Jackson Is Not Big on Solo Acts

Laker Coach Phil Jackson is facing a quandary of sorts, with a player who can score, say, 81 points in a game, but who also distorts the “everybody share” crux of Jackson’s triangle offense.

There had been a “second coming of Kobe,” Jackson said Tuesday, paying tribute to Bryant’s outburst against Toronto before solemnly acknowledging a need to return to normalcy.

“We remind our players that this is something that was a special night in a heated situation but it’s not going to be a steady diet for us,” Jackson said. “We can’t have that as a steady diet if we’re going to accomplish what we plan to accomplish as a basketball team.”

Whose job is it to ensure that happens?

“The onus is on Kobe to stay inside the team offense,” Jackson. “The onus is on the players to pick it up a little bit better. The onus is on me to provide players out there that can help [win]. The onus is on the general manager to provide players that are a good enough talent. There’s onus on everybody.”

Bryant, averaging a league-high 35.9 points on a team that is 22-19, seemed to understand.

“The way that I’ve been playing as of late I don’t think is any indication of how we’re going to be playing for the remainder of the season,” Bryant said. “It’s just important for us to kind of get through this stretch and then get our execution to a level where we feel like we can be effective with a more spread-out attack and for me to just pick my spots.

“I want us to elevate our game as a team to get to a level where we can go into the playoffs and be effective and surprise some people, and to do that I have enough experience to know that we have to have a collective effort.”

Bryant then pointed to his low-scoring, high-assist streak during the team’s 5-1 record on a mid-December trip as being more delectable.

He even went as far as saying his favorite game of the season was still the Lakers’ other game against Toronto, on Dec. 7. Bryant had a season-low 11 points and a season-high nine assists in the Lakers’ 102-91 victory that night, and he had referred to it in recent weeks as his best game this season.

“I still feel that way,” he said Tuesday. “Absolutely.”

The Hall of Fame might disagree.

Bryant was asked to donate the shoes he wore in Sunday’s game to the basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

“That’s really, really cool, something I never would have thought of,” Bryant said. “It’s fun to be a part of that.”

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Bryant, called “81” by teammates during Tuesday’s practice, was 19 points short of Wilt Chamberlain territory on Sunday, but he did set a couple of records for the league’s shot-clock era, which began in 1954-55.

Bryant scored 66.4% of the Lakers’ 122 points, beating the 63.4% David Robinson scored in his 71-point effort for San Antonio against the Clippers in April 1994. Chamberlain’s 100-point game in March 1962 accounted for 59.2% of the Philadelphia Warriors’ 169 points against New York.

Bryant set another record by accounting for 35.8% of both teams’ combined point total of 226.

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A Ron Artest-for-Peja Stojakovic trade reportedly has stalled, but the Lakers aren’t expecting to acquire the troubled Artest.

“We don’t anticipate that’s going to happen,” Jackson said. “We thought maybe we’d have an opportunity, but we don’t know if that’s going to happen for us.”

The Lakers are one of many teams that have had exploratory talks with Indiana without reaching a deal.

“We’re comfortable with the team we have,” Jackson said. “We’d like our team to grow a little bit and be a surprise team in the playoffs.”