Kobe's Window: With Role Reversal Complete, Lakers Tower Over Suns

Kobe Bryant left two defenders in the dust and threw his body into Alando Tucker for a three-point play off the window.

His free-throw make gave the Lakers a one-point lead early in the third quarter of a Sunday afternoon game in Phoenix they would lose 118-111. After trailing by 10 at halftime, they had retaken the lead with seemingly no effort.

Hanging with the Suns was easy.

In 2007, these same Suns were the ones running over the Lakers, and Kobe nearly hydrogen-bombed his own team because of it. He wanted a trade after the squad with the two-time MVP had slaughtered his in five games.

Some astute Lakers fan with Photoshop prowess altered the photo of Steve Nash hoisting his second consecutive Maurice Podoloff trophy and inserted the only satisfying image of that series for Lakers fans.

Kobe dunked on little Stevie Nash, and because of that, people were supposed to believe MVP voters had robbed him after a season statistically superior to any other award contender. For the second straight year, he couldn't beat Nash in the playoffs.

He did everything he could, from scoring 45 points in the first game in Phoenix to playing 44 minutes in the second contest, but none of it mattered against Mike D'Antoni's fun and-gun Suns.

As defenseless as the Nash and Amare Stoudemire Suns have been, they could at least handle not losing to one guy.

Lakers fans will remember that dark period as the time when management pretended Smush Parker was an adequate point guard and Brian Cook was not a scrub.

Now, Derek Fisher has returned, Pau Gasol mans the middle with a rejuvenated Lamar Odom and many wonder if anyone will beat these Lakers once Andrew Bynum recovers from another knee injury.

Even without the promising 21-year-old, the team completed a perfect six game road trip, securing season sweeps of the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers. That win in Cleveland ended the Cavs’ 23-0 home mark.

The Suns are in a dogfight with the vapid Dallas Mavericks for the West’s eighth seed. Both teams are dogging it, all right. The Mavericks let the Oklahoma City Thunder bully them sans Kevin Durant and Jeff Green Monday night.

The Suns had not lost more than 10 games since Nash arrived, but will easily accomplish that this season. Weren’t these same Suns supposed to save the world from tedious basketball?

How is that for an about face? This matchup is full of them.

Shaquille O’Neal was asking Bryant how his ass tasted months ago in a raunchy freestyle. Bryant was kicking it Thursday night in Los Angeles. His Lakers won 132-106.

The Lakers-Suns not-rivalry offers the best example of how quickly things can change in two years, and Kobe’s window is the epicenter of it. Games between these two teams have always been about Kobe Bean Bryant.

Two years ago, he pouted to management in the most unprofessional manner. His team of misfits—soft euros and garbage street ballers—bowed in five games to a team that, beyond the hype, was never going to win a championship.

He aired out Jerry Buss and Mitch Kupchak on a radio show and demanded a trade. Then, he rescinded his immature remarks and said he wanted to remain a Laker for life.

Buss had opportunities to trade his disgruntled star and almost did. Maybe matchups like Sunday’s prove that things happen for a reason.

There was Nash, now further exposed as an offensive juggernaut only in D’Antoni’s system, sitting on a bench in a dapper blazer. Name a point guard whose eyes do not light up when they get to attack Nash off the dribble.

Then again, the two-time MVP usually gets off easy defending the opponent’s spot up shooter because his coaches know any point guard with ability will break his ankles.

There was O’Neal guarding Bryant and vice versa. If their All-Star game make nice session seemed staged, this was real. The NBA’s coulda-been greatest duo went at it Sunday afternoon, and O’Neal emerged victorious for the only time in four meetings.

The Lakers scored a breakthrough win against the seven-seconds-or-less Suns on Christmas Day 2007. ABC analyst Mark Jackson wondered then if the Lakers were then more talented than the team that had ousted them in the first round in consecutive seasons.

As Bryant’s free throws clinched the win, the Staples Center crowd came alive with “Phoenix sucks” chants.

Give Lakers fans credit for no longer stating the obvious.

So, why revisit history and recapitulate what happened in the 2006 and 2007 playoffs and a few regular season games? It is through history that we learn what we should have known long ago.

While D’Antoni’s gimmick ball seemed exciting and fun, it lacked substance. Charles Barkley calls it “sissy ball.” If fans didn’t get that after watching the Spurs outclass them in three of the last four years, the Lakers 3-1 season series victory offered the exclamation points.

David Stern is rejoicing now because he doesn’t have to sell any particular style of basketball to the common sports fan. He can just market “Celtics” and “Lakers” and enough of the bandwagoners will come. Stern could disguise a rodeo clown exhibition as a Celtics-Lakers game and someone gullible would watch.

Just as people will tune in to see a supposed rekindling of an old rivalry, many believed just two years ago the Suns were basketball royalty. Stern can sit in the U.S. Airways Arena’s lower bowl now without fearing for his life.

Most Suns fans, the ones who believe in logic, have come to the difficult conclusion that the suspensions of Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw did not cost them a 2007 championship.

“The Spurs are well-coached and they play like a team. They defend and play playoff basketball,” one disappointed fan wrote underneath the Arizona Republic’s story about the Suns’ five-game exit.

For two years, Phoenix fans enjoyed the illusion their squad was better than the storied one in Los Angeles. The Suns’ latest performance was one of desperation, similar to the one playoff game the Lakers managed to win in 2007.

Odom’s monster game lifted the Lakers then. O’Neal’s 325-pound, 33-point performance lifted the Suns on Sunday.

In one just-like-old-times sequence, O’Neal grabbed his own rebound after a free-throw miss, much to the chagrin of Jeff Van Gundy, and barreled past three defenders for the one-handed slam. He threw in hook shots, bunnies and a few three-point plays off the glass.

However, this was nothing like the “old times” of two years ago or the early 2000s. Everyone is chasing the Lakers. The only team chasing the Phoenix Suns is the Phoenix Suns. How does the rear end of a loser team taste, Shaq?

Any basketball stats geek could argue that O’Neal was the league’s most valuable player during each year of the Lakers three peat. When he touched the ball in the post, he did something powerful with it. The only player comparable in points per touch was Tim Duncan.

Now, O’Neal represents everything that is wrong with the Suns. One declining big guy was never going to inspire Nash and Stoudemire to play adequate defense. So, Nash, Grant Hill and possibly Stoudemire unfairly pushed Terry Porter out the door and welcomed Alvin Gentry.

He promised to bring the “fun” back to Phoenix hoops; the same “fun” that was never going to win a championship.

Even after beating the Celtics and Cavaliers twice, many still question if the Lakers are tough enough to win a title. This version of the Lakers can at least fall back on its defending conference champion tag. On what do the Suns fall back?

It’s clear now—two years removed from the five-game flameout that enraged Bryant so—these Lakers are a lot better than those Suns. Bryant’s shot off the window Sunday afternoon said it all.

The Lakers lost because they could afford to after all but locking up the West’s top seed. The Suns needed 29 points from Matt Barnes and a flashback to 2001 from O’Neal just to inch one game closer to meeting these Lakers again in the first round.

Kobe’s window hasn’t looked this open in years. Phoenix’s window shut in seven seconds or less.