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To anyone used to the deep, stentorian "I know best" tones of Phil Jackson, the deep, stentorian "I know what's best for my security" tones of Rudy Tomjanovich sound a bit odd.

Then again, how about we all get over the Lakers of old before the new Lakers get old?

We know the deal. Rudy T gets the job after Kobe Bryant vacates it for him. Rudy T understands the law of gravity. Rudy T is going pay his props if he knows what's good for him.

Hence this remark from Tuesday's season opener against Denver, which the Lakers won, 89-78.

"We're going to be a team," he said, "but he's a great player and we have to exploit him. We have to use what he has. He can create a lot of things and generate a lot of offense."

Now, three points must be made here:

One, 89 points?

Two, just reading that quote doesn't provide the full sense of what Tomjanovich is trying to convey.

Three, what Tomjanovich is trying to convey is this:

"I get it. This is his team. I am limited in what I can say about him, so I'm going to be smart and safe and take the path of least resistance."

In other words, it's good to be nice to the king.

Now we're not so naïve to claim that Tomjanovich shouldn't have to do this kind of bowing and scraping. He is a coach in the National Basketball Association, and therefore MUST bow and scrape.

But with Bryant, the instrument of his coaching deliverance, he must bow until his nose gets scraped. He knows that, and we know that, so this is notice for anyone who finds him a little too obeisant to His Nibs.

Back off.

These are the rules that prevail, they are universal and they work for the great, and the near-great, because they punish the in-grate.

And when you are dealing with a man who beat a sexual assault case in Colorado WHILE ridding a team he does not own of two sure Hall of Famers just because he could, well, you tend to be very careful with what you say about him.

Rudy T could skip a game now and then, just as he did after the Lakers' embarrassing loss to the Utah Jazz on Wednesday ("These are things that can happen in this league. Very disappointed."), so he doesn't fall into the same horrific trap that helped sink Doug Collins in Washington --- polishing the Jordanian apple while flogging the rest of the Wizards for, well, for being the Wizards.

He particularly needs Bryant to be everything Tomjanovich feels he must say he is, because nothing undermines credibility quite like being dead wrong in public, especially when you know it just as well as everyone else.

This is particularly true because if things don't go well for the Lakers, someone is going to have to pay, and the truth is that Bryant isn't paying for anything, and Chris Mihm isn't a big enough name for payment.

But as we said, this is stuff Rudy T knows all too well. He didn't, after all, pass on many chances to rave about Hakeem Olajuwon when the Rockets won those two titles, in part because he didn't have cause to, and in part because he wasn't suicidal.

So he gets a pass viz. Bryant this year. If he wants to call him better than Jordan, so be it. If he wants to say David Stern should hit a knee nightly and thank the Big Commissioner In The Sky for the very gift of Bryant, hey, whatever. If he wants to say he would make a great pope, well, cue the white smoke.

He knows Rule A, and should be credited with knowing it, to wit:

He who butters your bread holds the knife.

Words to live by, we think.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com