By Michael Wilbon
Tuesday, December 26, 2006; E01

MIAMI

You ask about the best player in professional basketball and even insiders will still start talking about Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. Some will look at the Phoenix Suns' recent winning binge and say it's Steve Nash.

But when we left the big-stage games last June, Dwyane Wade was the NBA' s best player, and over the next five months he may prove to be up to the same kind of heavy lifting, if the Christmas day game was any indication.

With Shaquille O'Neal attired in a beautiful steel blue three-piece number and Bryant having had one decent night's sleep out of the last seven because of a bad case of the flu, Wade saved the Christmas matchup by scoring 40 points, handing out 11 assists and blocking four shots.

In the NBA, there's always talk of the great players putting up "statement games." And while Christmas day is usually too early for such a thing, the defending champs had gotten off to such a terrible start that Wade's performance and Miami's 101-85 victory over the Lakers was somewhat necessary.

"Dwyane had an outrageous night," his coach, Pat Riley, said. "He did a great job of making every right play. He reminded me a little of Steve Nash today. Every play Steve Nash makes is the right play and tonight Dwyane made every right play. Three out of the last four games I wasn't happy at all. [But] this was a good win. I just hope it's the start of something good and consistent at home. These are the types of games you have to play at home. You have to play with a lot of passion and grit."

Of course, Wade has done that for three seasons plus now. Sometimes he makes the pass Nash would have made. Some nights he has to rebound big and score in the fourth quarter the way LeBron does. Some nights he has to do all of it and does, the way Bryant has done for more than most of 10 seasons.

It's too bad Kobe was struggling with the flu because he and Wade are the best matchup the NBA has to offer now. Okay, it's not Wilt and Russell. It's not Bird and Magic. But Wade is at the top of his game and the top of his appeal. And Bryant is in the middle of a transition that will serve him and his Lakers well.

Maybe it was simply sitting at home for three rounds in May and June that led Bryant to some serious introspection about who he is as a basketball player. Or maybe it was specifically seeing Shaq's new playmate, Wade, walk away not only with the NBA championship but with the spoils for the victor. We've seen precious little of Kobe over the past six months but plenty of Wade, from commercials to magazine covers.

The week leading up to this game here in Miami found Kobe in the middle of a makeover, an obvious effort to do something different after two seasons of what he used to do not working very well. And for that effort, the Lakers are so, so much better than they were. They began the day only one game behind Phoenix in the Pacific Division of the Western Conference, even though the Suns had won 15 straight.

Kobe is shooting less (down from 27 shots per game to 19) and passing more (11 assists the other night to help beat the Nets in New Jersey). "I've got to be more like a big brother to my teammates," Kobe said in more than one pregame conversation. "I've got to be more tolerant of their mistakes, be a facilitator."

It sounds an awful lot like Kobe's trying to become more like Wade, and wouldn't that be full of irony. Wade already demonstrated he knew how to be the perfect little brother, letting Shaq run the team as his own in all the ways that matter in the star-driven NBA. Wade, only 24, figured out he could defer in all the cosmetic ways to older teammates Shaq, Zo, Antoine Walker, Gary Payton and Jason Williams, while leading the team quietly in all the ways that truly matter on game nights.

Wade has never scored 81, as Kobe famously did last season. In fact, Wade's career high is 48 and he needed overtime to get there. But while Kobe's season ended with a confounding Game 7 non-effort against the Suns, Wade was averaging 28 points, 6 assists and 6 rebounds per game through the playoffs.

Miami's 13-14 record this season might not sound like much. But Shaq is coming back sometime in the next month, and while Pat Riley hates the notion that Miami can just turn it on come April, the Heat does seem to have something in common with those back-to-back championship seasons by Houston in 1994 and 1995. The Rockets had the best player in the league then, Hakeem Olajuwon. Miami has the best player in the league now, Dwyane Wade.

Phil Jackson's team is better now. But the Lakers were 15-6 with Lamar Odom and 3-4 with him injured, and Odom is out for another two weeks at least. That kind of absence, before now, would entice Kobe to simply score more points. This season Kobe appears to understand that his job, especially until Odom comes back, will be to milk teammates just that much more.

Christmas wasn't the time to judge Kobe, who missed 13 of 17 shots. While those watching the game on television couldn't see it, truth is Kobe is open about evolving as a player. Asked by the Miami Herald's Dan LeBatard to name his biggest basketball regret, Kobe said he regretted that his relationship with Shaq deteriorated to the point that it did before the two finally shook hands and hugged on Martin Luther King's birthday almost a year ago.

There's nothing to do but applaud Bryant for realizing he needed to do something different as a player, as a teammate. It seemed a departure from his season-long demeanor that Kobe would take a swipe at Gilbert Arenas for his 60-point game that beat the Lakers the other night in Los Angeles. The cold words on a page -- "He doesn't seem to have much of a conscience. I really don't think he does. Some of the shots he took tonight, you miss those shots and they're just terrible shots." -- left a lot of people in D.C. annoyed with Kobe.

"But that's not at all how I meant it," he said afterward. "Look, Gilbert is my man. All I meant was Gilbert had guts to take and hit those shots. I loved the way Gilbert played. I don't know what exactly Gilbert saw, but I didn't mean anything other than Gilbert has some [guts]. He's a hell of a player and he's been playing great."

So has Kobe, despite recovering from knee surgery. So has Wade.

Asked if he expects to see Miami hit a championship stride in late winter, Kobe said: "It all depends on Shaq's knee. If he gets back to form, then they'll be there when it counts." And Wade is simply hoping nobody will much notice the Heat laying back in the weeds, out of sight and out of mind while the teams out west make all the early noise. "Let it sneak up on us," Wade said, flipping the phrase because he knows champs can't sneak up on anybody.

"Day by day, let's see the effort. But for this day, to play like this on Christmas, there aren't too many feelings better than this one. I don't even need any gifts."