If the Lakers go 3-for-3, they'll defend their title. The trouble is, they could just as easily go 0-for-3. Because of the strength in the West and his own team's deficiencies, Phil Jackson rates his team's chances of repeating as "a real tossup."

On paper, a championship team with Shaq and Kobe should send terror through the rest of the league. But Shaq hasn't been nearly as dominant as a year ago. The telltale sign is that after coming up one vote short of a unanimous MVP finish, he's hardly being mentioned for the honor this season. While Shaq hasn't been the same defensive force as last season, the Lakers also have suffered from Ron Harper's absence over the past six weeks.

On the Bryant front, we've seemed to have reached a calm. Whether or not it's the calm before just another firestorm, who knows. Everything is on hold until the best perimeter player in the game returns from another setback. After playing only 11 minutes against the Knicks on Sunday, he had to leave the game because of more ankle troubles. Although he said he will try to play Tuesday against the Jazz, he also acknowledged he's only around 75 percent.

"I want to make sure I'm healthy for the playoffs," he said. "But I think today was a step in the right direction for me and the team."

This season has been full of missteps in the Jackson-Bryant relationship.

Jackson has seemingly tried everything in his motivational bag of tricks to reel in Bryant. All season long, in fact. But it's just the manner that the Zen Master has used recently that has caused a lot of head-scratching around the league.

How many other coaches would trash their own superstar, publicly questioning his character? How many other coaches would reveal private conversations in which the player comes out looking totally selfish? How many other coaches would indirectly charge a player with sabotaging his high school team's efforts?

One way to look at it is, Jackson is pushing all kinds of psychological buttons to get through to his young star, so he's earning his $30 million to make the Shaq-Kobe alliance work. Isn't that his job? But some of his comments, whether intended to come out or not, have been pushing the envelope.

You wonder who's the 22-year-old in this soap opera, and who's the one who is 55?

"You have to remember that whatever Phil says is never random," said Luc Longley, who played five seasons in Chicago under Jackson. "It might appear to be random. But it's always well thought-out and has an objective."

The chief one being to get Bryant back to where he accepts the same role he filled last season. Even if Jackson didn't intend for some of the particulars to leak out, it's been a full-scale assault on the game's best perimeter player. Whatever works, right?

First, Jackson revealed the details of a private discussion the two had concerning the offense.

"I said to Kobe, 'What's the problem?' He said, 'The game's too boring for me. The offense is so simple. It doesn't display my talent. It doesn't give me what I have to have for my game.'"

When Jackson said he tried to reason with Bryant by pointing out that the same system helped Bryant and O'Neal get their first title, Bryant came off looking worse.

"He said, 'But it doesn't give me what I have to have for my game,'" Jackson recounted.

Anyone who read the comment immediately went to the stat sheets and noted that Bryant takes about 22 shots a night, compared to 18 for O'Neal.

	“	I'm not going to defend myself every time. I'm getting tired of doing that. I'm going to let my play do the talking and hopefully everything else will fall by the wayside. ”
		— Kobe Bryant

"I don't understand what Kobe is talking about," said the Knicks' Latrell Sprewell. "He's playing in a proven system. It's not like he's not getting any touches. When you're in the top three in scoring, it's not like you're not getting the ball."

Then came Jackson's real zinger, the now infamous sabotage comment.

"Someone told me that in high school Kobe would sabotage his own games so that the game would be close, so he could dominate," he said. "To sabotage the team process, to be so self-centered in your own process -- it's almost stupefying."

When the ensuing firestorm hit, Jackson retreated. He later met for an hour with Bryant to tell him where he was coming from.

"I want him to focus in on what it takes for us to win with him in there," Jackson said Sunday when asked his expectations of Bryant down the stretch. "Which means we step up our defense. The thing that he also does very well for us is when the clock is running down, creating scoring situations. And keep those type of things in focus."

It'll be a major focus because of what's happened in Laker-land this season.

Bryant is as thick-skinned as they come. As much as he's taken a public relations beating in what has been, statistically, his best season, he also knows better than anyone that Jackson can be even tougher on him in practice settings and behind closed doors than he has been in print. So he's refrained from engaging in verbal warfare.

"I'm not going to defend myself every time," he said just the other day. "I'm getting tired of doing that. I'm going to let my play do the talking and hopefully everything else will fall by the wayside."

If that's what happens and if he's willing to co-exist with O'Neal, the rest of the league might want to start running.

Mitch Lawrence, who covers the NBA for the New York Daily News, writes a regular NBA column for ESPN.com.