CHAMPIONSHIP RUN GOES THROUGH BRYANT.

Byline: STEVE DILBECK

All these superstars, all this excellence, melodrama, glitz and intrigue, so much always going on with and around the Lakers, and somehow it still comes back to Kobe Bryant.

It's either what he's doing or what he isn't. The crime he committed or did not. The shots he's taking or the ones he's not.

They could start an entire soap-opera digest on him and fill it monthly.

Kobe had what you might call an interesting first half in the Lakers' playoff opener Saturday night. His numbers might sound a tad familiar.

Kobe played almost the entire first half before taking an official shot. The first one he took was late in the half to beat the 24-second clock. It was his only shot of the half.

Flashbacks to Sacramento? Whispers in the locker room? Concerns Kobe was trying to make a point at the expense of the team?

Nope.

Different game, different results, different reaction.

Kobe was again being double-teamed, which happens about as frequently as the ball bouncing, and again looking for open teammates.

Yet unlike in Sacramento, teammates hit open jumpers. Unlike Sacramento, there was never a time when Kobe almost appeared to pass up a shot. And he hit that first shot and his team led.

So Kobe went into the locker room at the intermission with a nice little overall game: five points, five assists, four steals, three rebounds and the belief of everyone in America he would not take only one shot in the second half.

In the first half he got others involved, and surprise, it was OK.

``I think that's pretty obvious that he can make things function quite well,'' Lakers coach said Phil Jackson before the game. ``He's the oil that kind of makes all the parts move well for the players on this team.

``And he's also a person that obviously, during the wild ride we've had over the last week or so, can get involved in a lot things that create speculation.''

Kobe, naturally, started to get untracked in the second half.

Yet his team never really did, not as envisioned anyway. It should be clear to everyone who has been paying attention to the Lakers that things are not going to suddenly become easy for them because the postseason bell has rung.

After an opening rush, just about everything with this ugly, low-scoring game was a struggle. From Karl Malone's search for his jumper to Houston's tenacious defense, nothing easy was allowed.

``When you think about what the playoffs can be, I don't suspect it will be a steamroll,'' Rick Fox said earlier. ``It can be difficult to watch at times, with uncertainties still associated with our team.

``But hopefully the experience and our health will hold up, and we'll play with the desire and fervor that will lead us to a championship.''

Fox, of course, was at something less than complete health, playing for the first time since badly dislocating his shooting thumb. Malone was playing on a sprained ankle, Derek Fisher a sore groin. Even Gary Payton, who hasn't missed a game all season, left the floor briefly in the first half with a hyperextended back.

The kind of setting Kobe has been known to respond in. After he hit a 3-pointer in the third quarter, the sellout crowd chanted his name, imploring him to take over.

He never quite found the magic. The first half might have cost him the rhythm on his shot.

The Rockets led with less than a minute to play. Kobe - who finished with 16 points on 4-of-19 shooting - fired a shot to beat the 24-second clock again, this time an airball that Shaq rebounded and slammed in for the lead.

There was nothing pretty about it, but he was in the middle of it again.