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Lincicome: Bryant, West would be Mile High dream

Published May 30, 2007 at midnight

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The prospect of Kobe Bryant as a Denver Nugget or as any kind of Colorado gem is just a little too outlandish to consider. Except . . .

Well, he does know his way around here. He could drive between DIA and Eagle County with one eye closed and the other one checking for lights and sirens.

And the Nuggets are one of those verge teams, or so we have been assured, the kind that Bryant wants to be surrounded with, the kind he and the Lakers were when Shaquille O'Neal arrived.

It seems that Bryant wants more. More titles. More help. More smarts in the Lakers front office, there being only the junior Jerry West in Mitch Kupchak when, in Bryant's fanciful self-entitlement, the real Jerry West ought to be fixing his life for him.

This is all more encouraging than tedious, to see Bryant still fuming and fixating on what went wrong and how to make it right, when, as the best player in basketball, he could do his dance while someone else pays the band.

The ongoing NBA playoffs are now left to clods in work boots, there being nothing wrong with dull labor except that it is not entertainment.

If Detroit and San Antonio once again are left to sort out basketball pre-eminence, it will be like Mr. Goodwrench arm-wrestling Janitor In A Drum.

Rightly, Bryant must sigh at the dullness on display and think that, except for the sporadic spark of LeBron James, the season's end game is being lit by dim bulbs and floor lamps.

There is no lingering public grief obvious in Nuggetville, where Carmelo Anthony is gone and Allen Iverson is out of mind and Marcus Camby is sorting out things too personal to allow him to play for the USA.

Who knows about Kenyon Martin, who still for all his absence and dicey health could be all the Nuggets really need to be all that they think they are.

George Karl looks around at the NBA West and sees that things have gotten harder than they were. Through the magic of lottery therapy, Portland and Seattle, instead of Boston and Memphis, fell into to the next great players while the Nuggets have what they have.

For the Nuggets, having Bryant on the Lakers has been no great dilemma, without O'Neal, so even should this little Kobe snit lead to Bryant's leaving (he once considered the Bulls and the Clippers, if never the Nuggets), results would not change greatly on those nights the Lakers and Nuggets meet.

But if what Kobe wants is West (and West responded that he is not looking for a job with anyone) and what the Nuggets really need is someone like West, well, as long as we're just fantasizing, why not both?

Why not ask? What could it hurt?

West is leaving Memphis at the end of June and will retire, so he says, just as he said he was retiring when he left the Lakers he had played for and built into a dynasty.

West is by any review every bit as good a personnel whiz as he was a player, and to illustrate how those two jobs are glamorized, it is West dribbling the basketball that makes the logo for the NBA and not West sitting in a stale gym looking for the next Kobe.

As these things go, the second job is every bit as vital as the first. The Nuggets have no one, really, to do what West could do, certainly not with the pedigree that would have the best player in basketball yearning for him.

Karl may be a miniattraction, for players who have never played for him, and Iverson and Anthony together are an appealing tease, if only to be a celebrity by association.

Sam Vincent was such a thing with Michael Jordan, and here we are, years later, Jordan hiring Vincent as coach.

Why, indeed, would anyone want to be the missing piece for the Nuggets? And would Bryant be such a one? Not likely, since to get him at least one of the present stars would need to be dealt along with others.

But think of either Bryant and Iverson or Bryant and Anthony or in a world where anything is possible (and Portland getting the No. 1 draft choice confirms that it is), why not Bryant and Iverson and Anthony and West?

Bryant seems to want Chicago if not Los Angeles, and what West wants may depend on who needs him the most, but he is not likely to be sitting in his rocker in West Virginia for long.

As for Denver, aim high. A mile high.