Feel-good ride continues for Kobe

By Anthony Olivieri
PA SportsTicker Pro Basketball Editor

Kobe Bryant spent this summer on a different type of media tour.

The reigning league MVP, Bryant led the Los Angeles Lakers to an appearance in the NBA Finals, where his club lost to the archrival Boston Celtics in six games.

He then joined the United States men’s basketball team, which ended an eight-year, gold-medal drought with a rousing performance at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Bryant, in a departure from the usual controversy that surrounds him, came off like a proud parent when discussing his international experience.

“It was absolutely a great summer,” said Bryant, who repeated that mantra ad nauseam in the aftermath of Team USA’s dominant Olympiad. “It went by so fast, but I had such a great time.”

One of the fiercest competitors in the league, Bryant is known for his relentless drive to win NBA championships, making that enjoyment somewhat of surprise after the loss to the Celtics.

After all, Bryant has yet to win a title without Shaquille O’Neal and came tantalizingly close to doing so in June. The famously clutch Bryant also put forth a sub-par performance in the series, making it more likely that he would spend the offseason plotting the figurative deaths of opposing shooting guards.

He surely stayed awake at night agonizing over the defeat, right?

“I didn’t think about it at all,” said Bryant, who averaged 28.3 points and played in all 82 games last season.

Really?

“I was able to block it out because my focus shifted from the NBA season to the gold medal,” he said. “That’s what I was focused on exclusively. Now that the gold medal’s over, you shift your focus back to your Los Angeles Lakers team and focus on that.”

As it turned out, an appearance in the Finals - despite the loss - was a positive for Bryant and the Lakers, who seemed destined for a divorce prior to the 2007-08 campaign.

The trip to the league’s championship series only came to fruition after Bryant reconciled with the team after littering last preseason with on-again, off-again trade demands. He made his feelings known while making appearances on multiple radio shows in one whirlwind day, famously contradicting himself in each interview.

The bottom line, however, was clear - Bryant was not wholeheartedly convinced that the Lakers were headed in the direction of a championship. One year later, things have changed dramatically, and so has Bryant’s opinion of his teammates.

“We’re favorites for a reason,” Bryant said. “We have all the tools here, all the pieces to the puzzle. Now, it’s time for us to do the work.”

The only thing holding back Bryant is an injury to his right pinky finger, which he has refused to have surgically repaired since suffering the injury in February. Maybe, his competitive juices do still flow as prodigiously as they always have.

“It’s gonna get sore if I get whacked on it pretty good,” said Bryant, who also suffered a minor knee injury this preseason. “But in terms of missing some games because of it, then I’d have to completely reinjure it.”

Sounds like an injury he doesn’t plan to worry about. More accurately, Bryant may not want to change anything from last season, when he not only played worry-free but also with the injured pinky.

That superstition might saddle him with a permanently bothersome finger, which only would cause a problem if the two-time scoring champion tried to wear a championship ring on the wrong digit.

“I tell you what … if we win a championship, I’m not touching it,” Bryant said. “I’m not doing a darn thing. I’m leaving it alone.”

Bryant most likely will do the same to general manager Mitch Kupchak, who took the brunt of the criticism for what his star player dubbed a flawed roster prior to last season.

Since then, however, Kupchak put the Lakers on the right side of one of the most lopsided trades in NBA history, which brought All-Star center Pau Gasol to Hollywood from Memphis in exchange for a ham sandwich.

OK, the Grizzlies received Pau’s brother, Marc Gasol, Kwame Brown and Javaris Crittenton (the all-but-retired Aaron McKie and two first-round picks also went to Memphis). But more importantly, the Lakers were able to team Gasol with Bryant to put a smile on the ornery star’s face and set the franchise up for success in the years to come.

With an emerging bench and the return of 20-year-old big man Andrew Bynum, Los Angeles has no reason to dwell on its Finals loss and every reason to look toward that sparkling future. You don’t have to tell Lakers coach Phil Jackson twice.

“I had amnesia as soon as the season was over,” Jackson said.

For the first time in his career, so did Bryant.