an extension.

Keeping him meant giving him three more years, through age 37. This would have been risky, even with weight clauses, which O’Neal would have taken as an insult and might never have given them.

Two days after the Finals, General Manager Mitch Kupchak made only a qualified commitment to O’Neal’s future as a Laker, which was unnecessary but was also the new team policy.

O’Neal then demanded to be traded and hasn’t pulled back an inch since.

I’m aware of every last thing that’s wrong with O’Neal (conditioning, practice habits, defense, free throws, wake-up calls, decline in performance) so I can go along with trading him every step of the way....

Until it’s time to actually do it.

The day he goes, he leaves a crater the Lakers can never fill. With him, they’re an elite team. Without him, they’re a small, second-tier team without cap room in the foreseeable future, which means they can’t make significant improvements without a miracle. In other words, they’re the Mavericks.

Rebuilding is easier when you don’t have to worry about getting a big man. It’s easier still if your big man is so big you can get by with a smaller, older forward, such as Malone.

Try this: Keep O’Neal. Get Bryant to stay. Sign Brent Barry with the $5-million exception. Talk Malone into returning. Bring in Keon Clark, whose flaky reputation may keep him from getting a bigger offer, for the $1-million minimum.

Fill in around them with athletic role players such as Chris Andersen, Matt Barnes and Jeff Trepagnier.

That still looks like the Lakers to me, as opposed to a starting lineup of, say, Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Michael Finley, Josh Howard and Gary Payton.

Of course, Nash’s departure means the Mavericks’ interest, or their ability to put together an acceptable package, is over. Not only is it impossible to get fair value for O’Neal, we don’t even know if there’s a team out there that’s interested.

At present, the Lakers are running in circles, trying to please Bryant, as well they might. A week ago, he reportedly was so exasperated at their direction, one insider said, “He’s the Clippers’ to lose.”

Last week, however, there were signs Bryant was still involved with the program. The timing of the Lakers’ sudden courtship of Duke’s Krzyzewski suggests it was Bryant’s idea.

Last week they were all set to hire Tomjanovich. Last Monday, Bryant called Krzyzewski to ask him to come coach him. Two days later, Kupchak flew to Durham, N.C., to meet with Coach K.

This is what it has come to, a Tar Heel sitting down with a Blue Devil. Kupchak, of course, must have been hoping no one took his picture over there, so if Coach K turned them down, Dean Smith would never find out Kupchak was there.

By the way, why haven’t the Lakers offered the job to Smith yet?

Or John Wooden?

Maybe Bryant hasn’t thought of them yet.

In any case, look for Coach K to turn them down, as he has turned down every other NBA team.

It’s aggravating to see the pros take your best players as sophomores (Elton Brand), then as freshmen (Corey Maggette and Luol Deng), and then even before you can get them on campus (Shaun Livingston).

On the other hand, Krzyzewski has two games a week, a big house, and all his grown daughters living near him. If he needs them to, they’ll rename the university for him, even if it’s hard to fit on the uniforms. At 57, he needs to move, live on the road for nine months a year and take a continuing course in abnormal psychology?

Everyone is on really dangerous ground here, so in my role as local consumer advocate, I’d like to offer the following scenarios, in order of desirability:

1. O’Neal and Bryant stay. The Lakers fill in around them and remain the Lakers, more or less.

This would require Buss to prostrate himself before O’Neal and tell him this was just a big misunderstanding, which it was. We all knew the Lakers were becoming tiresome; we just didn’t understand we didn’t really want to see them go.

In any case, the Lakers made about $100 million to $150 million off O’Neal in his time here, not to mention the $250-million to $500-million increase in the franchise’s worth, and they owe him more than a brushoff. If I were Buss, I’d be practicing my apologies.

Of course, we all know that even if O’Neal and Bryant make up, they’ll be squabbling by Thanksgiving. But you know what? I already miss it.

2. O’Neal stays and Bryant goes to the Clippers. Neither team will be what it was, which will be good news for the Clippers, anyway. This will turn into an intracity rivalry that will make USC-UCLA look mild.

3. The Lakers trade O’Neal but Bryant doesn’t like the players they get and decides he’s better off playing alongside Brand and Maggette.

We’ll still have one decent team in town, it just won’t be the Lakers. However, I have to warn you, there’s a risk involved in rooting for a team owned by Donald T. Sterling.

4. O’Neal stays and Bryant decides to sign a one-year deal and re-evaluate his options next spring. In other words, we can go through this for another season!

Good luck getting through next week, everyone.