Los Angeles Lakers Basketball Team

Two days after announcing his return to the NBA, Magic Johnson signed a one-year contract extension Thursday for the 1994-95 season believed to be worth a record $14.6, payable even if he does not play. That gives Johnson the largest single-season salary in team sports, and, considering the $2.5 million he will make each of the next two years, makes the next three seasons worth $19.6 million.

Lakers fans showed up en masse, offering ear-bursting ovations during pregame introductions as Dwight Howard, Steve Nash and a semi-injured Kobe Bryant hit the Staples Center court for the first time. By the end of the game, it was quiet enough to hear a Cartier watch drop in the courtside seats. Despite the scoreboard proclamation amid the pregame cheers that this was a "NEW YEAR," the Lakers looked a lot like the people who set a team record last season by failing to score 100 points in 13 consecutive games.

Gary Vitti eased his way into a hat store in Cleveland on a recent Lakers trip in search of a lid for his bald head, when the door quickly opened and a man burst in. "Hey, you're Gary Vitti, the Lakers' trainer," the man blurted out. "You're the man! You're more important than the coach." Vitti rubbed his head and laughed at what he had just heard. "No, man," Vitti said, smiling, "no way." When this story was shared with Lakers Coach Phil Jackson, he cracked a smile and laughed.

Dwight Howard steps up to the free-throw line. Everybody knows what's usually next. Clang. If there's a nit to pick in Howard's game, it's at the line. He's a career 58.8% free-throw shooter, and it's not an upward trend. The Lakers' center was only 49.1% last season with Orlando, missing more free throws (291) than he made (281) for the first time in his eight-year career. So the Lakers have tracked every one of his shots from the stripe since they acquired him in August, even in scrimmages and after practice when players shoot individually.

Lamar Odom sat down, placed his Bible on a table and, with damp eyes, told the story of his summer. His infant son died while sleeping in a crib, a loss that has tugged at him since it happened in June. The autopsy report labeled it an "unremarkable" death, a seven-month-old's life snatched by sudden infant death syndrome, the latest in a line of losses traceable through Odom's years. Odom was in New York for the funeral of an aunt when Jayden Odom died.

It was a day when he was lambasted on talk radio and the Internet, linked socially to Louis Farrakhan by a New York Post gossip columnist and threatened with fines by the NBA for not speaking publicly, and near the end of that day Shaquille O'Neal apologized. He said he was not a racist for his taunt of Houston center Yao Ming, said his relationship with the Nation of Islam leader was his business, and, simply by saying all of that, eased any pressure he might have felt from the NBA.

There was a reason Phil Jackson could be seen balancing a large stack of books earlier this week at a Los Angeles bookstore. The Lakers coach bought books for each of his players and distributed them before their eight-game trip, part of an annual ritual before a Jackson-coached team begins a long winter trip. Kobe Bryant , who rolls his eyes whenever Jackson gives him a book, probably won't be perusing what Jackson handed him: "Montana 1948," a Larry Watson novel about a middle-class Montana family torn apart by a scandal in the late 1940s.

Five years ago Thursday, Ron Artest was a part of one of the worst brawls in sports history when he and his Indiana Pacers teammates went into the stands during a game against the Detroit Pistons at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich. Five years later, on the anniversary of that unforgettable event, Artest was tracked down before the Lakers played the Chicago Bulls at Staples Center and asked what he recalled from that night. Artest maintained that he "didn't start any trouble" and that he should get some of his money back after being suspended for 73 games without pay. "I put it behind me immediately because I did nothing," Artest said.

Blocks away from the triumphant Los Angeles Lakers victory parade Wednesday, the Buddhist priest pondered the win, the way and the sound of thousands of hands clapping. Yes, said the Rev. Noriaki Ito, he expected the Lakers would ride to a world championship the moment he heard Coach Phil Jackson was coming to town. He had followed him for years, knew he practiced Zen meditation and knew he incorporated those concepts into his coaching. Jackson, of course, practices more than Zen.

The man who doesn't exist walks larger than life through the dank hallways of the Goodwill Home and Mission, wearing a gold Laker jersey adorned with, "O'Neal." The man who abandoned his second child awakens every morning in his tiny, windowless room to photos of the boy on the wall and desk, all grown up, giant and famous and gone. The man who has been purposely forgotten has put a message on his answering machine that shows he will never forget. "Hi, this is Shaq ... " says the voice.

The Lakers were already in midseason form, appearing 20 minutes later than scheduled for their exhibition game Tuesday. They arrived in plenty of time for tipoff, though their pregame rituals were rushed and the product on the court didn't come close to resembling the dominance that awaits around the corner. That's what Lakers fans hope, anyway. The Lakers lost to Utah at Honda Center, 114-80, and are 0-4 in exhibition play, losing by an average of 23 points. Unlike so many NBA teams, the Lakers thankfully don't come up with cheesy promotional slogans each season.

Kobe Bryant's right foot, the most discussed body part in Southern California aside from Dwight Howard's back, improved sufficiently to allow the Lakers star to participate in practice Saturday. Bryant had missed a pair of practices Friday because the foot was bothering him, leading to breathless speculation on Twitter about worst-case scenarios. It amounted to little more than wasted keystrokes. "He's fine," Coach Mike Brown said Saturday. "He didn't have limitations" in practice.

Ready or not, Metta World Peace will return Saturday. It's been almost three weeks since his last game, and he's done a little of everything since then. Went on Conan O'Brien's talk show. Held a midnight movie party before a playoff game. Bought the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Miguel Cotto fight for teammates. The big question: How will he do in Game 7 against the Denver Nuggets? "I feel pretty good," World Peace said. "Feel fresh. " He averaged 14.1 points in April and unleashed his most physically fiery play in three years with the Lakers -- a stirring dunk over Kevin Durant -- a few seconds before elbowing Oklahoma City guard James Harden in the head.

One of them finally showed up. The other re-emerged after continually flickering in and out. Together, Arron Afflalo and JaVale McGee helped the Denver Nuggets look formidable on a stage where they had been jittery and outclassed earlier in their first-round playoff series. McGee was more impressive than his Lakers counterpart for much of the Nuggets' 102-99 victory in Game 5 on Tuesday night at Staples Center, repeatedly dunking over Andrew Bynum on the way to 21 points on nine-for-12 shooting.

Those close-out games are apparently a little harder than Andrew Bynum expected. The only players that folded Tuesday were the Lakers, under the pressure of their own awful shooting until the final few minutes against the Denver Nuggets. The boos started early in the third quarter at Staples Center, receded with a late Lakers run, and were replaced by silence at the end of a 102-99 Nuggets victory in Game 5 of the first round. The Lakers must now make another trip to Denver for Game 6 on Thursday.

Who's folding now? A day after Andrew Bynum foolishly predicted that the Lakers' potential close-out game in their first-round series with the Denver Nuggets would be "kinda easy," he was kinda wrong. A day after Bynum claimed that the Nuggets would probably "fold," it was Bynum's team that wound up bent at the waist and taking the hard breaths of humiliation. Believe it and weep. Despite having a chance to finish off the Nuggets on Tuesday, the Lakers elected to keep playing by not playing, keeping the battle alive by falling asleep.

On the saddest days, Brian Shaw can hear the voice of the coroner where his father's should have been. It has been nearly 10 years since the one-car crash in the Nevada desert killed Shaw's father, mother and sister, almost all he had, and since his namesake, 11-month-old Brianna, tumbled from the wreckage bruised but alive.

This falls under the category of unintended consequences. In the process of clinching a playoff berth for themselves, the Lakers strengthened the case for Steve Nash as the league's most valuable player. With Nash sitting on the Phoenix Suns' bench wearing a jeans-and-sports-coat combo, the Suns were a mess. The Lakers made them look like a lottery-bound squad instead of the Pacific Division champions. Phoenix played without a sense of purpose, had no team identity.

The Lakers' off-season, whenever it starts, becomes a little more intriguing whenever Ramon Sessions and Jordan Hill have strong games. They will probably be unrestricted free agents July 1. Their contributions are usually notable, though they each struggled Tuesday against the Denver Nuggets in Game 5 of the first round. Sessions, 26, becomes a free agent with a few strokes of a pen. He is expected to opt out of the final year of a contract that pays him $4.6 million next season.

He didn't hit the last shot. He didn't make the big steal. He summoned only a handful of oohs, a couple of aahs and a smattering of M-V-Ps. Cued to enter his favorite stage Sunday, Kobe Bryant instead spent most of the first postseason game of his 16th season hovering in the wings. He's never been quieter. He's rarely been better. Just when we thought we'd seen every possible evolution of this town's most complicated athlete, a howling Staples Center sellout crowd was introduced to the Invisible Mamba.