A season they wouldn’t trade for anything

Hello, madness, their old friend.

The Lakers’ most amazing season began, inappropriately enough, last spring with a week of shock and awe in which Kobe Bryant called owner Jerry Buss a “liar” and an “idiot,” highlighted by the day he asked to be traded on Stephen A. Smith’s show on ESPN Radio, came back on Dan Patrick’s show up next, reassured AM 570’s “Loose Cannons” that he didn’t really want to be traded and finally told The Times’ Mike Bresnahan that he did.

So many amazing things have happened since -- or at least since opening night of this season, leaving out Bryant’s attempt to broker a deal to Chicago and getting booed -- it now seems like some unpleasantness a long time ago.

Last fall, however, the end seemed as near as that night’s “SportsCenter,” which resounded with new reports of imminent Bryant trades for a week.

That’s where the Lakers started before having the best record in the West. Even in their storied history, none of their teams ever overcame as much and achieved a goal as improbable.

“As an athlete and as a competitor, you’d like to think that you’re capable of doing something even when it may not look that way,” Derek Fisher says. “But when you start thinking about the number of things that have to fall in place for you to get there, that’s when the amazing part comes in.”

How is this for amazing?

After two seasons of Smush Parker, the Lakers sign Fisher, one of their most popular former players, who has been released from the last three seasons on his $21-million contract in Utah to seek a treatment environment for his infant daughter, who has cancer in one eye.

Andrew Bynum -- about whom Bryant raged on camera, wanting him traded for Jason Kidd -- makes a quantum leap, as Kobe says he makes the Lakers a “championship-caliber team.”

With Bynum out and the team struggling, General Manager Mitch Kupchak -- another target of Bryant’s anger -- acquires Pau Gasol.

Instead of fighting to the finish to get in the playoffs, the Lakers go 22-5 with Gasol and are on top in West.

Who, them fortunate?

“I don’t think of it in those terms,” Coach Phil Jackson says, “but we are, definitely. . . .

“There can be so many decisions of import and then, you know, time heals all wounds. Everything goes away and people return to their purpose and are purposeful and in this situation, Kobe, particularly.”

Bryant is now the presumptive MVP. In a career of unbelievable turnarounds, this is up there even for him.

The way they (wince) were

Ten months later, Bryant’s days of rage come up only when the media ask about them.

It’s part of this story -- actually it’s the reason it’s a great story -- but it’s not anything Bryant and Lakers fans like to be reminded of.

But it happened. Thanks to Jackson’s candor and Bryant’s performance on talk shows and finally on camera, it’s all on the record.

Four months after Mt. St. Kobe erupted, events seemed to tumble out of control, with Buss saying at training camp in Honolulu he would “certainly listen” to trade offers, adding, “You can’t keep too many loyalties. You’ve got to look at it as a business. He looks at it the same way I look at it.”

Lakers officials, from Kupchak on down, insist Buss never had any intention of trading Bryant, accommodating his demands just to let him see how unworkable it was.

At the time, however, Buss seemed worn down by the intractable Bryant and looked like he was signaling his fan base that this was out of his hands.

Lavishly supportive of his stars, Buss wasn’t used to one attacking him personally. Going to Barcelona in June to see Bryant produced only a cool agreement to keep everything private, after which Bryant vowed to media confidantes he would never put on a Lakers uniform again.

Not one to minimize a slight, Bryant regarded Buss’ Honolulu remarks as a betrayal and received permission to go out and look for trades.

The Lakers took a hard line, demanding an All-Star player in return, but that doesn’t mean nothing could have happened. The word coming from inside the organization was, if Buss got what he wanted, Bryant was gone.

Bryant’s agent, Rob Pelinka, suggested trade proposals to Chicago GM John Paxson, but nothing worked. The Bulls’ best young player was Luol Deng -- who Bryant said had to stay.

That meant finding someone somewhere else -- like Sacramento’s Ron Artest, whom Jackson liked -- but the Kings turned the Bulls down flat.

Meanwhile, Bryant missed practice last fall for three days, prompting a report he had cleaned out his locker that launched the local media into orbit -- and wasn’t far off.

“It was just like, are we going to have to learn how to play without Kobe or are we going to play with him?” Jackson says.

“At this point, he had tendinitis. Might as well sit him out and we’ll go through this period of time.

“But it wasn’t easy for the players. The players felt -- they were questioning what was going to happen.

“They were upset. I didn’t think they’d be upset, but I had to address them as a whole to say, ‘We have to go on with what we do in a professional manner, regardless of what’s going on at this period of time. And none of us can resolve this, ourselves. There’s nothing we can do about it. This is in the cards or it’s sitting in hands beyond ours.’ ”

Of course, if you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs -- you may not understand the situation.

Actually, Jackson was still walking with a cane after hip surgery, wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in any case and could retire if Bryant left.

“I won’t speculate on that,” Jackson says. “The one thing I will say is, I told Dr. Buss that I would coach [this season], no matter what the situation. I wasn’t going to run away from the job.”

They had that to be thankful for. That looked like about it, though.

Now for the amazing part

It was madness as usual the day before the opener as Bryant, reconciled to starting the season here, said he was ready to go, fine with teammates (“We’re a close-knit group”) but didn’t know if he’d stay (“I’m not Nostradamus”) as talks with the Bulls continued.

That day Buss, Kupchak, Jackson, Bryant and Pelinka sat down to assess their situation.

“We said, ‘We hope Kobe gives this team the opportunity to perform because we think it’s going to be a lot better than he thinks it is,’ ” Jackson says.

The next night Bryant was booed by Lakers fans when he was introduced before the 95-93 loss to Houston, shaking even the unshakable Bryant.

“I understand where they’re coming from,” he said. “They didn’t really understand the whole situation, but I’ll keep my mouth shut like I should.”

It would be two more days before Paxson formally ended trade talks, holding a news conference to announce, “There’s no deal to be done.”

The next night, the Lakers, thought to be in fragments, went into Phoenix and stunned the Suns, 119-98.

“Going into that game, there were huge question marks about our team,” Fisher says. “And looking back on it realistically, I think you can say that early in the season, just the second game of the season, that could have been that game that planted just the small seed in our mind that if we played the right way, we could be pretty darn good.”

They weren’t dreaming.

Jackson knew Bynum’s potential -- a year before he’d said privately he didn’t know if he’d trade him for Kevin Garnett -- but kept Kwame Brown as his starting center, or tried to.

With Brown struggling, Bynum became the starter in the 10th game, at Indiana, and Andrew never looked back.

Seeing Bynum’s great hands and feet, Bryant started running pick-and-rolls, freeing Bynum for dunks, forcing defenses to adjust, freeing up other young Lakers such as Jordan Farmar and Sasha Vujacic.

Bryant remained plainly skeptical. They had had a surprising start the season before too. And then there was the embarrassment factor.

He even joked about his stern posture after their Christmas win over the Suns, saying he’d become “Belichicky,” like the taciturn New England Patriots coach.

The secret was out. Phoenix Coach Mike D’Antoni, asked if Bynum, who had scored 28 points, was up and coming, yelped, “He’s there. . . . I hope he’s not up and coming.”

They were 24-11 when Bynum was hurt Jan. 13. The next night after scoring 48 points in an overtime win at Seattle, Bryant said the 10 words that changed everything, telling KCAL’s John Ireland courtside:

“We’re a championship-caliber team with him in the lineup.”

Less than three weeks later, on Feb. 1, with the team in Toronto, for the second game of a long trip, the Gasol trade was announced.

Bryant’s reaction was unreserved jubilation, congratulating Kupchak, acknowledging he had been wrong to doubt the team’s commitment.

With Bryant putting on a dunk show that night, they beat the Raptors to start a streak of 16 wins in 18 games. The next time someone brought up his rant about Bynum, he said, “Good thing I wasn’t the GM.”

Of course, it was just a regular season and there’s a title to be won or lost.

On the other hand, they’ve already won back something of note. After three generic seasons and one horrific off-season, they’re the Lakers again.

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mark.heisler@latimes.com