The Lakers have shaken off all the alleged lingering after-effects of the Kobe Bryant trade drama and are now one game out of the lead in the Pacific. The team that currently holds the top-spot in that division, Phoenix, has proven no match for the Lakers in two meetings this year: L.A. won the first one on the Suns' floor 119-98, and then won yesterday 122-115.

It could be argued then that the Lakers are actually the best team in that division, which comes as something of a shock given the dire predictions as to where this team would end up after Kobe aired his discontent in public, forcing the team to try and trade him. It was supposed to be the Bulls, with Kobe, breathing down the necks of the elite in the league, not Kobe and all those Laker role players he basically branded as bums over the summer.

Phil Jackson has reason to smile the giddy smile of the validated after the way this team has come together. And who knows - maybe it is all the Zen Master's doing. Maybe there is some secret knowledge rattling around in that smoke-filled brain of his that he was able to impart to his supposedly inadequate pupils and one surly, uncommunicative prodigy. Or, maybe Kobe Bryant is just that good.

Maybe Kobe, like Jordan before him, is the kind of player who can take a bunch of spare parts and by the sheer force of his greatness transform them into a championship-caliber team. Is it then a mere coincidence that both Kobe and Jordan have risen to this level while under the watchful eye of Phil Jackson, while performing within Phil's triangle offense? Or, does Phil's triangle actually possess some kind of mysterious power to make mortal men into basketball gods?

Or, are the Lakers' players simply more talented than all the experts thought? Are Bynum and Odom and Fisher and Walton (who missed the second Phoenix game with a bad ankle) actually not the bums Kobe said they were, and furthermore, are they really magnanimous enough to forever forgive Kobe for dismissing them the way he did?

It's possible that, before it's over, acrimony and bitterness will infect this team again, and knock them from their new-won perch among the legit. I still don't buy that Kobe is this fantastic teammate all of a sudden, a second-coming of Jordan who understands when to do it all himself, and when to throw one of his guys a bone and build up their confidence. I just think that there's more talent on this team than people thought, and that Phil has a knack for keeping guys together even when his superstar is a selfish richard who calls his teammates turds and says he wants to be traded and by the way not to any old turd city but a place like Chicago.

The Lakers will either continue their rise, bringing Showtime back to the deep levels of the playoffs, or they will implode. Sounds like a hell of a show either way.