Bryant plays 52 pick-up

Aren’t the Lakers something?

Just to show I can jump on a bandwagon with anyone, I not only think they’ll win the title, I think they may be the greatest team ever. Kobe Bryant is not only a lock for most valuable player, he’s up for Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year, Time’s Person of the Year and People’s Sexiest Man Alive.

Not to mention owner Jerry Buss, whose deft handling of this troublesome situation has to have him in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Yes, it’s a new day for the Lakers, who suddenly find a folk movement bubbling under them after spending recent seasons in relative eclipse.

Imagine how it must feel. . . .

Gratifying after all the hard times?

Moving as they feel the love pouring from the community?

A pain in the neck?

All the above?

“It’s tough to get gas,” noted Coach Phil Jackson, whose celebrity just reached the point at which he couldn’t fill up his car without a line forming for autographs.

“I have gas, but it’s tough to get it. It reaches every level of your life when you come back to L.A.

“But I think our players understand it. I think they know the opponents we’ve had for a lot of that streak; there weren’t many major opponents in that run. We still have a lot to prove before we can get too happy with ourselves.”

Happily for the Lakers, who played four winning teams in the 13-2 run that carried them to No. 1 in the West, they had a “major opponent” on hand Sunday, the Dallas Mavericks, who at least used to be major once.

The Mavericks gambled everything on 34-year-old Jason Kidd, whom Kobe Bryant had his heart set on playing with only nine months ago.

Things change fast, huh?

After running away with the West, the Mavericks are now No. 7, having gone 4-3 with Kidd, losing to all three winning teams they have played.

It was a lean and hungry bunch of visitors who showed up to meet the Lakers, who looked fat and happy. L.A. cast up one three-point miss after another, as they did in Friday’s loss in Portland, where they were five for 27.

They were three for 13 on threes in the first three quarters Sunday, which was how the Mavericks found themselves in the game with Dirk Nowitzki and Josh Howard a combined six for 25 from the field at that point.

Happily for the Lakers and ABC, it turned into a shootout between Bryant and Nowitzki, and you know how those go.

“Man, the funny thing is, we gave him a single look [put one defender on him],” said Coach Avery Johnson after Bryant went for 52 points.

“Then we double-teamed him, then we gave him a triple team and he split the triple team and scored. We tried to zone him, we tried to funnel him into a trap and he went the other way, so he didn’t cooperate on any of our defenses.”

Showing the Mavericks are getting to know each other, Johnson left Kidd on the court at the end, unlike last week’s loss in San Antonio in which Johnson lifted him for a better shooter.

Of course, that wasn’t flattering to Kidd and subjected Johnson to a huge second guess, which no coach in his right mind would want to expose himself to again.

Lo and behold, with 16 seconds left in overtime and the Mavericks trailing by three, Kidd scored on a driving layup, drew a foul from Pau Gasol, went to the free-throw line and . . . missed?

“I just left it short and you never can leave it short if you want it to go in, so that falls on my shoulders,” Kidd said.

On the bright side, the Mavericks have a chance to make up for it tonight. On the dark side, they’ll be in Utah, where the Jazz is 25-3.

“The newness is over,” Kidd said. “ . . . We’ve got the hardest thing, to learn on the run, but nobody’s going to wait for us.”

With Dallas in transition and Phoenix 2-4 with Shaquille O’Neal, it’s possible that of the old Western elite class, only San Antonio is what it was.

It’s also possible the Lakers, as one Western team official said last week, have “raised the bar.”

It just remains to be seen at the time of year when such things are demonstrated, which isn’t now.

“I think right now everybody’s optimistic about their chances,” Johnson said. “But nobody has had a chance to see what they [Lakers] can do this year in the postseason. I think you have to give it a chance to see what they do in the postseason, to see whether the bar has been raised or not.”

In the meantime, if it’s too crazy for Jackson to get gas, Jeanie can get it.

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mark.heisler@latimes.com