It seemed a long shot to think the Lakers would beat the Suns, a team that shoots the ball as well as any ever has. But you knew if they were going to have a chance, Kobe would have to give it to them.

Kobe wanted the Lakers to be his team, and for the entire season it was. If they won, it was because of him. If they lost, it was because he had no supporting cast.

There wasn't a lot of talk about Phil Jackson's triangle offense this season. It was the Bryant offense, and there was never any question but that the team would go as far as he could carry it.

He carried it back to the playoffs. And then, in the first game Sunday, he decided he didn't want to do any more heavy lifting.

Bryant is the kind of player who will lose a game to make a point. It could be that's what he was doing Sunday — showing the fans what they can expect when he plays within the offense. It could be that now that he's made his point, he'll take the next game over to prove that without him, there is nothing.

Lakers fans better hope that's the case, and Suns' fans better hope it's not. Phoenix needed a phenomenal performance by Tim Thomas to put L.A. away on a day on which Bryant barely participated. The Suns can't expect the same in the rest of this series from Thomas. And they can't put themselves in a position to allow one player to beat them.

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We've been hoping for a long time to have two great players in opposite conferences hauling their teams through the postseason. This season, we finally got Kobe and LeBron in the playoffs together.

LeBron came through with a Magic performance, the kind of performance by a young star that the NBA can point to with pride as an example of how great the game can be.

James played a complete game. He went inside, fed his teammates, cleaned up the misses, hit three-pointers, controlled the game and made it his own.

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If Kobe wants us to believe he's really the best player in the game, he now has to prove it. He didn't get his hands dirty Sunday, didn't go inside, didn't fight for rebounds, didn't get himself to the foul line, didn't draw the defense and hand off for easy baskets by his teammates.

I don't know what he's trying to prove. If it's that he can be a team player, it didn't work, because even when he wasn't hogging the ball, he never made his teammates better. He didn't even help them; he just watched them work.

Bryant is in his 10th season in the NBA; LeBron is in his third. After watching their first efforts of the 2006 playoffs, you'd swear it was the other way around.

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