The one without Shaq.

The one to pass Red.

Bryant’s seven-year chase of a coveted championship is finally over. He’s got his fourth title, and Jackson his record 10th. One year after failing in the finals, Bryant and the Lakers have redemption, and all the rewards that go with it.

The Lakers earned their 15th title on Sunday night as Bryant scored 30 points and Pau Gasol added 14 and 15 rebounds in a 99-86 Game 5 win over the Orlando Magic, who ran out of comebacks.

It took longer than Bryant expected, but he has stepped out of former teammate Shaquille O’Neal’s enormous shadow — at last. His fourth championship secured a strong case can be made for Bryant being the league’s best player since Michael Jordan hung up his sneakers.

Bryant, who averaged 32.4 points and was named finals MVP, said the can-he-win-without-Shaq talk annoyed him.

“It was like Chinese water torture,” he said. “I would cringe every time. I was just like, it’s a challenge I’m just going to have to accept because there’s no way I’m going to argue it. You can say it until you’re blue in the face and rationalize it until you’re blue in the face, but it’s not going anywhere until you do something about it.

“I think we as a team answered the call because they understood the challenge that I had, and we all embraced it.”

O’Neal, now with the Phoenix Suns, was glad to see Bryant win another title.

“Congratulations kobe, u deserve it,” O’Neal said on his Twitter page. “You played great. Enjoy it my man enjoy it.”

Bryant’s former coach now stands alone.

Jackson, the chilled-out, bow-legged Zen Master who won six league titles in the 1990s with Jordan in Chicago, now has won four with Los Angeles and broke a tie with legendary Boston coach Red Auerbach as the winningest coach in finals history.

“I’ll smoke the cigar tonight in memory of Red,” Jackson said. “He was a great guy.”

Bryant and Jackson, whose relationship strained and briefly snapped under the weight of success, are again at the top of their games.

Together.

Jackson, who once called Bryant “a selfish player” now sees the 30-year-old in a far different light.

“He’s learned how to become a leader in a way in which people want to follow him,” Jackson said. “That’s really important for him to have learned that because he knew that he had to give to get back in return, and so he’s become a giver rather than just a guy that’s a demanding leader. That’s been great for him and great to watch.”

Nothing was going to stop Bryant, who spent the postseason scowling, snarling, baring his teeth and all but breathing fire at anything in his path. For weeks, the All-Star has worn his game face. His daughters called him Grumpy. Only when the victory was his in the final seconds did he allow himself to smile.

“I was just completely locked in,” he said. “I was grumpy for a while and now I’m just ecstatic, like a kid in a candy store.”

After the final horn, Bryant leaped into the air and was quickly engulfed by his teammates, who bounced around the floor of Amway Arena. Bryant then gave his long, heartfelt hug and shared a few words with Jackson before sweeping up his little girls, both wearing gold Lakers dresses, into his arms.

It was just as he dreamed.

“It finally felt like a big old monkey was off my back,” he said. “It felt so good to be able to have this moment. For this moment to be here and to reflect back on the season and everything that you’ve been through, it’s top of the list, man.”

Bryant had come up short twice in the finals before, in 2004 with O’Neal against Detroit, and again last season against the Celtics in the renewal of the league’s best rivalry. The Lakers were beaten in six games, losing the finale in Boston by 39 points, a humiliating beatdown that Bryant and his teammates had trouble shaking.

They went to training camp with one goal in mind. This was going to be their season, and except for a few minor missteps, it was.

In the locker room afterward, Bryant made sure Jackson got a champagne shower.

“He took his glasses off, threw his head back and soaked it all in because this is a special time,” Bryant said. “For us to be the team that got him that historic 10th championship is special for us.”

After beating Utah in the first round, Los Angeles was forced to go seven games against Houston, which lost center Yao Ming to an injury. The Lakers then took care of Denver in six games, setting up a matchup with the shoot-from-their-hips Magic, who made their first visit to the finals since O’Neal took them there in 1995.

Orlando will be haunted by moments in a series that swung on a few plays and had two overtime games.

After losing Game 1 by 25 points, the Magic had their chance in Game 2 but rookie Courtney Lee missed an alley-oop layup in the final second of regulation. In Game 4, Dwight Howard clanged two free throws with 11.1 seconds, and the Magic allowed Derek Fisher to nail a game-tying 3-pointer to force OT.

Howard, the Magic’s superhero center, was hardly a factor in Game 5. He scored 11 points, took just nine shots and never got a chance to get going. Rashard Lewis scored 18 points, but was only 3 of 12 on 3s for Orlando, which after living on the 3, finally died by it.

The Magic went just 8 of 27 from long range.

“I thought our guys fought hard,” coach Stan Van Gundy said. “But they just had an answer for everything.”

Orlando was trying to become the first team to overcome a 3-1 deficit in the finals. They had rallied to knock off Philadelphia and Boston, and then upset LeBron James and Cleveland in the conference finals. The Magic always felt they had a shot at history.

Bryant, though, wouldn’t be denied his place.

Orlando’s magical mystery tour came to a quick end.

“It hurts,” Howard said. “It hurts a lot. But you can learn a lot from losing. Sometimes you’ve got to lose to win.”

As teammates, Bryant and O’Neal were nearly unbeatable on the court. Off it, there were problems.

The pair won three straight titles together from 2000-02, but the Bryant-O’Neal dynasty became dysfunctional as both fought for control with Jackson publicly siding with his All-Star center. It all eventually crumbled in 2004 when O’Neal was traded to the Miami Heat.

Bryant was blamed for the breakup, and as the years passed, his many critics said he couldn’t win one by himself. He couldn’t, but the addition of Gasol, who came over in a stunning trade from Memphis last season, filled O’Neal’s massive void at center and gave Bryant help.

Fisher, who has four rings himself, came back to L.A. after stints in Golden State and Utah and became a steadying force. If not for his two key 3-pointers in Game 4, this series would still be going.

The Lakers were anything but The Kobe Show.

They got help from their entire roster as Odom, Trevor Ariza and Andrew Bynum, who missed most of last season and the playoffs with a knee injury, came through.

It all came together.

“To have the attitude of we’re going to become a better defensive team, a better rebounding team and then to actually do it and to see it all happen, it feels like I’m dreaming.

“I can’t believe this moment is here.”

Lee’s last-second shot went up, and went out.
Stopped cold by a pick near the free-throw line, Kobe Bryant watched as Orlando’s Courtney Lee headed toward the basket and a shot at history.

Lucky.

The Lakers remain in control of the NBA Finals — just barely.

Lee missed a potential game-winning alley-oop as regulation ended, giving Los Angeles another shot it didn’t waste. Pau Gasol scored seven points in overtime and Bryant finished with 29 as the Lakers, so dominant in the series opener, survived with a 101-96 win over the Magic in Game 2 on Sunday night.

“I was obviously relieved when he missed that shot,” Gasol said. “It could have been a heartbreaker and right now we could be in a totally different situation.”

If Orlando doesn’t come back and win this series, Lee’s miss may go down as one of the biggest gaffes in finals history. He had a chance to give the Magic its first finals win.

“We missed it. I don’t know what else to say,” Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said. “We executed well, Hedo [Turkoglu] made a great pass. I’m not trying to be a pain … Hedo made a great pass and he just missed it.”

Orlando may not get a better shot to beat the Lakers.

Alley-oops.

“We blew a lot of assignments tonight — a lot of assignments — and we still managed to get a win,” Bryant said.

When it was finally over, Bryant, Derek Fisher and the Lakers jogged to the locker room, smiling and high-fiving fans along the way.

Hedo Turkoglu, who threw the perfect lob pass on Lee’s ill-fated shot, trudged through the tunnel dejected, a towel hanging from his head.

Gasol added 24 and 10 rebounds and Lamar Odom 19 points for the Lakers, who won Game 1 by 25 but needed 53 minutes to put away the Magic.

Rashard Lewis scored 34 — 18 in the second quarter alone — and Dwight Howard had 17 points and 16 rebounds for Orlando.

Game 3 is Tuesday night at Orlando’s Amway Arena, which will be hosting a finals game for the first time since June 9, 1995.

With the score tied at 88-88 in regulation, Lee missed the first of two late-game shots when he drove the lane and misfired on a contested layup with 10.5 seconds remaining.

The Lakers called time with 9.1 seconds to play, and after Odom caught the inbounds pass, he quickly gave it to Bryant, who drove into a crowd. Bryant attempted an off-balance 12-footer, but his shot was blocked from behind by Turkoglu with 1.8 seconds left.

The horn sounded, the clock expired to zeros and Jack Nicholson and the star-studded Staples Center crowd braced for overtime.

But the officials huddled at the scorer’s table and decided to put 0.6 seconds back on the clock because Turkoglu grabbed the ball and called timeout.

Turkoglu couldn’t find anyone open on the inbounds and was forced to call another timeout. On the Magic’s second attempt, Lee got free on a perfectly executed play and caught Turkoglu’s long lob pass as he neared the left side of the basket. But with 7-foot Gasol closing in on him, Lee’s shot caromed off the backboard and front of the rim.

Howard dunked in the miss as Lee put his hands behind his head in disbelief and began a long walk back to the bench as his teammates tried to console him.

So close. So far.

“I caught it and just tried to make a play,” Lee said. “We didn’t lose the game just because I missed the layup. We could have won the game.”

Howard, who had seven of Orlando’s 20 turnovers, didn’t want to put too much emphasis on Lee’s miss.

“We had our chances to win,” he said. “We turned the ball over too much. That got them the win.”

Bryant, who got caught paying more attention to Orlando’s outside shooters than Lee, knew how fortunate the Lakers were to hang on.

“It was just a brilliant play,” Bryant said. “It was just a very, very smart play that he [Van Gundy] drew up. He knew my eye was more on the shooters coming up and just a hell of a play by a hell of a coach.”

Fourteen years to the day, the Magic have more finals misery.

On June 7, 1995, Orlando had a chance to put Houston away in Game 1, but Magic guard Nick Anderson missed four late free throws in a 120-118 loss to the Rockets, who went on to sweep the series.

The Magic will head home thinking about what might have been. They could be tied 1-1, and with the next three games scheduled in front of their frenzied fans, they could have denied Bryant and the Lakers their first title since 2002.

Now, in a season of comebacks, they’ll need their biggest one.

Bryant, who scored 40 in the opener, finished with eight assists and seven turnovers.

Lewis transformed into Orlando’s version of Bryant in the second quarter, scoring 18 of the Magic’s 20 points to keep them close. The 6-foot-10 forward’s size and exceptional range make him an impossible cover for the Lakers.

With Howard unable to get open and Orlando’s other shooters still searching for their touch, Lewis carried the load. He made four consecutive 3-pointers to end the half and the Magic, despite shooting just 32 percent, were within 38-35 at the break.

If not for Lewis, Orlando would have been in big trouble because Howard looked hopeless.

For a long stretch, Superman was more like The Invisible Man.

At times, it seemed as if there were six or seven Lakers on the floor as they swarmed Howard, who made just 1 of 4 shots and had four turnovers.

“I was frustrated tonight and in the first game,” Howard said. “But being the leader on my team, my teammates cannot see me frustrated. I’ve got to play through all the different situations and learn from them.”

Well our next game (Sunday, 8 p.m. ET ABC), I predict will go the Magic’s way. I think Magic center Dwight Howard will overcome the double and triple teams and score at will. As we saw on a play in the second quarter of Game 1 with 3:47 remaining, Dwight Howard spun away from a double team, and drew a foul from Lakers forward Pau Gasol. And hit his free throws.

That’s what I love to see.

And I’ve got kind of an easy way the Magic can drop points on the Lakers with the triple on Howard. Have a guy cut down the lane for a pass. Or kick it to Magic guard Courtney Lee (favorite player, because of his toughness) for the 3.

Kobe……..Kobe……… how do you stop him? His name’s Rashard Lewis. The Magic forward has long arms ( And if you watced the game last night on ABC, the announcers showed how well defended the shots were, so long arms are helpful, and how close the Magic defenders hands were to the ball and Kobe woud get it off and nail it.) and quickness.

If the Magic do this they should win.

“We’ve just got to keep our foot on the gas and keep our head down and just keep on working,” Bryant said.

That’s all the Lakers have to do. Keep their foot on the gas. This Kobe’s race.

Good, they win. Bad, they lose.

Jameer Nelson’s return resulted in him scoring 6 points and dishing 4 assists. The top scorer was backup guard Mickael Pietrus with 14 points for the Magic, and Kobe Bryant dropped in 40 for a team and game high.

The game was close until late in the second quarter when Kobe dropped in a few buckets late in the quarter and it was 53-43, Lakers. The Magic were still close. But in the third quarter Kobe exploded to add 16 points, and it was 82-58. The final score was 100-75.

Game 2 (Sunday, 8 p.m. ET, ABC) is in Los Angeles. And remember, under Phil Jackson, the teams that he coaches that wins Game 1 is undefeated (43-0).

“We’ve never had a shooting night this bad,” Magic center Dwight Howard said. “We’ve just got to come out and play a lot harder than we did tonight.”

Howard had 12 points, 10 of them free throws. He was 1 of 6 from the field. It was tough because he always had 2 or 3 player on him when he got the ball.

“This is a resilient team,” Kobe said of the Magic. “They’ve been through a lot of adverse situations before. This is nothing new to them. We’ve got to forget about this [win] and move on.”

On the dry-erase board in Orlando’s locker room, coach Stan Van Gundy, in handwriting as neat as a schoolteacher’s, devoted two sections on how he wanted his team to defend Bryant.

Nothing worked.

On the eve of Game 1, Bryant said winning his first title since teammate Shaquille O’Neal was traded in 2004 was not that important to him. Bryant bristled at the notion that he wouldn’t have any of his three titles — from 2000-02 — without Shaq as nonsense.

He says he wants No. 4 because it’s the one in front of him.

And he’s three wins from getting it.

Fast Facts

• The Lakers snapped a two-game losing streak in opening games of the NBA Finals (lost Game 1 to the Celtics in 2008 and the Pistons in ’04).

• The 25-point margin of victory is the sixth-largest in Game 1 Finals history and largest since the Bulls’ 33-point win over the Trail Blazers in 1992.

• The Lakers have won 16 straight best-of-seven series when winning the opening game (second-longest such streak in NBA history).

• Kobe Bryant led the Lakers with 40 points, eight rebounds and eight assists, marking his 10th career 40-point playoff game and first in the Finals.

• The Magic fell to 0-5 all-time in NBA Finals games and became the third franchise in NBA history to lose its first five Finals games.

• Dwight Howard was 1-for-6, his fewest field goals made in a playoff game in his career.

After taking down the 76ers, the Celtics, and the Cavs, the Magic are ready for action. Coming in hot already, the Magic will have Jameer Nelson back for the game.

Center Dwight (Superman) Howard and the Orlando Magic will play the Los Angeles Lakers and guard Kobe Bryant for all the bragging rights.

There have been plenty of headlines. Jameer Nelson, who was said to have a “season ending” injury, is cleared for Game 1 tonight in L.A. (Los Angeles). Pietrus ditching his Kobe’s {shoes} for Jordan’s. And that Dwight Howard-Andrew Bynum matchup down low. So I think it will be a great series.

I wan’t the Magic to win Game 1, but they won’t. And that’s a problem. Under Phil Jackson, any team that he coach’s that win’s Game 1 has a undefeated record in that series (43-0).

And the unlikely matchup in the Finals of the Black Mamba (Kobe) and Superman (Dwight) actually stacks up well on paper. Kobe is averaging 26.8 points per game, while Dwight is averaging 20.6 points, but with 13.8 rebounds, in the 2009 NBA Playoffs.

Kobe said after Game 6 in Denver, that “we’re back to the place where we couldn’t finish our buisness last year, so hopefully we can {win the Finals} this year.” With either rookie guard Courtney Lee or slow Mickael Pietrus guarding Kobe, he should score a lot.

On the other hand, Center Andrew Bynum guarding Dwight will be a problem for L.A. But if Bynum and Forward Pau Gasol step up for the Lakers, they should win Game 1 by 10 or more. If they don’t, it will be a close game. But I think L.A. will prevail in the game, and then win the series in 7.

If Lakers center Andrew Bynum could have just lived up to expectations, his upcoming matchup with Orlando’s Dwight Howard would be the talk of the NBA this week. It could have been the best center duel in the NBA Finals since the mid-1990s, when Hakeem Olajuwon took on Patrick Ewing, then Shaquille O’Neal. Michael Wilbon would have flown out to L.A. for a sit-down interview with Bynum to go with Rachel Nichols Sunday Convo with Dwight.

It would have been a nice parallel, the two young centers (Howard’s 23, Bynum is 21) taken a year apart in the draft, both competing in their first NBA Finals. Only it’s pretty hard to compare a guy whose defining moment of the spring was putting the Magic on his back in the conference championship-clinching game to a guy whose defining moment of the spring was putting a Playmate on his shoulders at a pajama party.

Howard’s averaging 21.7 points and a league-leading 15.4 rebounds in the playoffs. The only noteworthy thing about Bynum’s playoff numbers is they make a palindrome: 6.3 points, 3.6 rebounds.

Bynum’s statistics could easily be explained by the fact he missed 32 games after injuring his right knee in January. Except he teased us with averages of 17.3 and 5.5 rebounds when he came back for the last four games of the regular season, numbers that were within a couple of rebounds of his January statistics when he hit the best stride of his career, including a 42-point, 15-rebound game against the Clippers.

The playoff drop-off has been explained away by the adrenaline’s expiring, the game’s intensity picking up (and the absence of the Clippers). Bynum never got comfortable wearing the bulky knee brace. His awkward mobility hurt his confidence. That, in turn, gave Phil Jackson less reason to use him.

“I’m not playing my best basketball,” Bynum conceded. “I’m a little bit limited here.”

Them’s not exactly fighting words heading into the Finals. As a result, all the center hype is directed toward Orlando, such as Jackson’s observation that “I don’t know who can guard the big kid if he’s as physical as he is. Howard’s just a real powerhouse down there inside.”

There’s one thing the centers have in common. Each called out his coach in these playoffs.

Howard’s issue was touches in Game 5 of the conference semis against the Celtics. “Offensively I have to get the ball,” he said afterward. “I don’t think you are going to win a lot of games when your post player only gets 10 shots. It’s tough to get yourself going and get a lot of touches without a lot of shots.”

Bynum wanted more minutes. He’s been in and out of the starting lineup, has played more than half the game only twice in the playoffs and saw as little as seven minutes of action in back-to-back games against Utah in the opening round. He’s been visibly upset, and after Jackson suggested that Bynum was limited to short stretches on the court because his conditioning wasn’t back yet, Bynum told Jack Ramsay in an ESPN Radio interview, “I think that’s just his excuse for not wanting to play me.”

In the afterglow of winning the Western Conference finals Bynum sounded more conciliatory, saying, “Obviously, it was frustration a little bit. You’re not playing your best ball. Sometimes you have a good game and you get yanked out and you think, ‘Ah, it could have been better.’ You can’t let that stop you from playing team basketball.”

Jackson could have another reason to sit Bynum and start Lamar Odom in the Finals: Orlando’s unorthodox style and lineup forces Pau Gasol to guard Rashard Lewis out in 3-point land if Bynum starts. So far Jackson has indicated he’ll stick with the big-man combo of Bynum and Gasol and try to dictate the matchup issues at the other end of the court.

“I think we’ll be all right with what we do,” Jackson said. “Our big lineup is going to create a problem for them.”

That’s still a theory based on Bynum’s potential, as is the four-year, $58 million contract extension he signed early this season. The Lakers couldn’t use their double 7-footers to dominate Utah withoutMehmet Okur or Houston without Yao Ming. Now they’ll face Howard and his more-than-capable backup Marcin Gortat.

From the first day of training camp Bynum was portrayed as the difference-maker. He missed the playoffs last year with another knee injury, and could only watch as the Celtics pushed around the Lakers in the Finals. He vowed he wouldn’t let that happen the next time.

Only there won’t be a next time after Orlando took out the Celtics in the second round. And even the last time wasn’t quite the way we thought of it. We became Simple Storyline Suckers, believing that one player’s absence or presence could explain everything.

“Boston didn’t beat us by posting people up,” Derek Fisher said. “Kevin Garnett made shots; Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, they made shots, rather than just giving the ball to anybody and letting them go to work in the middle.”

Looking ahead to Orlando, Fisher said, “Our ability to rebound the basketball could really be the difference in this series.”

Based on the last two games of the Western Conference finals, when Bynum grabbed a total of three rebounds, someone else will have to handle that department.

You know what Bynum showed during Game 6 in Denver? A willingness to foul. And seriously, that’s going to be a factor in the Finals, when the Lakers will try to make Howard beat them 15 feet from the basket instead of a foot above the rim. Bynum gave hard fouls to Carmelo Anthony and Kenyon Martin on early drives, setting a no-nonsense tone even if it meant he had to head to the bench.

“You’ve got to play defense,” Bynum said afterward. “You can’t allow people just to walk down the lane and dunk. It creates too much energy for the other team.”

The Lakers would be fine if Bynum adopted that mindset. They’ll throw the ball to Gasol in the post or Bryant on the wing on offense. They want Bynum to be able to hold his own against Howard on defense, because they sure don’t want to leave any of Orlando’s 3-point shooters to come double-team Howard.

“Offense it’s more about you, because you’ve got to put the ball in the basket,” Bynum said. “But you can’t stop playing defense. You can’t stop trying to block shots and changing the momentum of the game.”

We’ve seen Trevor Ariza become a hero by stealing inbounds passes. That’s how huge the details become in the playoffs. That’s the new model for Bynum. They’ve advanced to this stage practically without him. If he gives the Lakers even half of what Howard gives the Magic it will be a minor victory for Los Angeles. Bynum seemed energized by the Western Conference finals victory, a reminder that winning erases frustrations. Dressed in conference championship gear, he was drenched in team spirit.

“I’ve got to play up to the player that I’m able to be,” Bynum said. “I’m ready to go do that. Seriously.”

A big man doing little things, with downsized hype.