First Step Is to Admit Lakers Have a Problem

G-o-o-o-d morning, Lakerdom!

In the news, you can take the spring off. And now for the weather report: Looks like a long cold spell with no prospect of the sun’s breaking through in the immediate future, or, for that matter, the intermediate future.

In our show business report, the Lakers’ great 1985 champions are coming back for Monday’s game. Despite many requests, I don’t think any of them are suiting up.

By now, I hope there’s one thing we can agree on: The good times are so over.

We shouldn’t have to waste more time talking about All Their Injuries or “trade scenarios” such as Caron Butler, Vlade Divac and Devean George for Carlos Boozer, which was reported by one prominent outlet as a done deal.

Unfortunately, this is the way it had to be. Jerry Buss may be second-guessed until the end of time for trading Shaquille O’Neal, but under the circumstances -- Shaq demanding a $90-million extension, Kobe Bryant poised to leave if he got it -- Buss had a choice between bad and worse.

The mistake was everything afterward, starting with the assumption that the Lakers could transition seamlessly into a bright tomorrow.

There are no seamless transitions, not even for the greatest dynasties.

The Celtics won the last of their 11 titles with Bill Russell in 1969 and their first with Dave Cowens in 1974. But they sat out the 1970 and 1971 playoffs.

Five years after the Lakers lost in the 1991 Finals and Magic Johnson retired, Jerry West landed O’Neal and Bryant. But they spent the first three of those five seasons going south, all the way to 33-49 in 1993-94.

That was the greatest turnaround in the NBA’s salary-cap era, from the five Showtime titles in the ‘80s to the three with Shaq and Kobe from 2000 to 2002.

Of course, as West could tell you if he talked about this stuff, 1,000 things had to go just right. It’s possible no one could duplicate that trick, including West.

A No. 37 pick named Nick Van Exel had to prove he wasn’t too much of a head case to play in this league. It was close sometimes, but he wasn’t.

They had to steal a 20-point-a-game scorer named Cedric Ceballos off the bench of division rival Phoenix and get all they could out of him before he jumped ship, literally, leaving the team to go boating in Lake Havasu.

They needed a coach who could get them organized. That was Del Harris, who took them from 33 wins to 53 in two seasons.

They needed lightning to strike, and it did, hitting Orlando, when a new bargaining agreement that did away with restricted free agency went into effect just as O’Neal became a free agent, taking away the Magic’s right of first refusal.

(In the next bargaining agreement, restricted free agency was restored.)

It helped that West’s friend, agent Arn Tellem, asked him to work out Bryant as a favor. Off their scouting reports, the Lakers weren’t thinking about Kobe.

Then West, who had the No. 24 pick, had to beat everyone ahead of him to Bryant. The New Jersey Nets wanted to take him at No. 9, but Tellem scared them off, saying Bryant didn’t want to go there because it was too close to his home in Philadelphia.

The Suns tried desperately to trade up but couldn’t persuade Golden State to give up the No. 11 pick -- which the Warriors then used for Todd Fuller.

West was finally able to get the Charlotte Hornets’ pick at No. 13 for Vlade Divac, taking $4 million off the Laker cap at the same time so they could offer O’Neal $98 million.

Then they spent a month sweating out O’Neal’s decision. Shaq had just built his home in Isleworth (the one he went back to every summer while he was here), had just moved his mother to town and would have stayed if the Magic hadn’t kept lowballing him, gearing its offers to the Lakers’.

O’Neal turned down the Lakers’ $98 million. He loved L.A., but his priority was beating Alonzo Mourning’s $105 million.

That left the Lakers at a crossroads. Should they sign Dikembe Mutombo and Dale Davis or trade more players to create more cap room, taking Shaq at his word that he would then come?

That was when O’Neal left his message, rumbling, “Make the deal!” on Buss’ machine, but the Lakers were still worried.

What if they got their offer up to $118 million and the Magic went to $125 million? With no state income tax in Florida and the Magic allowed to front-load its offer, the difference in the current value of the deals would be $20 million.

That was when Davis’ agent, Steve Kauffman, who lives in Malibu, said they were so close, he was ready to jump into his car and drive down to the Forum.

That was when Buss said to go for broke and West got Vancouver’s Stu Jackson to take George Lynch’s $2.5-million salary by giving him Anthony Peeler. Everyone else in the West slapped themselves in the forehead, saying, Thanks, Stu.

Then the Lakers just had to survive several postseason pratfalls and Dennis Rodman and bring in Phil Jackson to work things out with Shaq and Kobe.

It was West’s gift, and his curse, that he never thought the Lakers were good enough or could win enough and he had the cachet to say what he thought.

Now, with the cost of their seats outstripping Beverly Hills real estate, the Lakers worry about marketing. The word came down from the top that they weren’t “rebuilding” since they weren’t going back to square one. Nobody in the organization was even supposed to say the word.

Buss, who had never paid a coach $2 million before Jackson, hired Rudy Tomjanovich at Jackson’s old scale, $6 million, to bring back Showtime. The game has changed since the ‘80s, with teams keeping more players back against the fastbreak, but that didn’t seem to come up much.

Here’s the really bad news: The Lakers could have had a much better season and made the playoffs, but they probably would still have lost in the first round. My bet is, fans would have been almost as upset as they are now as they began to understand how hard it would be for the Lakers to get back to what they were.

It’s time to stop the happy talk and put the marketing concerns on the back burner.

Champions are extraordinarily hard to build in the salary-cap age. Wishing isn’t planning. Jackson isn’t likely to return, nor is West or Pat Riley, and if they did, they still couldn’t just make this go away. This is a long, hard process with no certainty about how it will end, and it has just begun.

The real situation is, the Lakers don’t have cap space for two more seasons, until the summer of 2007, would have to melt down their roster to get it, and who says Yao Ming and Amare Stoudemire will ever be on the market?

Lamar Odom is an awkward fit with Bryant. If the two had been dynamite, the Lakers would have taken a big step this season, no matter how many games they won, but that wasn’t the case. Whether it will ever be the case remains to be seen.

There will be good prospects around the Nos. 10-12 spots where they will draft but none likely to have an immediate effect.

The Lakers can turn over half the roster, but unless a great player drops from the sky, it will be hard to dramatically upgrade their talent level next season ... and the season after it.

Great players do drop from the sky -- Stoudemire was a No. 9 pick -- the problem being that you can’t count on it.

On the plus side, rebuilding begins with finding a great player, but the Lakers have one. On the minus side, their franchise player has an image problem among the league’s players.

Bryant has begun digging in, trying to regain his standing, but he’ll need help. The only thing that will do it is to win games, but he can’t do that alone -- and they may not be able to do it for several seasons.

Bryant has the toughness and the mind-set. When the Lakers were eliminated, his reaction was, “We’re going to take our lumps and get back up to the top.”

It remains to be seen whether the organization has the toughness and the mind-set. Insiders already note strain as Buss turns to his son, Jim, who has held a ceremonial title for years. Jim is said to be critical of Mitch Kupchak, whose assignment, in light of the prevailing optimism, was Mission: Impossible.

It’s not written anywhere that a great organization has to stay great. The Celtics all but invented this league, but they

haven’t won a title since 1986 and aren’t closing in on their next one.

Nor would I hold my breath waiting for the Lakers’ next one. Their last miracle took nine years from the ’91 Finals to the 2000 title, so if they pull off another one just like it, they’ll win their next title in 2013.

A journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step. Let’s just see whether they can bring themselves to say “rebuilding.”