Well, looks like I was right. The Lakers, dulled by the illusion that they were playing finely-tuned basketball in winning 15 in a row and sweeping the Kings and Blazers out of the playoffs, appeared dazed in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals against the Spurs.

For all of, oh, five minutes.

When it was all over, as Kobe sat at the scorer's table doing a radio interview, he looked my way and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, "What was that about a rude awakening?" He had scoffed at my suggestion earlier in the week that the Lakers would be in for just that if they didn't eliminate the lapses they had against the Blazers and Kings. He insisted the Lakers had come together in Game 4 against the Kings. I doubted that had been enough of a challenge to really count.

It became common practice never to doubt Michael Jordan. It looks as if Kobe deserves that same latitude. There's no way to overstate how thoroughly he dominated the Spurs.

He drove around David Robinson and dunked on Tim Duncan. He missed a fadeaway jumper over Sean Elliott, then dunked the rebound over Elliott and Duncan. Danny Ferry stopped one drive by yanking Kobe backward by his shoulder -- and Kobe still made the basket, plus the bonus free throw. All this, while playing frenetic ballhawking defense on point guard Terry Porter, forcing him to bring the ball up with his back to the basket.

Every time the Spurs made a shot or a play that could've sparked a run, Kobe immediately blew it out with an equally big play or shot. In Rick Fox's estimation, he clowned the Spurs without ever breaking a smile.

"It gets beyond borderline comical sometimes," Fox said. "I told him to stop it. He's taking his will and imposing it not only on his defender but on their whole team."

After missing three of their first four shots and turning the ball over three times in the opening minutes, the Lakers found their rhythm and never lost it. When they were on the brink of doing so, or Shaq appeared gassed from having to work at both ends for the first time in the postseason, Phil Jackson called a timeout. Those, combined with the TV timeouts and the 25-minute halftime, allowed the Lakers to catch their breath and re-focus.

Instead, it was the Spurs making one mental error after another, the most obvious being a Fox breakaway layup after a made free throw by Malik Rose off a baseball inbounds pass by Robert Horry. Fox returned the favor with an inbounds dish to an unguarded Horry for a three-pointer that squashed a late Spurs' rally.

So where does this go from here? The Spurs can certainly clean up their execution and take Game 2, but it is going to take an even greater and more decisive effort because the Lakers just added another layer to their aura of invincibility. And the all-important homecourt advantage, which is primarily why I still favored the Spurs, my preseason pick, to win the series, is gone.

I still believe the Spurs are capable of coming out on top. I like that Duncan not only scored over Shaq in the Spurs' late rally, but demanded that the coaching staff let him guard O'Neal when it wanted to use Rose and Robinson instead. That's the kind of competitive spirit the Spurs will need. But as Kobe demonstrated, they will find it extremely difficult to match his.

Ric Bucher is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at ric.bucher@espnmag.com.