Dear Lakers: Reality check, please

This just in from the banks of denial ...

Three seasons after Shaquille O’Neal left, the expectations aren’t what they were in Lakerdom, but the fervor is.

A 50-man media corps descended upon practice last week with six camera crews, including the one Lamar Odom’s people hired for a possible reality show.

Not that anything was going on. It was just the standard run-up to their game against the Clippers, although for that light touch there was this tabloid scoop -- Britney Spears and Luke Walton!

As the Daily Star put it, “Britney Spears could soon be getting up to some ‘lanky panky’ with a 6ft 8in basketball player ... LA Lakers star Luke Walton.

“And his pals say they will be perfect partners -- because Britney, 25, is fresh out of rehab and Luke, 27, is on the wagon during his team’s run-in to the NBA play-offs.”

Of course, not a word was true. Walton hasn’t even been off the wagon and is in a long-term relationship. His girlfriend thought it was funny ... a week ago.

Said Walton, Southern California-born and -bred: “If I was living in Milwaukee, this wouldn’t have happened. It’s definitely an L.A. thing.”

On the other hand, who around here couldn’t use a diversion?

No one even mentions “title.” Now they talk about getting out of the first round ... assuming it’s one of those seasons that the Lakers get into the first round.

Hopes soared this season -- yet again! -- before reality asserted itself and dismay began wafting down on little bats’ wings.

The Lakers have actually progressed, but to appreciate what they’ve done, you have to accept them for what they really are: a rebuilding program.

The problem isn’t Andrew Bynum’s disappearance, Smush Parker’s head, Kwame Brown’s barricading himself in the trainer’s room, dribble penetration and/or the moon in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars.

It’s more basic. They’re not good enough.

It’s not even close. With their remarkable start, without injuries, they might have been as good as Utah and Houston ... but that would have left an entire class of elite teams -- Dallas, San Antonio and Phoenix -- towering above them.

With a skewed image of themselves, the real problem is death by expectations.

When Bryant re-signed in 2004, he was asked whether they could do what they’d done without Shaquille O’Neal. “Not even close,” he said.

That’s the last lucid thing any of them said on the subject. A year later, owner Jerry Buss, coming off a 34-48 nightmare season, said they could be in the Western Conference finals in a couple of years.

That’s a couple of years ago.

Half the team departed with or after Shaq (Karl Malone, Gary Payton, Derek Fisher, Rick Fox, Slava Medvedenko). What remained -- Bryant, Odom and their young helpers -- was an NBA George Mason, capable of shocking a good team but not all of them.

Ironically, in their wisest move since O’Neal was traded, in the same month they rehired Phil Jackson to restore the greatness, they drafted the 17-year-old Bynum.

Bynum had great potential ... in some far-off future ... which arrived with a vengeance last fall, two years after his high school coach sneered, “If he’s an NBA player now, how do I lose in the first round?”

At 19, Bynum was such a mistake-prone NBA player, Jackson played Brown ahead of him when he was available. The Lakers said little about Bynum, although, as I wrote in January, I thought I saw a Greg Oden-level prospect.

Said General Manager Mitch Kupchak: “We’ll see.”

The secret is out. Every team they talk to asks for Bynum. Three scouts told the Denver Post’s Marc Spears that if he were in college, he’d rank No. 3 behind Oden and Kevin Durant.

Unfortunately, Bynum hit the wall Feb. 1 and has been a zombie since.

In Lakerdom, there’s intense speculation about a Bynum-for-Kevin Garnett deal, even if it overlooks two realities: 1) Minnesota would be loath to send KG here, and 2) Jim Buss, who helped scout Bynum, would lie down in front of the bus to keep him.

I’m with Jim, but now that Bynum is out on his feet and Bryant is 28 going on 38, you can’t say it’s a no-brainer.

Jackson said he tells his players, “It’s your job to hold Kobe below 30 shots,” but someone uncorked the bottle they put the lightning in.

Their pretty ball movement is a memory. Now they wait for Bryant to save them, as in the loss to the Clippers when he asked to stay in, played 48 minutes and flamed out.

“He told me, ‘We’d probably be 10 points behind before I took my first breath,’ ” Jackson said.

“I said, ‘You’re probably right.’ ”

For those who think Bryant should bring it up, wave everyone out of the way and go to it, there’s a limit to what even he can do by himself, and you’re looking at it.

Their best (only?) shot lies with Bynum, who’s still a great prospect, as opposed to a prodigy, but the only great prospect they have.

If you see another equation-changer on the lot, let me know. Or maybe the guys on “Loose Cannons” can pull off one of their Kwame-and-Vlade-Radmanovic-for-KG deals.

Hope springs not only eternally but universally. Steve Springer, The Times’ Internet Lakers beat reporter, just got his first question from China.

In the digital age, the entire planet will soon be connected and we might finally get the answer mankind has sought to the cosmic question, posed again by the reader from China:

“Can the Lakers get Kevin Garnett?”

It’s still the greatest show on Earth, just not the greatest basketball team.

mark.heisler@latimes.com