Michael Ventre

Sometimes a man falls in love with a beautiful woman. He buys her jewelry, clothes, a car, takes her out on the town night after night, makes a giddy fool of himself. Then one day he wakes up and realizes that his angel is really a shrew, and although it’s a humiliating slap in the kisser, hey, better late than never.

I can only hope that Lakers owner Jerry Buss is at the point where he is ready to withhold his affections from the object of his desire.

That, of course, would be Kobe Bryant. All right, so Bryant isn’t a sizzling 24-year-old blonde with a breathtaking set of accoutrements.  But Buss has been in love with him. And now it’s time to end it.

The call has been uttered in some circles sporadically, but now it’s time to holler it from the rooftops:

Trade Kobe Bryant.

The impetus for this action is Bryant himself. In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, he was quoted again as complaining about the Lakers’ lack of progress in improving the team. Then ESPN reported later Sunday that Bryant told reporter Ric Bucher that he wants the Lakers to bring back Jerry West and give him full authority to run the team, and if they don’t want to do that then he wants to be traded.

On Monday, he performed the customary dance of the loose-lipped celebrity, backpedaling on his comments after they had already torched the sports landscape. Now he claims that he wasn’t really calling for any management changes and wasn’t suggesting he ever be traded, but simply expressing his desire to have West back.

On Wednesday, Bryant made it clear: he wants to be traded.

It appears that what he’s doing in his passive-aggressive manner, no matter how he spins it, is ratcheting up the pressure on the Lakers to make drastic improvements while keeping his hand on the “fire Mitch Kupchak and hire Jerry West, or trade me” hole card so that everyone knows he’ll use it if he has to.

Wow. So much gall. Where to begin?

Perhaps the most appropriate place to start is with the man who is primarily responsible for the Lakers’ current woes:

Kobe Bryant himself.

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Yes, that’s right. Not Buss, who is getting on in age and who could understandably be blamed for crotchety judgment. Not Kupchak, everybody’s favorite whipping boy.

This is Bryant’s fault. The Lakers suck, and it’s Bryant’s fault.

Say it with me: The Lakers suck, and it’s Bryant’s fault.

In 2004, Bryant was about to become a free agent. In any business deal involving two parties, one often has more leverage than the other. In this case, Bryant had ALL the leverage. Buss desperately wanted to keep Bryant because he had some cockamamie notion that he could recreate the Showtime Lakers of the ‘80s, with Bryant subbing for Magic Johnson. He also had had enough of Shaquille O’Neal.

Even though Shaq was fat, lazy, didn’t work hard and wanted way more money than he probably deserved, the fact remained that he was still the most dominant big man in the game. But Bryant hated him and wanted him out, along with Phil Jackson.

Desperate to satisfy Bryant’s every whim, Buss did what Bryant wanted. He instructed Kupchak to trade Shaq.

If Bryant were interested in winning championships, he would have recognized that having both he and Shaq in the fold would have given them a superstar core around which to build. He should have put his ego aside, worked out his differences with both Shaq and Jackson, and signed with a Lakers team that had a chance to continue its winning ways.

Instead, he sat back and waited until the Lakers did his selfish bidding.

What most talk-show blowhards fail to recognize about the Shaq trade is that it was made on a deadline. Buss wanted Shaq out before Bryant became a free agent, so he could then say, “See Kobe? I did everything you wanted. Now will you re-sign with us? Huh? Will ya?”

If you have to sell your house, usually you can sit back, let the offers roll in, and then choose the best one. If you have to sell your house BY FRIDAY, then you don’t have nearly as much leverage, and you’ll just have to take what you can get for it.

That’s what happened when the Lakers traded Shaq to appease Kobe. They got Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and Brian Grant because that was the best deal they could make by that deadline. They wanted Dwyane Wade, but Pat Riley is no dummy. The Dallas Mavericks wanted Shaq, but they wouldn’t part with Dirk Nowitzki.

So that’s what the Lakers were forced to settle for, and that’s why they now suck.

And remember, Kobe was all bright and cheery after he finally re-signed, gushing about how well he thought his new revamped team was going to be, which tells you a little bit about his basketball judgment.

Since then, the Lakers haven’t catapulted themselves back into the elite because it isn’t that easy. It takes skill and savvy, but it also takes luck. If Kupchak bears responsibility for this, it’s in not drafting a Manu Ginobili or a Leandro Barbosa.

The Lakers are never quite bad enough to sink into the lottery so they can get a shot at a Greg Oden or a Kevin Durant. And they’re over the salary cap.

Why don’t they get Kevin Garnett, or Jason Kidd? I agree. Why don’t they? While they’re at it, why don’t they get Tim Duncan, LeBron James and Steve Nash, as long as we’re collecting fantasy league players?

Other general managers aren’t out there saying, “Gee, what this league really needs is a revitalized Lakers’ franchise, and I think it’s high time I did my part.” And the idea that the holdup is the Lakers’ reluctance to part with youngster Andrew Bynum is pro basketball’s version of the “weapons of mass destruction” myth.