Los Angeles ? The town is shrouded in smoke, and Lakers fans only want to talk about the team’s “crisis.”

Lives and homes are being lost, and the main topic at Staples Center is still who should get more shots, Shaq or Kobe.

Flames are flickering into the sky in a 200-mile arc from Simi Valley to San Diego and Mexico, and the biggest issue on the night Phil Jackson’s team opens its season with an easy, if somewhat sloppy, 109-93 victory Tuesday night against the Dallas Mavericks is which of the coach’s two incumbent superstars is being more immature.

Before we get too deep into this strange battle between one peevish player and another, maybe we should step back and try to put all this into some kind of perspective.

There are other things more serious — much more serious — than two multi-millionaire athletes trying to decide whose team this really is.

If the basketball world is holding its breath over these latest ugly salvos in L.A., the rest of the world is not.

A lot of us find the raging fires in the San Diego area much more disturbing than the fact that Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant are feuding again.

Excuse me, but are we supposed to be feeling sorry for these two spoiled jocks who make a combined $38 million a year? Are we really supposed to be worried about how this latest conflict shakes out?

Maybe under normal circumstances we would be. Maybe if all this desolation wasn’t surrounding us like so much confetti-like ash, we could be more concerned about Game 1 of an 82-game regular season that really only serves as a precursor to the playoffs.

Maybe if much of Southern California didn’t seem to be burning to the ground, we wouldn’t have felt so foolish sitting there before the game, listening to Jackson try to explain why Bryant suddenly wasn’t in the starting lineup against the Mavericks.

Someone asked the coach if “the situation” might have had anything to do with Bryant not playing.

“It certainly could,” Jackson said.

Would he be on the bench during the game? “At some point,” Jackson said.

That point proved to be with 17 seconds left in the third period, when Bryant, who supposedly had been working out to improve his “sore knee,” suddenly jogged out of the tunnel in a bright red T-shirt and sat down next to — who else? — O’Neal and half-heartedly slapped the Big Fella on his knee.

Shaq didn’t respond. He didn’t even look his way. Moments later, the period ended, and Bryant was greeting the rest of his teammates with high fives.

The crowd, naturally, was chanting “Ko-be … Ko-be … Ko-be …”

Bryant saw himself on the Jumbotron, with the fans cheering him, and he smiled and waved.

All of which made you wonder what kind of reception he might have received if he still wasn’t facing that sexual assault charge in Colorado. Not that any true Lakers fans really seem to care.