Det. O’Neal Is on Case With Usual Suspects

Every NBA All-Star game needs a theme. Two years ago in Atlanta, it was the league’s sad farewell to Michael Jordan. Last year in Los Angeles, it was the league’s sad farewell to Rodeo Drive.

This season, it’s ... Shaq vs. Kobe?

Yes, the Feud for All Seasons is back again, even if they just met at Christmas without incident, and half of the old partnership doesn’t want to feud anymore.

That’s the Kobe Bryant half. Then there’s the Shaquille O’Neal half, which is having way too much fun to stop now.

Let’s see, they got rid of me, they said I’d miss Kobe, they go down the drain, I’m in first place with Dwyane Wade and someone wants me to zip it up?

Good luck.

By now, we must be up to Shaq vs. Kobe IX or is it X? O’Neal doesn’t actually talk about Bryant, since he doesn’t speak Kobe’s name and blames the media for keeping any notion of a feud alive.

Nevertheless, Shaq still managed Friday to convey the immense pleasure he derives from the decline of the post-Shaq Lakers.

Question: Do you intend to talk to Kobe?

Answer: “Why should I? No way. I don’t want to talk about old times. I wouldn’t say I have any ill feelings. I don’t have any feelings at all. I’m a married man. I don’t care what another man’s thinking or what another man thinks about me.”

Q: How have the Lakers changed?

A: “There’s an old term that says the record speaks for itself.”

Q: How do you know the Lakers are struggling?

A: “I have sources. Detective O’Neal knows it all.”

Q: Like what do you know?

A: “I know everything. I know the same thing that you know, but you won’t write it. You want me to say it. I just sit back and do what I got to do.”

Q: Do you ever think of Mitch Kupchak?

A: “Who? Who is that? He must have become the general manager after I left because I was the general manager when I was there.”

Shaq’s got a million of them, and he’s only up to about 500,000.

Good feuds being hard to find, this one is still good for a splash or two, like the story that ran across two tabloid pages in the Rocky Mountain News, complete with a compendium of Shaq and Kobe’s greatest hits (“This is his team, so it’s time for him to act like it. That means no more coming into camp fat and out of shape;” “I’m not the one buying love. He’s the one buying love.”)

For his part, Bryant isn’t looking back. With Eagle, Colo., 125 miles to the west, this was hostile territory last season, but when asked Friday about being apprehensive, he replied that he was fine, that he had said all along he would play in the All-Star game if his ankle was OK.

“No,” said the reporter, “I mean coming back to Denver.”

“No,” said Bryant. “I’m excited to be here. It’s a blessing to be invited to come back and play in an All-Star game.”

Bryant tossed off all the questions about Shaq and Phil Jackson the same way, betraying no anger or concern. This doesn’t convey his actual feelings, since he doesn’t enjoy being a pin cushion. Nevertheless, after several years of being difficult with the media, Kobe has returned to his persona circa 2000.

He’s back to representing himself graciously, which may help turn things around for him, assuming there are no misunderstandings of the Karl Malone variety.

“Don’t care,” Bryant said of his relationship with O’Neal. “Don’t really matter. He’s in the East, and he’s doing his thing. I’m in the West, we’re trying to make a playoff push.... In the last five seasons, we won three rings. From that standpoint, it’s all good....

“I don’t really have any,” he said of his relationship with Jackson. “We had a great five years there. Three rings in five years. I don’t have any complaints. Most people don’t wear one ring. We have three of them so....

“He moved on. If he joins our staff next year, that’ll be great. If he doesn’t, I wish him all the best.”

It’s not easy to put a season like the last one behind. Bryant still faces a civil suit but says his life has gone back to the way it was, give or take one 7-foot, 350-pound center.

“It’s completely normal,” said Bryant. “Completely normal. It’s just low key, man. I just go out, play basketball, turn on TV, see people talk about how we’re not going to make the playoffs. You know, stuff like that. It’s cool....

“I think it was a lot of scrutiny and criticism at the beginning of the [season]. I think it’s died down considerably now. I think people are embracing us as a team and what we stand for, a team that’s fighting to get back up to the top.”

Well, the scrutiny and criticism fired back up here. Expect many close shots of O’Neal and Bryant walking out for the center jump Sunday to see if Shaq can spot Kobe soon enough to get out of his way this time.

Look for Bryant to drive, as he did on Christmas. Look for O’Neal to try to repel him forcefully, as he did on Christmas.

As TNT’s Steve Kerr told the Rocky Mountain News: “Shaq’s a very smart guy. He realizes he kind of has the high moral ground on this deal because the perception is that Kobe forced him out.”

On the other hand, Bryant is 26, which is why he got to stay, and O’Neal, who’s almost 33, had to go. If Kobe has nothing else going now, vis-a-vis Shaq, he does have time on his side.

“This is my ninth year in the league and my seventh All-Star game and it all went by like that,” said Bryant, snapping his fingers.

“I feel like I’m going to blink again, career’s going to be over. I appreciate all of this.”

It may not be perfect but, at least for Bryant, it’s better than where he was a year ago.