Leadership counsel

It started with an e-mail.

Then another. And another.

Back and forth they went, coach and player, over the summer.

Phil Jackson’s were written mainly from his Montana lakeside home, site of his annual retreat from basketball and the big city.

Kobe Bryant’s were written from his Newport Beach home or during his venture through the Far East while traveling with the U.S. national team.

The message from Jackson, one e-mail at a time: Become a leader by not always showing teammates the way. Back off at times. Comfort them sometimes, cajole them at others.

Somewhere in cyberspace, there was a connection.

“Phil helped me out a great deal over the summer in terms of being a mentor and how to become a better leader,” Bryant said. “It kind of goes back to being a parent. There’s certain things that make you want to jump on top of your kids and try to tell them how to do everything. ... Sometimes it’s best if you just step back and kind of guide them a little bit and allow them to learn on their own. Very subtle. That’s kind of one of the things he taught me this summer, is how to do that.”

Because of Bryant, the Lakers (30-24) have been an on-court case study this season. The final results won’t be known until spring, but it has been an intriguing ride so far.

The Lakers have struggled recently without Luke Walton and Kwame Brown, and also while trying to assimilate Lamar Odom back into the lineup, yet Bryant doesn’t stray far from the new pattern in his play.

Rarely does he launch shot after shot as he did last season on the way to his first scoring title. His scoring average and shots per game have dropped considerably. His assists have risen, as has his field-goal percentage.

None of his Lakers teammates have ever been All-Stars, but he tries to involve them in the share-the-wealth concept of Jackson’s triangle offense. Sometimes he wanders from the script, returning to last season’s shoot-at-will ways, but Bryant usually heads into the second quarter, if not the fourth, with surprisingly pedestrian stats.

He doesn’t even always take the final shot. That honor went to Odom last week against New York. It was an airball. The Lakers lost by a point.

“I think the biggest step he’s taken in becoming a leader is sacrificing some of his own personal abilities in games to help better the team,” Walton said. “He’s realizing that for us to be at a championship level, he needs all of us involved.... It’s got to be hard to be as good as he is and to be willing to take a step back to let the rest of the team grow. He’s doing a great job of adjusting.” Buoyed by his summer correspondence with Jackson, Bryant has been more open to coaching than ever. There are no more blowups with teammates, such as the ugly on-court tiff with Odom last season or, further back, a stinging critique from Chucky Atkins in which he derisively referred to Bryant as the team’s “general manager.”

Perhaps Bryant’s only conflict since the Lakers’ playoff elimination last season was a text-message feud with TNT analyst Charles Barkley, who accused him of quitting in the second half of the Lakers’ final game against Phoenix.

Not long after that, Bryant, 28, began corresponding with Jackson.

“He’s actually sought out guys and sought out how to motivate people, and [thought], ‘How can I help this team in the long run?’ ” Jackson said. “One of the encouragements that I’ve used with Kobe over the last year is that we’re not going to beat a team like Phoenix or a team like Dallas or San Antonio or any of these good teams in the playoffs if you try to score 40 points. As good a player as he is, it’s the same old thing we faced in Chicago with Michael Jordan. It’s got to be a team effort. Kobe’s really bought into that. That’s where his growth has been very important.”

Although the Lakers have yet to make a run that firmly entrenches them among the top four teams in the Western Conference, Bryant has taken some off-court victories.

His new No. 24 jersey was the top seller among all NBA players in figures released last month. He won his second All-Star most-valuable-player award Sunday in Las Vegas after a 31-point, six-assist, six-steal effort.

Overall, he has been booed less on the road this season, with the exception of Sacramento, where the Lakers-Kings rivalry never seems to die; in Washington, where the Wizards’ All-Star guard Gilbert Arenas is their choice; and in Toronto, which was apparently still miffed at Bryant’s 81-point outburst against the Raptors last season.

His approval ratings are on a slight uptick, according to a survey that measures a celebrity’s ability to influence brand affinity and consumer purchases. Last August, he was ranked No. 571 in the Davie Brown Index of 1,500 celebrities and athletes. His ranking rose to 553 last month, according to DBI results that showed an increase in his appeal, influence and trust among consumers compared with last summer.

“It takes time to rebuild a reputation, whether that’s an actor like Mel Gibson, a company like JetBlue or an athlete like Kobe or Barry Bonds,” DBI spokesman Chris Anderson said. “U.S. consumers are generally forgiving and, after time, they’re willing to move on. He has stayed out of trouble and is putting change in that trust bank every day.” More anecdotally, the unthinkable happened in a road game three weeks ago in Boston: Pockets of fans in the normally pro-Celtics crowd chanted Bryant’s name toward the end of a victory by the Lakers. A few games later, scores of fans in Cleveland, typically known as LeBron James territory, were wearing Bryant jerseys.

Even before fans in hostile arenas turned a little more welcoming, Bryant’s celebrity status had forced him to travel with bodyguards since 2001. The bodyguards are typically two or three off-duty police officers with martial-arts skills, and they are paid by the team. On the road, they often accompany Bryant from the team bus and stand outside the locker room. They watch games from the Lakers’ bench or from a nearby post in the arena.

“You come out to a city, whether it’s Detroit, Chicago, whatever it is, you don’t want to have a mob scene or anything like that, so I take my security just to discourage that from happening,” Bryant said. “I only do that on the road. At home, I don’t do that. Home is home. I’m around there so many times, everybody’s used to me. Whether it’s Coffee Bean, whether it’s Quiznos, wherever I go, to the shopping mall, I just go by myself.”

It is all part of an interesting shift from the previous few years, all of which were difficult for Bryant.

The trade of Shaquille O’Neal in July 2004 was overshadowed by the announcement two months later that sexual-assault charges against Bryant were dropped. From there, Bryant took the court with a team that underperformed from the start, struggling to live up to the mantle of four NBA Finals appearances in five seasons.

Bryant and Karl Malone fought, Atkins chafed under Bryant’s heavy-handed ways, the Lakers missed the playoffs in 2005 for the first time in 11 seasons, and Bryant disappeared for the summer, even failing to show when Jackson was rehired in June 2005. (Bryant responded to the news with a brief statement released by his agent.)

Last season was somewhat better for Bryant, punctuated by his historic 81-point night against Toronto, but the Lakers faltered in the playoffs and became the seventh team in NBA history to lose a best-of-seven series after holding a 3-1 lead.

The reputation for selfishness continued to stick to Bryant. It tugged at him, irritated him. Perhaps the only person who could change Bryant was Bryant himself.

He took some advice from another player who had worked his way through a score-first reputation. Jordan and Bryant spoke often last summer and have continued to stay in contact throughout the season.

“MJ’s been through a lot of things that I’ve gone through in terms of being labeled a selfish player just wanting to score and [who] can’t lead a team to winning a championship,” Bryant said. “He’s expressed how he’s dealt with it and then trying to help his team win a championship and elevating his teammates around him while dealing with the criticism of just being a scorer and being a selfish player.”

After 10 seasons with jersey No. 8, Bryant switched to No. 24 this season, as a symbol of the importance of every hour in every day, he has said.

As such, he often charters a helicopter to get to the team’s practice facility in El Segundo, a practical but pricey solution to avoid the 405 Freeway from his home 45 miles away. The helicopter lands close to the Lakers’ facility, saving Bryant about an hour each way.

Home or away, in the air or on the court, Bryant acknowledges continually working on his leadership abilities.

“If you want to improve your ballhandling skills, if you want to improve your jump shot or whatever it is, you have to work on it,” he said. “It’s something that I’ve consciously worked on, along with the fact that I’ve been in the league for 11 years now and seen a lot. You just naturally grow, come to understand things a little bit better, have a little bit more patience.”

mike.bresnahan@latimes.com

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Changing of the guard

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The switch from jersey No. 8 to No. 24 was not the only change in Kobe Bryant this season. The Lakers’ All-Star guard is scoring less and taking fewer shots:

*--* Category 2005-06 2006-07 Scoring average 35.4 28.8 Shots per game 27.2 20.3 Assists per game 4.5 5.5 FG percentage 45.1% 46.8%

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*--* BRYANT’S CAREER AVERAGES: Scoring FGM-FGA Assists FG Pct 24.2 8.4-18.5 4.5 45.2%

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Los Angeles Times