State of Confusion

Whatever remains of the great Lakers-Queens, er, Kings, rivalry, it’s back again.

Phil and Shaq are history, as are the Lakers as we knew them. The Sacramento Kings have seen better days themselves, but if the rivalry is over, as Kobe Bryant suggested, it’s news to the fans here.

As far as King fans are concerned, they’re still up here and the Lakers are down there in Sodom, Gomorrah, Los Angeles or one of those places. Even with Phil Jackson available only in bookstores and Shaquille O’Neal in Miami, it’s still on up here.

“There’s always going to be a rivalry as long as we compete,” King co-owner Joe Maloof said. “Northern California, Southern California....

“Let me say this, that series a couple years back [the 2002 Western Conference finals] could be arguably the best basketball series ever played. Phil Jackson said it was one of the best.

“I’ll never forget it. I still think about it all the time, every day. I see Robert Horry and that shot.

“It’s going to continue on, maybe not as vicious as it was or as strong as it was, but it’ll still be there.”

Then there’s personnel director Jerry Reynolds, who used to say his purpose on Earth was to live to see the day the Kings triumphed over the Lakers. Now he’s confused.

“They’ve got Rudy Tomjanovich, who’s one of the all-time good guys, so they’re hard to dislike,” Reynolds said. “But then I thought about those yellow uniforms.”

Actually, they’re gold. Up here, the rivalry will last as long as both cities have NBA teams.

Nevertheless, it won’t be what it was for the last five seasons, soon or ever. The Lakers are rebuilding and no longer have the hammer. The Kings are regrouping, to see just what it is they do have.

Everyone knows the Lakers broke up last summer, but the Kings looked as if they were at least considering it.

Vlade Divac, who was like their den father, went to the Lakers. Chris Webber went on a rant that insiders said was aimed at Peja Stojakovic and Brad Miller (“If you’re always out of shape, I don’t want to play with you. If you don’t care when we lose and you’re always giggling and laughing, I don’t want to play with you. If you’re giggling before the game, a Game 7 before we play the Lakers, and you’re giggling and laughing and [stuff] is funny, I don’t want to play with you.”).

Stojakovic asked to be traded and put his house up for sale. The Kings started the season 1-5, with the greatest show on Earth looking like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

Stojakovic, who didn’t play much over the summer, missed 25 of 31 three-pointers. Bobby Jackson, who sat out the last two months last season, missed 26 of 29. Doug Christie, who sat out all of the exhibition season, scored 14 points in his first four games.

Betraying his concern, Maloof said, “We’re not going to sit back and let this continue. We’re not happy about what’s going on, and I know Mr. Geoff Petrie [the general manager] is not happy either. We have too much talent for this.”

They’ve since won six in a row as their three-pointers have started falling again. Stojakovic, who has taken his house off the market, made 22 of 47. The show might not be over quite yet.

Is There a Window Open?

The Kings were at their zenith in the spring of 2002, when they played that memorable seven-game series against the Lakers.

The Kings had won 61 games, finishing No. 1 in the West by three games. In the West finals, the Kings took a 2-1 lead over the Lakers and went up by 20 points in Game 4.

Unfortunately for the Kings, that one turned out to be one of the great games in Laker history, not theirs. The Lakers won, 100-99, when a rebound rolled out to Horry, whose three-pointer dropped with 0:00 on the clock. The Lakers then staved off elimination in Game 6 and won Game 7 in Sacramento.

In 2003, the Kings won 59 games and looked as if they were headed for a showdown with the San Antonio Spurs in the West finals before Webber blew out a knee in the second-round series against Dallas.

Last season, the Kings started 43-15 without Webber, but when he came back, he wasn’t Chris Webber. They finished 12-12 and were sent home in the second round again, this time by Minnesota.

This fall, the league sent them to China in the exhibition season, then put them on the road for five of the first six games, including all three stops of the Texas Triangle, where they played in the home opener in Dallas, San Antonio and Houston.

Then, of course, there were the spiritual problems of what had been the wackiest ship in David Stern’s navy.

“I was concerned,” Coach Rick Adelman said, “because not only did you have things being said by individuals in the papers when the other people aren’t around, but you also know that we lost Vlade, who was a huge part of the locker room for us. We still miss him big-time in our locker room....

“I think Chris really tried to defuse a lot of that. He talked to Peja right away, [to] Brad the same way. They’ve all tried to defuse it and I think it helped, as far as that issue.

“But as far as what we’re going to be as a team, we still have a lot of answers and a long ways to go.”

To assert their new solidarity, or show they still had their old solidarity, Webber, Miller, Stojakovic, Mike Bibby, Jackson and Christie paid $12,000 for a full-page ad in the Sacramento Bee, announcing, “Our spirit will never be broken.”

So that takes care of that. You can’t put it in a newspaper if it isn’t true.

And Now for Son of Vlade

Since Webber arrived in 1999, his story has been the story of the Kings, for better or worse.

He was one of the league’s most gracious, accessible and quotable players. Sometimes, he was too quotable for his own good, which is why, until the world fell in on Kobe Bryant, he was the NBA’s most-bashed player.

Now at 31, still trying to come back from his 2003 knee surgery, he no longer has his old explosion and is going more to a craftier style -- the one Divac patented, going into the post, high or low, and looking for teammates.

Webber was always a good passer, but now he’s at 5.1 assists a game, up from his career mark of 4.4.

“I’ve been learning that for about three years now because of my ankle injuries and things like that,” he said. “It’s been a long process of really learning. You keep reminding yourself of how to play on the floor. It’s not something new, but now I’m getting up a little bit, it feels good....

“It [his knee] feels good some days, bad some days, but I’m playing. There’s a lot of guys who had the same injury who’re not playing. Allan Houston’s not playing. Jamal Mashburn’s not playing this whole year and we had our surgeries within a month of each other. I’m just happy to be playing right now.”

Stojakovic has never formally retracted his trade request but says he’s fine. He’s even looking for a house to buy for his parents but has only two seasons left on his contract, so the summer of 2006 still stands as a deadline for the Kings.

Like the Lakers last season, the Kings will play it out and nothing will count as much as the last thing that happens.

“It was just the truth,” Webber said of last summer’s declaration. “We were losing. It’s that simple. I went to guys and told them and I talked to everybody about what I said. Nobody had a problem except the media with it.

“So that’s my job as a leader, to take whatever comes, but I never said anything about anybody’s character, or we like this person or that person. I don’t think anything’s changed. You look in our locker room or on our trips, you see it’s even sillier or more fun than ever. But I still say we have the best chemistry in the NBA. We just need to get a championship. That’s what we need to worry about.... .

“There’s no more rivalry, not at all. Hopefully we’ll beat ‘em and all that, but the road no longer goes through them.

“There’s no rivalry. It’ll just be some good games. They won the rivalry.”

That might be comforting for the Lakers, but the two teams will still play at least four times a season. Whatever this is, it’s ongoing.