The Lakers have Dwight Howard (left) and Kobe Bryant. They shouldn't panic. Associated Press

Who's ready to give a big whoop about the discombobulated Los Angeles Lakers? Not me! It's November, buster. Waaaay too early for a basketball psychodrama. The NBA doesn't really become the NBA until spring, when the daffodils bloom, birds return from their Arizona timeshares and Hollywood begins releasing really bad 3-D movies about supernatural cats that talk to dogs and play classical piano.

But here we are, trapped in another Lakers group therapy meeting. On Friday, Los Angeles fired its coach, Mike Brown, after only five games. This was like firing water for not turning itself into Chardonnay. The Lakers have a revamped roster, a new offense and a starting point guard on the bench with a small fracture in his leg. Los Angeles did begin 1-4, but a basketball regular season is a six-month, 82-game slog. Patience would have been advisable, even admirable. Patience didn't happen.

Oh well. Abrupt dismissal is a civic pastime in Los Angeles, right after validated parking, tennis with your plastic surgeon and 55-year-old men who dress like they're in junior high. The Lakers were panicked that 1-4 would become 2-8, 2-8 would become 4-16, and after a few weeks, the disaster would become so unwatchable, Sylvester Stallone would want to star in it. So Brown is gone, packed up in Bubble Wrap along with his Princeton offense, and sent to the Museum of Things Laker Fans Don't Like to Remember, like Randy Pfund, "The Magic Hour" and the Final Days of Karl Malone.

There will be no sympathy here. The 2012-13 Lakers have been lauded as one of the NBA's "SuperTeams," another hoarded collection of well-compensated talent designed to win a title—or at least get talked about so much that we're all sick of them by mid-December. The Lakers were already one of the league's starrier teams, but in the off-season they signed the point guard and former MVP Steve Nash. A month later, they arranged to trade their underperforming center Andrew Bynum and a half-eaten bag of pretzels for Dwight Howard, the newest superstar center to moan his way out of Orlando.

Of course, the Lakers truly orbit around one man: Kobe Bryant, who has won five NBA titles, made 14 All-Star teams and can doom a perfectly competent NBA coach with one well-timed stinkface, as Bryant appeared to do during Brown's final Los Angeles appearance. Put me on the side of Bryant's true basketball admirers, especially when he's irritated—to me, the most dangerous player in the NBA still isn't LeBron James, Kevin Durant or Carmelo Anthony's delusion of himself, but a Kranky Kobe, scoring with a vengeance. But now Bryant is 34, and an old 34, having joined the NBA straight out of the fifth grade. The addition of Howard (a free agent at end of the year) and the 38-year-old Nash was really a maneuver designed to give Bryant a crack at a sixth title, tying him up with idol Michael Jordan. This is not a team that will wait for the future. The ring, as always, is the thing.

Which leads us, naturally, to Phil Jackson, the Lakers's In-Case-of-Emergency-Break-Glass legend. Jackson was courtside for every one of Bryant's and Jordan's rings, and last was seen coaching when the Lakers were cheap-shotting their way out of the 2011 playoffs versus Dallas. That was sad, like watching Obi-Wan Kenobi selling used lightsabers on QVC. Bryant, who played through injury that season, said the other day of that embarrassment: "He's too great of a coach to go out that way."

This would be Jackson's third tour with the Lakers, an amazing workplace accomplishment for any coach not hired by George Steinbrenner. Can the deal get sealed? There have been reports that the 67-year-old Jackson, who has had hip and knee surgeries, would ask for travel restrictions, presumably the right to tell the pilot to turn around whenever the Laker plane gets within 500 miles of the Charlotte Bobcats and Washington Wizards. Cannot blame him for asking! At this point, Jackson could demand that "Hannah and Her Sisters" be re-imagined as an Oliver Stone musical, and Los Angeles would greenlight the check. This narrative has already been written. The Lakers sound All In for Zen.

Should Jackson say no—and ESPN was reporting he could give an answer as soon as Monday—the Lakers could move down a list that includes Mike D'Antoni, Brian Shaw, analyst Jeff Van Gundy, current interim Bernie Bickerstaff, Salma Hayek, Ryan Seacrest, Claire Danes and aggrieved San Diego Chargers leader Norv Turner. But I suspect if Jackson declines, Los Angeles's second choice will be Phil Jackson changing his mind, followed closely by moving the Lakers to Jackson's home in Montana.

If you were already fatigued by these Lakers, the situation is totally hopeless now. But even before the season began, there was an assumption that these Lakers were too talented not to get it together in time for an NBA championship run. Is that truly preordained? Forget the defending champion Heat—can the Lakers hang with the Thunder, the Spurs or even the feisty Rockets? But there's always going to be hope for the Lakers in Los Angeles. That is an optimistic town which commissioned not one or two but three movies about Transformers. They continue to believe that big, expensive things can change.

Write to Jason Gay at