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Around this time last year I was preparing for midterms at the University of Southern California, managing a long-distance relationship and preparing to embark on one of the greatest assignments ever.

While reviewing my illegible notes from a cinema class taught by film critic Leonard Maltin, I got a call from SLAM magazine online editor Lang Whitaker. He wanted to know if I could cover the Lakers during the upcoming season, chronicling the team's behind-the-scenes soap opera. Needless to say Maltin's lecture on Citizen Kane became far less important at that moment.

As the youngest reporter in the locker room, I tried to be a fly on the wall, capturing every little detail I could. I would watch Karl Malone interact with the media hours before and after games and he seemed to be relishing every last minute he had as a player. "Once I retire, no one's going to come up to Karl Malone and ask him what he thinks," he once said. I would listen to Gary Payton give advice to the younger players, especially Devean George, whom Payton constantly screamed at during games for making bad passes and taking poor shots. And I could feel the anger in Kobe Bryant's voice when the media accused him of "throwing" a late-season game against the Sacramento Kings. In fact, he refused to talk to us for 12 days after the incident.

I also forged some friendships. Malone said he would take me hunting at his ranch in El Dorado, Ark. Rick Fox told me what kind of hair products work best for a curly mane. And Kobe's 1-year old daughter Natalia was nice enough to hold my recorder next to her daddy's face on more than one occasion in a crowded interview room.

Underneath the good times, though, there was always the sense that this would be the last hurrah for the Lakers. I would hear about the turmoil between Kobe and Shaq and between Phil Jackson and Kobe. But the parties involved would always play it down. Shaq would call Kobe "the best player in the league," Kobe would call Shaq his "big brother" and Jackson would call the duo "his children."

But it was all lies ... and we knew it. Everyone who watched the interaction between Shaq, Kobe and Jackson knew this was a doomed relationship. Shaq never really showed much love for Kobe on the sidelines or in the locker room and watching Kobe and Phil together was as awkward as watching Seal make out with Heidi Klum.

There would always be stories about how much Shaq and Jackson hated Kobe and vice-versa, but none of it was confirmed by anyone involved ... until recently. Besides Shaq's public salvos at Kobe for running him out of Los Angeles and Kobe telling investigators that Shaq paid women for sex, Jackson has come out with a book, The Last Season: A Team In Search Of Its Soul, in which he chronicles his tumultuous, and at times, non-existent, relationship with Bryant and how he wanted the Lakers to trade their golden boy on at least two occasions.

To those of us who watched the Lakers on a day-to-day basis last year, none of these "revelations" come as a major surprise. I remember talking to Shaq about Kobe's legal situation before last season and being floored by the fact that he never called Kobe. When I asked him if he thought Kobe would ever commit the crime he was accused of, Shaq would only say he trusted the judicial system.

As Shaq and Jackson begin to vent their frustrations with Kobe, the only person who hasn't let his true feelings out is Kobe himself. He still puts up a façade every time he is asked about Shaq and Phil. I can still picture Kobe's smile whenever I'd ask him about Shaq and Phil as he'd give me the same-old "big brother, father figure" rhetoric that goes against everything we know now.

No one may ever really understand or know who the real Kobe Bryant is, but now that Kobe has run, arguably,  the most dominant player and most successful coach out of town, the Lakers can only hope their enigmatic leader is as successful on the court as he is putting up a front off of it.

Week Sauce

Let's open up the bottle and pour out the week that was.

FRIDAY -- Four horses from the Olympics test positive for illegal substances. When asked for a comment, the horses said they had unknowingly used the substance while applying a special cream on their horseshoes.

SATURDAY -- Yankees reliever Tom Gordon is hit in the eye with a cork during the Yankees' champagne celebration at the Metrodome. Thankfully, Milton Bradley is not on the Yankees; if he were, Gordon might have been hit by the entire bottle.

SUNDAY -- Dennis Rodman grabs 18 rebounds and dishes out six assists while playing for Fuerza Regia in Monterrey, Mexico. "[NBA coaches] think I'm uncoachable and I don't know why," said Rodman, who still hopes to sign with a NBA team this season. "I'm just a free and independent person." Free and independent is one thing. Being a 43-year-old party animal who hasn't played a full season of basketball in six years is totally different.

MONDAY -- Gary Payton is held out of the last portion of a Boston Celtics practice. "Any time it's just aimless running, I try to get Gary off the floor,'' said Celtic coach Doc Rivers. Ironically, Phil Jackson would probably use the phrase, "aimless running," to describe what Payton was doing on the floor last season.

TUESDAY -- We finally have a Darko Milicic sighting. Let's just hope our 19-year-old boy is drinking Shirley Temples.

WEDNESDAY -- Most Bostonians turn a blind eye to watching their senator, John Kerry, battle George Bush in the final presidential debate, choosing instead to watch the hopeless romantic drama called the ALCS, even though they've seen the ending a thousand times.

Screen Play

This week's encounter between athlete and celebrity gives us an epic battle between Conan O'Brien and Eli Manning to decide who is New York's best understudy.

The best quarterback on the New York Giants is currently standing on the sideline with a clipboard and the best talk show host on NBC is currently in New York and relegated to a 12:30 late-night time slot. That will all change in due time. Manning will probably take over for Kurt Warner once the Giants' current honeymoon period comes to an end and O'Brien will replace Jay Leno as host of the Tonight Show in 2009. Yeah, I know, 2009! Hillary Clinton could be in the Oval Office before O'Brien takes over for Leno. Therein lies the problem for O'Brien.

While Manning begins his sixth season with the Giants, and probably his fifth as the starter, O'Brien will be a Tonight show rookie, still adjusting to his new time slot. So while O'Brien is certainly the hotter commodity, the fact that Manning has a decent chance of starting this season gives him the edge over O'Brien, who won't be given the reigns until after the next presidential election.

The Six-Pack

	MAILBAG Submit a comment or question for Arash. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

In honor of Jose Lima, a fine singer who pitched the Los Angeles Dodgers to their first playoff win since 1988, our weekly six-pack, brought to you this week by Mack & Jack (Seattle), gives us The Top 6 Worst Singing Performances By Athletes.

6. John Daly -- While Daly's life may read like a country music song, when the PGA great recorded the vocals to all 11 tracks of his 2002 CD, My Life, he took that analogy to another level. By Daly's own admission, he is a terrible singer, and he certainly isn't being modest. Although Daly couldn't carry a tune as well as he carried his weight, he should at least be credited for writing and performing, All My Exes Wear Rolexes, one of the best song titles ever.

5. Roy Jones Jr. -- His 2002 CD was called Round One: The Album. Let's hope it never makes it to round two. It's bad enough that Jones can't rap, but the synthesized Casio keyboard beats in the background only accentuate how bad every track is. In fact, you could simply tell how bad the songs are from the cheesy titles like You Don't Wanna Go There, You Damn Right and No You Didn't. OK, No You Didn't wasn't one of the titles but you get the picture. His best line comes from the song, If You Need a Man, when he raps, "What's up girl/How you feelin'-feelin'-feelin'-feelin'?/That's cool/Yo, I'm chillin'-chillin'-chillin'-chillin'." Yes, as I'm stoppin'-stoppin'-stoppin' and ejectin'-ejectin'-ejectin'.

4. Oscar De La Hoya -- Oscar's self-titled 2000 CD was so bad that he even stomped on a copy of it while on ESPN's Mohr Sports a few years back. The mostly Spanish album has two English tracks, including Run To Me, which was originally recorded by the Bee Gees, which should also give you an indication of what types of songs are on this album. Imagine a cross between How Deep Is Your Love and Bamboleo, only worse, sooo much worse.

3. Deion Sanders -- After winning a Super Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers in 1995, Sanders got the crazy idea that he could rap and released Prime Time, arguably the worst rap record ever. Every track sounds like it's recorded over the demo of a cheap keyboard, which is ironic because every one of Prime's songs deals with how much money he has. His "hit single," if we can even call it that, was Must Be The Money, where he rapped that, "The way I live is oh so phat. I got two ladies and Prime Time is all that." Yeah, all that and a bag of crap.

2. Kobe Bryant -- Now this one had all the makings of a disaster right from the get-go. It was 2000 and the geniuses at Columbia Records came up with the idea of releasing a Kobe Bryant CD, with the hit song being a duet with Bryant and Tyra Banks. Oh, it gets better. Their song was titled, K.O.B.E, which doesn't stand for anything, other than allowing Banks to croon "K-O-B-E, I L-O-V-E you." Kobe eloquently responds with, "Uh, what I live for? Basketball, beats and broads." Thankfully the CD was never released.

1. Carl Lewis -- Forget about Lewis' classic butchering of The Star-Spangled Banner before a 1993 New Jersey Nets game. His singing career was already on the fast track to sports blooper highlights long before that. In 1987, Lewis and his band -- yes, he had a band called Carl Lewis and the Electric Storm -- released Break It Up, the worst song and worst music video ever created. But in the words of Reading Rainbow's LeVar Burton, "You don't have to take my word for it." Check it out for yourself.

I've Got Mail

Time to open up the old mailbag and check in with a Hot Reader.

Easy, Arash, sounds like someone had a bad experience. You almost sound as bad as the fat kid who asked out the hot girl and then told everyone she's a b---- because she shot you down. Gotta go, you're giving me the nerd chills. -- Joe Richardson, Ames, Iowa

That's the thing, Joe, I never did ask Kirsten Dunst out. We talked a few times at house parties while we were at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, Calif. and in the lunch lines at Laurel Hall Elementary School in North Hollywood, Calif, and she was always one of the nicest people, so I don't exactly fit into your psychological analogy. Although I do know I've hit a button when I start giving someone in Ames, Iowa, "nerd chills."

Whatever Happened To ...

Rony Seikaly ...? You know, the first big man of the Miami Heat who married SI swimsuit model Elsa Benitez. Seikaly was last seen playing in nine games and averaging 1.7 points per game for the New Jersey Nets in 1997.

(Cue the late, great voice of Unsolved Mysteries' Robert Stack) If you have any information that could lead to the discovery of Rony Seikaly, please contact The Hot Read.