He doesn't wait two years to opt out of his L.A. deal

Bryant always dominated the news, so it's appropriate that he takes over my farewell column as well. And in a way it fits in with the approach I took to this valuable piece of L.A. Times real estate -- that this was always about the players and the issues, not about me.

There's a reason none of my 1,700 stories for this newspaper started with the word "I." You're more interested in the games and the big names. And there's no name like Kobe.

Only Kobe could overshadow the NFL conference championship games (when he scored 81 points) and the NCAA tournament (when he dropped 65 on Portland). Only Kobe could make the Lakers' signing of two Hall of Famers the secondary story of the week (when he was charged with sexual assault).

Now he has rendered the NBA playoffs, the Stanley Cup finals and every other sports story irrelevant with his non-stop media parade that crested Wednesday when he said he wanted to be traded.

A conversation with Phil Jackson soothed Bryant slightly, but he still sent mixed signals when I talked to him Wednesday afternoon.

"I want to stay," Bryant said. "I want to stay. But I can't be at a place where [people] are going to do this [impugn him anonymously].

"I don't want to go nowhere. But how can I stay?"

He can stay because he has to wait two years to exercise the escape clause in his contract. He can stay because the Lakers learned firsthand from the Shaq farce that an NBA team never benefits from trading a superstar. He can stay because the Lakers can't expect fans to pay crazy ticket prices for a faceless team. (Already I'm getting e-mails from season-ticket holders such as the one who said, "I'm not paying to see the Atlanta Hawks every night.")

My prediction: He's here for another year, then there's another frustrated outburst when they don't improve, and the Lakers trade him rather than have him walk as a free agent. For now, the Lakers can't -- can't -- send him anywhere in the Western Conference, even though that's where most of the talent is. The one Eastern team with an abundance of good young players -- Chicago -- needs a low-post player more than a guard. And Bryant will come to realize that if you're going to be on a rebuilding team, it's much better to be in L.A. than some place like Milwaukee.