Let's see if we've got this straight.

	Kobe struggles through the pain to meet his shot quota.

Right shoulder? Sore.

Left elbow? Sore.

Right hip? Sore.

Kobe Bryant is loving his chance to carry the Lakers in the absence of Shaquille O'Neal, or at least loving the chance to try, even if it means looking like he entered a demolition derby with a bicycle. Because the back is still plenty strong enough to hold the weight of expectation.

So we add one more consideration:

Heart?

Impenetrable.

Of course, that has always been Bryant's greatest strength and his biggest weakness, how nothing could beat him down during the early climb to stardom, or that he couldn't be convinced anyone else wearing the same uniform could make the same play. Locker room diplomacy never having been one of his strong suits, he has been single-minded in the pursuit of being the greatest player ever, so clear a path.

We are reminded of his chances this week, as O'Neal is out with the strained arch, because that is what it will take.

O'Neal being out of the way.

Permanently.

Bryant will never be able to discover his true greatness while on the same team with Shaq, and don't think it hasn't crossed his mind either. Michael Jordan never had to throw the ball into Dave Corzine regularly, did he? That's the difference.

Jordan had Granville Waiters, Bryant has the reigning Most Valuable Player.

Jordan had Will Perdue, Bryant has the best center on the planet.

Jordan had Stacey King and Bill Cartwright and Caldwell Jones and Cliff Levingston and Scott Williams and Luc Longley, Bryant has a future Hall of Famer.

The common denominator is Phil Jackson -- Jordan's coach then, Bryant's coach now -- but that's not the solution. The time will come when he will have to bring the combatants into the teepee, as Pat Riley so deftly noted, and Zen away, but, as previously stated in this space, a cooling period is the better now. Maybe soon after the All-Star break, since instead of spending a weekend in Washington in close proximity it now appears that Bryant and O'Neal may both miss the game because of injury.

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Get them together then. Talk. Plead. Prod. Push and pull. Demand. If it works, it's a huge patch job for the Lakers, who then only have the little matter of a team-wide lack of urgency, veterans aging a month for every week that passes and poor defense standing between them and becoming favorites again for a repeat. That's all.

But one thing can't be changed in a meeting.

Bryant won't challenge Jordan if he also has to challenge O'Neal. With his predatory court instincts, can't you just imagine how the curiosity will gnaw at Kobe?

It's not O'Neal's fault. It's not the Lakers' fault, because they won't, and shouldn't, make a trade. It's just the way circumstances worked out -- great for the team, great for the city, and, uh, difficult, for Bryant's unswerving desire.

He got a glimpse, at least, at what could be. O'Neal sat out at New York, the start of a three-game trip, and shame on you for thinking it may have been to make a point about how much he was needed. And then he missed the next outing, at Cleveland, as Bryant scored 47 points in a victory and Jackson countered by suggesting maybe a good way to save the shoulder is NOT SHOOTING SO MUCH!!! And the next, at Minnesota.

The Lakers went 1-2, and Bryant averaged 34.7 points per and 23.3 shots per. Not counting the ones he took from his coach and opponents.

"It's hard enough to play the amount of minutes he plays ... and you're [getting] the attention that defenses give him -- one, two and three guys -- and now he's truly feeling what Shaq feels night in and night out: the beating and the abuse," Laker forward Rick Fox said. "It's brutal, it's brutal. [Bryant's] frame is not one of 300-and-something pounds. He's 218 pounds, 6-6 and they're going to continue to beat up on him, because he's the guy that the focus turns to."

Said Laker forward Horace Grant, a former Jordan teammate with the Bulls: "It's a growth period for him right now and I think it's a growth period for the team in general, not having the big guy out there."

When Bryant had limbs dangling, joints aching, O'Neal on the sideline and the Lakers still beat full-strength Sacramento on Sunday, it left them at 3-2 while powered by something other than Diesel fuel. (It also left Chris Webber more determined than ever to find a way to land in Los Angeles next season, but that's another story). O'Neal is also expected to miss Wednesday against the Suns, the final game before the All-Star break, a timeline the Lakers hope will allow him to return for the first game after, Tuesday at New Jersey.

Just in time. As in: "Good morning, defending champions. This is your mid-February wake-up call."

It's the start of a six-game trip that also includes stops at Philadelphia and, in a back-to-back, Dallas and San Antonio.

It's the end of the post-title hangover -- or else.

"I think the effort is there," guard Brian Shaw said. "It just seems that a lot of times we're playing like we're bored. I think it's kind of a natural thing -- once you've tasted it, you kind of become complacent. We have to do a better job of remaining hungry because teams are giving us their best effort every night and we're not matching it.

"At the start of the season, it was real difficult for our team to find the challenge, to motivate ourselves to really get up for all the games after having done what we did last year. It's like, 'Let's get to the good part. April.' I guess we came in with the sense that we can just kind of turn it on whenever we want to, and we're finding out we can't do that. It's been kind of a slow process."

Kind of?

"A lot of guys are taking this for granted," said Robert Horry, who has extra insight because he also won two championships with the Rockets before earning a third in Los Angeles. "They're saying, 'We know we're going to be able to turn it on, like we did last year' and all this kind of stuff. And that's not the case. You've got to fight hard now and get your [playoff] position. Guys come out there and are trying to do their thing -- trying to get their points, trying to do this, trying to do that. The team thing kind of sometimes falls by the wayside."

Which leaves only one thing to do.

Fire up the peace pipe. Kobe may want to quit smoking one day, you know.

Scott Howard-Cooper covers the NBA for the Sacramento Bee and is a new regular contributor to ESPN.com.