From Invisible Man to Dominant Kobe

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LOS ANGELES -- Kobe Bryant didn't bring his "A" game. He brought the schizophrenic one. Sometimes that's good, too. Or two. The Los Angeles Lakers' leader deferred to his teammates for more than a half, then took his ball and went to the hole, dragging his team past San Antonio in the first game of their Western Conference finals series Wednesday night. "I can get off any time," he said. "The second half I did that." No kidding. He was the Invisible Kobe in the first half, the guy who tends to be over-solicitous to his teammates. He often passed up shots you think he's going to take. He bailed out of 15-foot pull-ups, and aborted numerous drives to the basket. If he thought he could thread a pass underneath to Pau Gasol, he tried. If he saw Sasha Vujacic camped out on the wing, he kicked the ball to him. He ended up taking three shots, scoring his only two points of the half with about 90 seconds left. After the break, and after the Lakers slipped into a 20-point hole, he turned it on. The second half he was the Dominant Kobe, the guy who asks for the ball and manages virtually every possession. He nailed 10 of 18 shots, made all four of his free throws and added four more assists to the five he compiled in the first half. "Kobe was doing his trust-his-teammates thing in the first half," said Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, explaining the obvious, that no one really controls how Bryant plays, that it's totally up to him. "He was checking it all out, to see where his territory was going to be. In the second half, he went to work." For the record, of course, it would probably be better if Bryant could find the happy medium, a nicer blend of the two personas and be that guy all the time. As Coach Phil Jackson said of Bryant's first half, when he did his John Stockton impersonation, "I didn't think he was taking shots available to him ... he was doing some things good. But it had gotten us out of rhythm during the course of the first half." Of course, he has the ability to right things in a hurry. The Lakers closed within seven points by the start of the fourth quarter, and the Spurs were looking like something crawling through an open field with crosshairs on its back. With the score tied, 81-81, with 2:42 left, Bryant went to the basket, found contact, and got the obligatory two free throws. He made them both, giving the Lakers their first lead of the game. Bryant was so hot, he even scored for San Antonio, accidentally tipping in Tim Duncan's miss with 41.7 seconds left to tie the game back at 85-85. No problem. He took the ball to the other hand, drove into the lane and pulled up for a 10-footer with 23.9 seconds left, the game-winner. The Spurs had time to miss once more, and two free throws by Vujacic sealed the deal. In the process the Lakers may have discovered that they got exactly the matchup they wanted after all. For a while, it looked like the romantic and fitting notion -- that the Lakers should go through San Antonio, the defending champions and the Lakers most imposing adversaries for a decade to win a title -- was a bad one. Instead of giving way to the daisy-fresh Lakers in the first half, the game-weary Spurs forced the pace their way. They expertly played their methodical game, making sure the ball was fed inside to their usual featured attraction, Tim Duncan. When San Antonio had a chance to push the ball, it was Tony Parker's show. But something weird happened to the poised, experienced, clutch team of veterans. They took a 20-point lead, and squandered it in a flurry of turnovers, bad shots and indecisiveness. The Lakers -- the team riddled with conference finals first-timers -- played their way back into it. "When you're down by 20, you just have to stay focused," said Lakers forward Lamar Odom, who's never been remotely close to this stage of the postseason before. "You just take your time, relax and let the game come back to you." The Lakers may, indeed, have drawn a team on the backside of its glory days. Hard to imagine a championship Spurs team coughing up such a sizable lead. Of course, that can happen when Bryant finds his scoring touch, and goes into over-drive. Bryant dismissed the notion that his pendulum-swing of a game is too unbalanced for his team to handle. He said that the key was the Lakers defense -- the multiple stops they got on the Spurs during the Lakers' big comeback. "If I go off like that offensively and we don't win," he said of his second-half upturn, "Everybody would be talking about how I shot us out of the game." Maybe. Maybe, he can't win. But if the Lakers win, it really doesn't matter. Bryant can be any Kobe he wants.(Contact Gregg Patton at gpatton@PE.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)