Shooting Star Faces Another Early Flameout

This has been the central theme of Kobe's basketball existence since the Lakers traded Shaq to Miami following the 2003-04 season.

True enough, Smush Parker, Brian Cook, Maurice Evans, Sasha Vujacic and Ronny Turiaf are role players. Kwame Brown is still challenged just to catch the ball and get into the proper position. The Lakers' best shooter, Vladimir Radmanovic, put himself into Phil Jackson's doghouse, perhaps for good, by injuring himself snowboarding during the all-star break.

Yet, when Kobe averaged a disciplined 20.3 shots per game, the Lakers jumped to a 30-19 record, which means his teammates must have been playing pretty efficiently. But with Odom and Luke Walton out with injuries Kobe had to score -- and Jackson asked him to -- just to get the Lakers into the playoffs.

Back to his old ways (averaging 27.3 shots down the stretch) the Lakers dropped to 12-21.

The Lakers don't seem to have any idea of which way to play now that the playoffs are on. An hour before Game 1, Suns Coach Mike D'Antoni said he expected to see both facilitator Kobe and soloist Kobe, "and my guess is they'll stay with whatever works best."

Well, since Kobe's 28 points in the first half staked the Lakers to a 48-39 lead they stayed with what worked early even though the Suns came with triple-teams. Kobe wondered what happened to the screen-setting that freed him for shots in the first half. His teammates wondered what happened to trusting them to produce when he's covered.

Jackson said in a conversation Friday that Kobe would have to pass the ball more, as he did before the injuries, for the Lakers to do anything in the playoffs and it looks so far like the coach knows what he's talking about. One assist isn't exactly looking for teammates.

But coaches are rational; scorers are instinctive. Bryant scored 50 points or more 10 times this season; only Wilt Chamberlain has scored 50 points or higher more times than that (45 in one season, 30 in another).

Somebody misses an open shot, Kobe's instinct is to take the next shot himself. Yet, if the season had lasted one week longer the Lakers would probably have missed the playoffs.

So, the Lakers practiced Monday and tried to figure out what will work Tuesday to tie the series. If Kobe ran out of gas Sunday, as Jackson suggested, it would be insane to expect a 50-point outburst to make a difference. On the other hand, if the rest of the Lakers are inadequate, what's the point of passing them the ball?

"When he gets 50," Jalen Rose said, "you say, 'We let him get his because we wanted to hold everybody else down.' He's the only guy in the league who can have people saying they 'held' him to 40."

Long after the theater of Game 1 was over, the Suns watched as their nemesis in the Western Conference, Dallas and San Antonio, shockingly lost their playoff openers at home. Once upon a time, to start the decade, the Lakers were the ones everybody else worried about. But the Suns, with legitimate designs on a championship, know the best way to set themselves up for a long playoff run is to get rid of Kobe as quickly as possible.

Amazingly, that's what the game's most prolific player may be reduced to over the next three games: preliminary practice for a team on the way to somewhere important.