Pieces of 8

The boos have subsided for the most part, although San Antonio and Sacramento still get a little boisterous, and Philadelphia will never let its native son forget his roots, showering Kobe Bryant with the same rude greeting its fans offered Santa Claus one unforgettable football Sunday.

Bryant has moved forward from a year ago, when the Lakers staggered to a 34-48 record, and has become the face of a team pushing for a playoff spot believed possible by only a handful of pundits before the season.

If last year’s Bryant was driven and demanding, this year’s edition might be more so, playing with an edge and impelling teammates to follow along his way, for richer or poorer. He hit for 62 points in three quarters against Dallas, then upped the ante with 81 in four against Toronto, maneuvering the Lakers toward a likely playoff appearance and witnessing an uptick to his image, which was shredded after sexual assault charges were brought against him in July 2003.

Bryant still declines to answer questions about the Eagle, Colo., incident, doing so twice in an interview with The Times, but he provided some insight into the importance of image, how he feels about the direction of the Lakers and what makes him push and pull on teammates.

“That’s how I am,” Bryant said. “I’m more determined than my opposition all the time. What you see from us as a team, what you see from us when we play now, we play with that edge.”

To watch Bryant work is to witness an athlete dominate a craft with nary a smile -- every possession personal, every miss to be scrutinized later on tape. He steps on the court with a scowl, rarely changes expression except to plead his case to referees, and then concludes games with the same glower, even if his final shot is the winning one.

He gave notice during a preseason practice, booting a water bottle across the court when the team couldn’t make enough free throws to end a conditioning drill. Since then, he toppled a TV monitor and yelled at Lamar Odom after a last-second loss to Washington in December and, more recently, gave second-year guard Sasha Vujacic a healthy shove on the bench during a home loss to hapless Seattle.

Bryant says he sees results.

“You see it from Kwame [Brown], Sasha, Lamar, all the guys,” Bryant said. “They play with that chip.

“Since training camp ... I’ve been pushing them all the time to play that way just by being hard on them, being tough on them.... When you go into a hostile environment when the playoffs come up, you have to be able to respond to optimum pressure situations. In practice, I’ll talk a lot. I’ll put the pressure on them and try to get them to look within themselves and get confidence in themselves to come through in those situations.

“And then when they come through, you’ve got to pat them on the back. You’ve got to let them know, and I think they understand how I am. They understand that that’s my leadership style. There’s a million different ways to be a leader, many different forms of it. This is the way I go about it.”

Bryant’s first season without Shaquille O’Neal was characterized by a constellation of spats as the burden of a franchise in transition weighed heavily on 26-year-old shoulders. Left in Bryant’s wake last season were tiffs with former teammate Karl Malone, Seattle SuperSonic All-Star guard Ray Allen, then-teammate Chucky Atkins, and a season-long barrage of cross-country insults delivered from O’Neal’s new Miami address.

This season, Bryant has waged a tug-of-war with referees -- only Rasheed Wallace of Detroit has more than his 14 technical fouls -- and he received a two-game suspension from the league for elbowing Memphis guard Mike Miller on the chin in a December game.

Laker fans have adored his efforts, chanting “M-V-P” at nearly every home game, and some members of the corporate world -- specifically, Nike -- have edged up to the Bryant trough, although others haven’t always shared the love: The January edition of GQ magazine labeled Bryant the fifth most-hated athlete in pro sports, a few spots behind loquacious football star Terrell Owens and controversial slugger Barry Bonds.

But the re-branding of Bryant was bolstered somewhat by his 81-point outburst in a 122-104 victory over Toronto on Jan. 22, a single-game effort surpassed only by Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game for the Philadelphia Warriors in March 1962.

Nike, which signed Bryant to a five-year, $45-million endorsement deal in June 2003, a month before assault charges were brought against him, tested the waters last July with a two-page ad in Sports Illustrated. Nike then targeted February as a jumping-in point for Bryant’s signature shoe, the Zoom Kobe I, with a “love me or hate me” commercial blitz during the All-Star break.

The commercial was shot last summer at the Laker training facility in El Segundo with a script that was “basically how I felt at the time,” Bryant said.

“I think to a certain degree, it’s something that everybody goes through. I just said it,” he said. “A lot of people, whether it’s a writer or a coach or whatever, certain people love your work, certain people don’t like your work. In our position, people have a greater platform to criticize us.”

Sales of Bryant’s shoe has been brisk, not at the level of LeBron James or the ever-popular Michael Jordan, but in the same sphere as Kevin Garnett and Carmelo Anthony, according to analyst Matt Powell of SportScan Info, a pro sports retail tracking firm.

“Retailers signified it was a good start,” Powell said. “I’d say it met expectations, for sure.”

Despite his push-and-pull with teammates and referees, Bryant, who grew up the son of an NBA player and has been part of the Laker spotlight for 10 seasons, acknowledges the importance of image and the clout it can carry.

“I think that the things that I’ve been through in my life, I pretty much have grown up in front of the city of L.A. -- positive times, bad times, whatever -- and I think where my image really comes into play is being able to impact people in a good way,” Bryant said. “Not everybody’s perfect. I’m certainly not perfect. So I just try to help young kids growing up, challenge them to be better, not to settle for people’s expectations of them or people casting a negative image upon them. It’s tough to battle through that, fight through that and be better the next day.”

Bryant, for his part, salted away one of the league’s longest-running feuds, shaking hands with O’Neal before the Lakers and Miami Heat played in January. (O’Neal initiated the detente and Bryant went along with it, seemingly relieved it had finally happened.)

On top of it, there have been few problems meshing with Laker Coach Phil Jackson.

The player-coach relationship was a blistering topic when Jackson agreed to rejoin the Lakers last June, partly because of Jackson’s withering critique of Bryant in a tell-all book, partly because of Bryant’s lukewarm response to Jackson’s hiring with a brief written statement.

Jackson occasionally criticizes Bryant’s shot selection, and Bryant sometimes veers outside of Jackson’s share-the-ball philosophy, but they have otherwise coexisted peacefully.

“Life’s too short to be carrying grudges or whatever,” Bryant said. “We understood one another extremely well from a basketball standpoint. The important thing for us was to put it behind us, move on, and accept this challenge we have in front of us.”

Said Jackson recently: “I’m really happy for Kobe. I’m happy for myself in this regard that we just slip right back into that mode of concurring with one another. We’ve even picked it up to another level, where his leadership is developing to the point where he’s showing caretaking capabilities as a leader.”

As the Lakers struggled to stay above .500, Bryant had enough of a question about the organization’s future to make a series of midseason visits to the Playa del Rey home of owner Jerry Buss.

The Lakers are over the salary cap until after next season, and Bryant’s high-contact style of play ensures he won’t last forever. Already this season he has fought through a sore ankle, balky wrist, sore hips, knee tendinitis, back spasms and, most recently, a bruised calf.

Earlier this season, as the Lakers were losing as often as winning, no less an authority than Jackson mentioned the importance of not wasting the peak seasons of Bryant’s career.

Bryant, two seasons into a seven-year, $136.4-million contract, has pledged patience after recounting past Laker blueprints -- win a lot, rebuild for a short period, and win some more -- with Buss and team vice president Magic Johnson.

“This organization has done a great job in rebuilding in years past,” Bryant said. “I’ve talked with Dr. Buss, spoken with Magic, and they want to win as badly as I do. They’re going to do everything they can in their power to make sure that we do get back to the top. I trust them completely. Absolutely.”

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High marks

Kobe Bryant and LeBron James are the only NBA players to reach the 50-point mark more than once this season. Bryant has done it five times and James twice (through Monday):

*--* PLAYER, TEAM PTS DATE OPPONENT Kobe Bryant, Lakers 81 Jan. 22, 2006 Toronto Kobe Bryant, Lakers 62 Dec. 20, 2005 Dallas Allen Iverson, Philadelphia 53 Dec. 23, 2005 Atlanta LeBron James, Cleveland 52 Dec. 10, 2005 at Milwaukee Kobe Bryant, Lakers 51 April 7, 2006 at Phoenix Dirk Nowitzki, Dallas 51 March 23, 2006 Golden State LeBron James, Cleveland 51 Jan. 21, 2006 at Utah Kobe Bryant, Lakers 51 Jan. 19, 2006 at Sacramento Vince Carter, New Jersey 51 Dec. 23, 2005 at Miami Kobe Bryant, Lakers 50 Jan. 7, 2006 Clippers Paul Pierce, Boston 50 Feb. 15, 2006 Cleveland

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Source: NBA.com