Just in case anybody doubted Kobe Bryant’s MVP credentials, the Los Angeles Lakers star added to his Wednesday night resume: Not long after receiving the award from NBA commissioner David Stern, he went out and dropped 34 points and a 120-110 loss on the Utah Jazz. The Lakers are up 2-0 in their Western Conference semifinals series and haven’t lost a game in the playoffs.

And Bryant wasn’t alone in the Laker assault: Derek Fisher had 22 points; Pau Gasol added 20; and Lamar Odom had 19 (and 16 rebounds). On the Utah side, seven Jazzmen scored in double figures, led by Deron Williams with 25.

Kobe added some fatal dissonance to the Jazz’s attempt at beautiful music. (Getty Images)

“Every time the Utah Jazz lumbered its way into some sort of threatening position Wednesday night, some Laker got enough daylight to ram home another shot,” writes Mark Whicker in the Orange County Register, adding: “With each victory you sense one more stage of harmonic convergence. This time the Lakers shot 57.4 percent. The starting lineup shot 32 for 52, which is 61.5 percent. Fisher hit all but one of his five threes and scored 22, which is nothing new. Like the jacarandas, he shows up brightly in May. But, really, all the Lakers seemed to take the appropriate shot. And most of them seem to realize how rare that is.”

Stick with Mr. Whicker for a discussion of Bryant’s unlikely transformation, in a year’s time, from unloved diva to model teammate. It’s a subject also on the mind of the Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon, enumerating the reasons Kobe’s holding hardware.

“So what made this year different?” he asks. “For one, he enabled his team to win the closest, most competitive conference race ever. But more important, for the first time in his career Kobe became a great teammate. Okay, he doesn’t exactly cop to that. Kobe says he learned to ‘trust’ his teammates more. But others, such as New Orleans Hornets coach and former Lakers guard Byron Scott, have come right out and said it, that Kobe’s made himself a great teammate.”

Down 2-0 to the Detroit Pistons, the Orlando Magic fought back, spanking Detroit 111-86 Wednesday night to break a nine-game streak of playoff futility against the Pistons. Injury to insult for Detroit: The Pistons lost All-Star guard Chauncey Billups to a hamstring strain early in the first quarter. (He’s being re-evaluated Thursday.)

In the Orlando Sentinel, David Whitley crafts an entertainingly gonzo introduction to the Magic’s tale of redemption: “Maybe that blinking oil light was just what the Magic needed. It started flashing on the flight home Monday night. The plane began to shake, smoke was spewing out of an engine and Stan Van Gundy jumped into Jameer Nelson’s lap and just wanted to be held. OK, that’s not quite how it happened. But if Hollywood was producing this series, the story line would be the Magic faced death. After that, what’s so big about facing Detroit?”

The Philadelphia 76ers were sent home in the first round by the Pistons and now face what Bob Ford of the Philadelphia Inquirer calls “their most-important off-season in a decade.”

The Sixers, he writes, “have accomplished the easy part now. They have become interesting again, and, in a departure from recent history, not interesting in a dysfunctional, we-talking-’bout-practice kind of way. They are interesting again for the right reasons, because they play hard, have some talent, and are easy to root for. It is a likable bunch. Everyone appears to get along. They listen to what coach Maurice Cheeks has to say — another departure from the past — and there is promise for the future.”

But for all that, Mr. Ford reminds readers that they were also 40-42 this season: “Interesting, yes. Contending, no. On its own, interesting doesn’t last very long, at least not in this town. Interesting better give way to good pretty quickly or it reaches an expiration date.”

Barry Zito is back in the San Francisco Giants’ rotation, though you could argue he never left.

The Giants’ mystery man was sacked as a starter on April 27, never got into a game as a reliever, and returned Wednesday on the road against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the sixth with the Giants trailing 2-0 — a not-bad effort, but not enough to prevent his record from falling to 0-7.

“Zito’s an event now,” writes Tim Kawakami in the San Jose Mercury News. “He’s a happening above and beyond the Giants’ daily skirmishing. He’s a wide-eyed, slurp-throwing, head-scratching piece of Pitching Mound Theater. You don’t tune in to a Zito start to see if he’ll win, because that never happens anymore, not on this reality show. You tune in to see how he loses, how the Giants absorb and explain the losing, how heavily his $126 million contract weighs on everybody (only about $110 million left to burn off!), and how much deeper he plunges into the chasm. You tune in because you’re addicted to the outlandish performances and squirmy results. You can’t help yourself.”

Mr. Zito’s former teammate and fellow Barry sits at home waiting for some team — any team — to call. It’s a peculiar exile for Barry Bonds, but he’s not alone: Roger Clemens occupies the same Limbo of Damaged Reputation.

“Neither man has retired, yet neither is playing, and it’s the most intriguing story of the baseball season,” writes Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Clemens apparently was planning to pitch this season but pulled himself off the market, such as it is, out of spite. … Bonds is as retired as Hugh Hefner. Barry keeps his bats in the umbrella stand next to his front door and his Batmobile idling outside. But nobody phones.”

Mr. Ostler writes that “the important thing is that Bonds and Clemens don’t have to go through this alone, they have each other. And they are bringing us all together by showing that the ability to alienate fans and media transcends skin color. Now if someone simply will give them a job.”

Extra credit to Mr. Ostler, in discussing Clemens’ couldn’t-be-vaguer apology for “mistakes in my personal life,” for this funny line: “Really, shouldn’t every man issue a general-purpose apology about once a year? Kind of like spring cleaning.”

Standing in opposition to Bonds and Clemens, reputation-wise, is Ken Griffey Jr., who’s three home runs away from 600 in the autumn of a long career scarred by injuries, but widely believed to be unmarred by drugs. Griffey has let it be known that at 38, he’d like a chance to play for a World Series ring; in the New York Sun, Tim Marchman is sympathetic but also realistic about the chances.

“It would be nice to think that, simply by virtue of having been a great player and having represented the sport well for two decades, Griffey has earned the chance to play for a contender in his last years in the majors, but baseball doesn’t work that way,” he writes. “This isn’t about the Reds; it’s about other teams. Very few teams get near a World Series by squandering resources for sentimental reasons, and that’s what any contender that picked up Griffey would be doing.”

Next month Major League Baseball will begin its annual draft with a ceremonial draft of surviving Negro Leaguers. It’s intended as tribute and tacit apology, but Jon Bois of the Dugout makes his opinion clear in a mock dialogue between MLB commissioner Bud Selig and Boston Red Sox GM Theo Epstein. As with all the best Dugouts, it’s laugh-out-loud funny, thoughtful — and comes with an unexpected sting.

– Tip of the Fix cap to reader David Hartline, and to True Hoop’s Henry Abbott.

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