So, Coach, How Do You Like the Roster?

Dear Rudy,

As we say here in Italy, Buongiorno, and welcome to the Lakers.

We’re all rooting for you.

Ciao,

Dr. Jerry Buss

*

As we say here in Los Angeles, good luck, you’ll need it.

About to start the Rudy Tomjanovich era, the Lakers now have the best players’ coach around. The problem is, they’re a little light on players.

Their problem as they deconstruct the team everyone still fears has little to do with coaches. It wouldn’t have mattered whether Phil Jackson stayed, or whether Mike Krzyzewski came, or if Phil, Mike, Rudy T and John Wooden joined hands and coached them. If either Shaquille O’Neal or Kobe Bryant was on his way out, they were no longer an elite team.

O’Neal is, indeed, outbound, and, to the Lakers’ dismay, Bryant is still in play. The coach was the issue in 1999 when Jackson arrived, but those were the good old days.

Now it’s about who’s left.

The Lakers should have at least tried to see if they could make it work with O’Neal and Bryant, even if it was a longshot. Their partnership was too good, and the alternatives were too dire, not to try.

Now the Lakers aren’t inclined to try. And even if they were, all Dr. Buss’ horses and all Dr. Buss’ men couldn’t hoist this Humpty back up on the wall again.

Buss and Tomjanovich could crawl in on their stomachs, but the Lakers are Bryant’s team now and O’Neal knows it. Shaq got upset enough in the days when it was his team and everyone did crawl in on their stomachs.

For the Lakers, the really bad news is even if they talk to Bryant’s agent daily, they still can’t seem to figure out what Bryant wants. They still have no commitment from their star guard, who expressed frustration at their direction and tried unsuccessfully to bring in Krzyzewski.

The Lakers were intent on taking their time to move O’Neal, to avoid auctioning off their last asset in a fire sale. Suddenly, sources said they were “desperate” to unload O’Neal before Wednesday, the day Bryant would be free, in theory, to sign with the Clippers.

So the fire sale is on again. For whatever it’s worth, the packages getting into the papers are jokes. Lamar Odom and Brian Grant or Eddie Jones from Miami?

Odom is coming off a fine season, but we saw him have two of those when he broke in with the Clippers and that didn’t turn out very well.

The presumption is that Bryant wants O’Neal gone. Actually, Bryant doesn’t mind seeing O’Neal go in the least, but he still expects to play for titles. Even with O’Neal gone, Bryant might decide to play alongside Elton Brand, rather than Odom.

OK, now O’Neal and Bryant are gone and the Lakers are rebuilding around ... Odom?

It’s the worst of both worlds for local fans: The Clippers, at Laker prices!

Buss, who long ago removed himself from day-to-day involvement, is vacationing in Italy, leaving General Manager Mitch Kupchak to try to hold this together by himself. Kupchak has done an underappreciated job to date and is fine under ordinary circumstances.

Under these circumstances, he’s in over his head.

Assuming anyone could handle this, which is uncertain to say the least, it has to be someone with more cachet than Kupchak has.

Pat Riley, a former Laker who proved he could rebuild from nothing in Miami, was a viable option. Buss reportedly lost interest when Riley said he wanted the same coach-president setup he had with the Heat, with control of the basketball side. Buss should have given it to him and then gone on vacation.

Magic Johnson, who has cachet, if not experience, is another option. Johnson appears to be involved, but only part-time. He has always wanted to run a team, but has been waiting for the right one. Because he already owns 5% of this one, it would seem the ideal team and the ideal time for him.

Whoever is in charge faces choices no team has ever had to make.

No one ever tore apart an NBA team this good. The Bulls broke up a team on a three-title winning streak in 1998, but Michael Jordan was 35 and about to retire and management, which made little money in the glory years, could cash in by slashing the payroll.

O’Neal is 32, Bryant 25 and the Lakers have been making $25 million-plus in profits a season. Implosion might have been inevitable -- Jackson mentioned it often enough -- so it’s hard to say whose fault this is, but there’s enough to go around. Everyone who was part of their glory ride is now participating in the greatest pratfall in NBA history.

What the Lakers should do is move O’Neal for expiring contracts to create salary cap space, positioning themselves for free agents, who could include Pau Gasol, Tyson Chandler, Zach Randolph and Samuel Dalembert in 2006 and Yao Ming, Amare Stoudemire and Jamaal Magloire in 2007.

If Bryant leaves, so be it. Instead of rebuilding from square one, they’ll be rebuilding from square none.

Laker tradition means being smart enough to see down the road. That was how they built this team, with Jerry West and Kupchak, his cap expert, spending years to create the room that allowed them to sign O’Neal in 1996.

That was the summer they traded their starting center, Vlade Divac, for a high school kid, subtracting

$4.5 million in salary.

When O’Neal turned down their $98-million offer -- Alonzo Mourning had gotten $105 million so Shaq needed $105,000,001 -- they almost went to Plan B, which would have been signing Dikembe Mutombo and Dale Davis. It was Buss who sent them back after O’Neal, telling them to go for broke.

So they sent Anthony Peeler to Vancouver to get the Grizzlies to take George Lynch’s $2.5-million salary, creating enough room to go to $120 million. The rest was Laker history.

The Lakers were the Lakers then. We don’t know who they are now, or what they’re capable of, but we’ll find out soon.