OPEN COURT: Lakers move on

This is weird, right? I mean, isn’t it?

Moments after the Los Angeles Lakers crushed — and, really, “crushed” might not even be a strong enough word here — the Denver Nuggets in Game 6 in what had previously been an exciting and competitive Western Conference Finals, Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson congratulated each other on yet another job well done.

The duo will be heading to the NBA Finals for the second straight year, with Bryant focusing on capturing that elusive championship ring that he can claim as his. He had to share three with Shaquille O’Neal, and Bryant doesn’t strike me as the type of NBA superstar who likes to share.

While it’s not weird to see star player and Hall-of-Fame coach shaking hands and celebrating after a big series win, the circumstances surrounding the Byrant-Jackson partnership are a bit, well, unconventional.

You see, once upon a time, Phil Jackson — the Zen Master, the winner of 11 championships (nine as a coach, two as a player) — devoted 304 pages to vent his anger and disgust with the mercurial Bryant.

In the summer of 2004, after one of the most disappointing seasons in Jackson’s coaching career, he sat down with sportswriter Michael Arkush to write a book called “The Last Season: A Team in Search of its Soul.”

With the additions of Gary Payton and Karl Malone to the successful Bryant-O’Neal nucleus, it appeared as if the Lakers were going to cruise to a fourth straight NBA title. However, bickering, in-fighting, injuries and rampant pettiness derailed what should’ve been a special season.

Jackson didn’t hesitate to pin most of the blame on Bryant.

Prior to last season’s Celtics-Lakers title clash, ESPN.com’s “Sports Guy” Bill Simmons wrote a hilarious column, using excerpts from “The Last Season” to put that series into context.

Bryant’s “me-first” game didn’t mesh with Jackson’s philosophy on basketball. The unique thing about the Zen Master’s techniques is that he sees basketball as an athletic representation of harmony and togetherness.

“If a player tries to score every time he touches the ball, the system will break down,” Jackson wrote. “Success depends on everyone, at one time or another, accepting, if not embracing, the role of playmaker.”

Only recently did these lessons hit home with Bryant.

In his otherworldly Game 6 on Friday night, Bryant shredded the Nuggets’ defense with one of the best all-around games of his illustrious career. It wasn’t necessarily the number of points he scored that broke Denver’s will. It was the way in which he scored them and involved his teammates.

In order to get through to a star player, a coach might make him run a bunch of wind sprints or stay late every practice to get him to buy into the team philosophy. Apparently, it took a best-selling book crammed full of pointed criticisms to get Bryant on board.

So, here we are, five years later, watching Kobe and Phil shake hands. They still have work to do, but this team’s appearance in two straight NBA Finals is one of the stranger stories in sports.

You’re never supposed to say never in sports, but I’m saying we’ll never see anything like the Byrant-Jackson relationship ever again.

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