Put It Up or Shut Up?

The knot on the forehead had disappeared by Monday afternoon, but the questions about Kobe Bryant’s inactivity in Game 1 lingered.

The Laker guard took 21 shots, more than six below his regular-season average, a disparity large enough to elicit plenty of questions a day after the Lakers’ 107-102 loss to Phoenix in their playoff opener.

The Lakers made good on their promise to pound the ball down low to Kwame Brown, but an unusual byproduct was the glaringly reduced scoring role of Bryant, who had 22 points after averaging 42.5 in four games against the Suns this season.

Bryant said he did as he was told, carrying out the game plan and helping all five Laker starters score in double figures for only the fourth time this season. But a loss is a loss, another in a series against the Suns the last two seasons, a main reason Bryant was prodded Monday, again and again, about being passive.

“I listen to the big guy, that’s all,” he said. “That’s who I play for. If he says go out there and shoot 60 times, that’s what I’m going to do. I just follow his orders, follow his lead and try to play the way that he wants me to play to the best of my abilities and we just go from there.”

The big guy, obviously, is Coach Phil Jackson, who again hammered home the importance of pounding the Suns down low with another round of “Inside Man” clips interspersed into Monday’s game film. (There were also a few scenes of “Jackass: The Movie” to complement some of the Lakers’ in-game foibles, complete with some of the movie’s characters purposely giving themselves paper cuts on the webbing of their fingers.)

Jackson, winner of nine NBA championships in 14 other seasons, pledged to keep the game plan relatively intact for Wednesday’s Game 2: Let the Suns run up and down, Steve Nash zipping the ball here and there, and the Lakers will again try to slow things down on offense.

But Jackson also acknowledged the need to get a certain someone more involved.

“We still want that same idea of going inside against this team and making it difficult for them to play our big guys,” Jackson said. “That’s the weakness of their team. They don’t have size players, obviously. They want to play speed ball. That’s the allure. We don’t want to miss out on Kobe’s expertise either, though.”

Bryant had 12 points on four-for-15 shooting before hitting a driving layup midway through the fourth quarter. He missed numerous open looks throughout the game, a rarity in his world, and didn’t finish as he had in so many other games.

“You win that ballgame, everybody would say it was a great ploy, but it didn’t happen,” Jackson said. “There wasn’t enough there at the end of the game. I asked [Bryant] if his legs, if he was tired and he needed to come out because his shot was short and he said, ‘No, I feel great.’ He really hadn’t been working that hard. But we’ll get him more involved with the offensive end.”

The Suns are doing some second-guessing of their own, acknowledging that Lamar Odom damaged them with his 21-point, 14-rebound effort and trying their best to avoid the what-will-Kobe-do-next game.

“You could sit here and think about is he going to go out and try to get 50 or is he going to try to pass the ball?” Sun forward Shawn Marion said. “I don’t know. It’s up in the air. Who knows?”

During their 7-1 run against the Lakers over the last two regular seasons, the Suns have gladly let Bryant score whatever and whenever, confident that they could pretty much stifle the rest of the Lakers. Their latest blueprint: Bryant’s 51-point display earlier this month resulted in a 107-96 Laker loss. Only two other Lakers scored in double figures in that game.

Now the Suns are a little more familiar with the new, improved Odom, who made eight of 15 shots and continued his late-season roll.

“Odom’s a handful,” Sun Coach Mike D’Antoni said. “Shawn did a great job on him, but at the same time, the guy is 7 feet [actually 6 feet 10]. He’s a big lug in there. ... We’ll have to give [Marion] some help and see if we can take a couple things away.”

The Lakers, though, are hoping to add a few more things, mainly more Bryant baskets.

“The key is to find balance,” Bryant said, before alluding again to Jackson, “but he doesn’t want me to be that passive.”

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Unlucky No. 7

The seventh-seeded Lakers will have to overcome history in addition to the second-seeded Phoenix Suns. Since the league began the 16-team playoff format in 1984, seventh-seeded teams have won in the first round only four times in 44 series:

*--* 1987 Seattle def. Dallas 3-1 1989 Golden State def. Utah 3-0 1991 Golden State def. San Antonio 3-1 1998 New York def. Miami 3-2

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Note: The league moved from best-of-five series in the first round to best-of-seven in 2003.