They’re Learning How to Be a Family

With a bunch of guys from New Jersey in town and the season premiere finally upon us, there was only one thing on my mind Sunday: “The Sopranos.”

What’s going to happen with them this year?

“Now that’s the interesting question,” said Kobe Bryant, after fielding queries about his sprained right shoulder for almost five minutes.

So does he think Tony and Carmela will get back together?

“No chance,” Bryant said.

That one was sealed the moment Carmela told Tony about her love for Furio. There’s no going back.

For a while the Lakers had the point-of-no-return feel of that pool house argument in the fourth-season finale of “The Sopranos.” In a tumultuous week before the All-Star game, the Lakers announced they had cut off contract negotiations with Phil Jackson, Bryant said he didn’t care what happened to Jackson and O’Neal had nothing favorable to say about Bryant. O’Neal even avoided a direct response when asked whether he wanted Bryant to come back.

The atmosphere is a little different these days, a little more conducive to Bryant’s desires. Bryant, who seemed headstrong on using the escape clause in his contract to depart via free agency this summer, is starting to realize that making such a serious choice while his mind is preoccupied by a sexual assault trial that could end up deciding his future for him might not be the wisest move.

As he said recently, “I have a lot on my plate.”

And there are constant additions to the menu.

Team owner Jerry Buss appeared to favor Bryant over Jackson and O’Neal in a television interview.

O’Neal has struck a conciliatory note, recognizing Bryant’s importance to his own success.

“I know if I didn’t have a guy like Kobe, I’d only have one [championship ring] instead of three,” O’Neal said Sunday.

(Of course, it’s hard to take anything O’Neal says at face value. Sunday, for instance, he was talking about taking over the Disney chairman position recently taken from Michael Eisner. “Disney stock is better,” O’Neal said. “And their extension plan is better.”)

But the prospect of going through another stretch without Bryant, who reinjured his right shoulder Friday night and could be out up to four weeks, might actually make O’Neal appreciate him more.

With the exception of the Sacramento game, there’s no way O’Neal could complain about the way Bryant played after the All-Star break, when Bryant averaged 28.7 points, 8.8 assists and 8.0 rebounds a game. Bryant did such a good job of involving O’Neal that his and O’Neal’s scoring averages increased during that time; Bryant went from 21.5 to 22.9 points a game, O’Neal went from 20.8 to 21.5.

Most of all, the Lakers won eight of nine.

Just think of it as the reverse of the 2001 stretch run, when Bryant was injured, the Lakers found success by giving the ball to O’Neal and Bryant had no choice but to go along with the winning formula after he returned. Although O’Neal wants to be the focal point of the offense, it’s too much of a burden to carry the Lakers on his own and it would wear him out before the playoffs. The more the ball goes inside, the more opponents jump all over O’Neal.

Take Sunday’s 94-88 victory over the New Jersey Nets. In a loosely officiated game in which anything short of a mugging wasn’t called, O’Neal still shot 14 free throws (surprisingly, he made 10).

The Lakers are getting nothing from their starting forwards right now. New Jersey’s Richard Jefferson and Kenyon Martin outscored Rick Fox and Slava Medvedenko, 38-7. Jackson said afterward that Medvedenko was indecisive and Fox lacks confidence in his shot (you would too if you had made only two of your last 14 attempts).

So right now the Lakers’ best mode of attack is to give the ball to O’Neal -- “That should be the game plan for every game,” he said -- and the opponents’ best defense is to foul him.

Fox has struggled so much that he has even had difficulty throwing lob passes to O’Neal. Luke Walton sometimes tries to force the issue, to the point that one reporter jokingly accused Walton of passing to O’Neal too much.

“Is that possible?” Walton asked.

That wasn’t the problem at the start of the third quarter, when Medvedenko took and missed all the shots and the Lakers fell behind by nine points. A three-pointer by Derek Fisher loosened the defense, then the Lakers worked the ball back into O’Neal for four more points and the Lakers were back in business. O’Neal scored seven of the Lakers’ last 13 points in the quarter to give the Lakers the lead going into the fourth, and he made four of five free throws in the final 4 1/2 minutes of the game to give him 32 points.

Gary Payton managed to work his way to 18 points. There were no other Lakers in double figures, no real impressive performances and not much to say about this effort.

“Uh, it was good enough to win,” Bryant said when asked to evaluate his teammates’ work.

It surely would have been better with Bryant. Perhaps O’Neal will come to the conclusion that his chances of getting some more rings would be better with Bryant, and Bryant will realize that his own championship hopes -- not to mention his bank account -- will be better if he re-signs with the Lakers.

That would still qualify as a surprising plot twist. And it would leave them with another argument: Which one is Tony and which one is Carmela?

*

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