Kobe Bryant shows many faces, but is this finally his time?

In Game 2, he was frantic, abandoning the Lakers' offense whenever Orlando took a one-point lead, sitting on the ball as if he were a hen trying to hatch it.

In Game 3, he was impulsive but brilliant -- at least at the beginning.

Wednesday, Lakers Coach Phil Jackson acknowledging the arrival of this latest Kobe -- "Oh, without a doubt" -- said he wanted his old Kobe back.

"He's going to have to take his time and weigh that out and trust his teammates, there's no doubt about it," Jackson said. "We've told him, one guy's not going to beat five. That's something that doesn't happen in these things.

"And he can't always be the first initial option. He also has to be a guy that baits the defense and moves the ball ahead, as he did in the Denver series."

Oh, and if they can hold the Magic under 60% shooting, that might help too.

In the bad news for the Lakers, that's not as easy as it sounds.

Like the Lakers, the Magic is completely balanced, able to gash you up close and personal, or, in the words of the great Gen. Curtis LeMay, bomb you back to the Stone Age.

In the last 10 years, only a few teams have had great inside-outside games -- the Shaq-Kobe Lakers, the Shaq-Dwyane Wade Heat, the Tim Duncan Spurs -- but this series has two.

The Finals also has two adept coaches, even if Jackson leads Stan Van Gundy in titles, 9-0, which doesn't mean anything unless Jackson hits Van Gundy over the head with one of his Larry O'Brien trophies.

Both coaches are loading up on Bryant and Dwight Howard at the defensive end, and telling them to move the ball at the offensive end.

The Lakers have one advantage: They have Bryant.

Howard is younger, almost a decade's worth of experience behind, and plays inside, where he's dependent on teammates to get him the ball.

Bryant is older, wiser and plays on the perimeter, where he can start with the ball in his possession, sense adjustments, and make changes that fast -- assuming he chills out.

Being Kobe, he can still rub the national media the wrong way, as with his recent stone-faced interviews, which, being Kobe, he carries to the nth degree.

Of course, if he wins this title, everyone will fall at his feet as if his coronation were on schedule, and they made plans to attend, long ago.

Actually, Bryant has put on fireworks shows that make Tuesday look routine . . . like the game in Portland in the spring of 2004, when teammates and everyone else were down on him for supposedly "tanking" -- that was the word that got in the papers -- a game in Sacramento.