BOSTON — Can the Celtics contain Kobe?

That is the key question that hovers over this series.

Can the Celtics contain Kobe, or is this NBA Finals going to turn out to be the Kobe Bryant Invitational, a showcase for all his basketball gifts, like the earlier rounds for the Lakers were.

So last night was the first in this cat-and-mouse game, as both the Celtics and the Lakers survived all the pre-game hype and all the stories of their history and actually played against each other.

Can the Celtics contain Kobe, keep from him from being Superman in baggy shorts?

And this starts with the premise that no one can guard Kobe. Not really. He is the one player that comes every generation or so, someone so gifted that he’s essentially unguardable. You don’t stop Kobe. You just try to make things difficult for him, and hope he has a bad shooting game.

And let’s not ourselves here. Without Kobe the Lakers would have been hanging out in Marina Del Ray last night, not here in the Garden in the first game of the NBA Finals. He is not the one-man team that LeBron is with the Cavaliers, but he is still the show, the guy who puts the rest of the Lakers on his back and carries them.

He came in here last night as the MVP of the regular season, came in here averaging nearly 32 points a game, came in here billed as this generation’s version of Michael Jordan. And if that’s heavy baggage, it’s as if Kobe’s been preparing for it all his life, as if born to be on this kind of stage.

He had said after the Lakers had disposed of the Spurs in the Western Conference finals that getting back to the NBA Finals was “the answer to a prayer.”

For he knows he’s no longer playing for money and celebrity, two things he’s had for a long time now. He is playing for his ultimate legacy, playing for immortality. As if he’s come to know that great players need NBA titles for validation, fair or not.

Last night the Celtics began with Ray Allen guarding him, and Kobe was 0-for-3, missing three medium-range jumpers from the right side before he finally made a jumper from the foul line. Even so, he was only 2-for-8 in the first quarter, and that was missing shots that were very makeable for him, betrayed more by his midrange jumper than anything Allen was doing to him. Still, the Celtics couldn’t have hoped for more.

But Bryant is the basketball definition of explosive. After a rest he came into the game shortly into the second quarter and made a medium-range fallaway from the right side, vintage Kobe. He then threw three excellent passes to Pau Gasol, but the half ended with him having scored only eight points on 3-for-10 shooting.

Still, the Lakers were up by five.

Could the Lakers come in here and beat the Celtics in the Garden without Kobe being Superman?

At the half that still remained an interesting question, with interesting ramifications.

Kobe got it going in the third quarter, hitting a jumper from out front, then a beauty of a fallaway on the right, then a honey of a drive over Paul Pierce, the play Pierce got hurt on. The Lakers were up four, it was midway through the quarter, and he was like a great pool player on a roll — a shot here, another there, the feeling that he could make them forever.

Then he dunked on the break on an alley-oop from Derek Fisher, and followed that up with his toughest shot of the night, a fallaway from the right corner.

One long jumper later and Kobe already had 18, his slow start all but forgotten.

Was this about to become what Magic Johnson used to call “winning time?”

Was this going to be Kobe time, when he starts to put the game in his pocket?

Not last night.

He made a short bank shot for his 20th point of the game, and after that?

That was about it.

The Celtics started putting their imprint on the game, and curiously that came at a time when Kobe was on the bench for a breather. When he came back there was 5:14 left to play, the Celtics had a lead, one they never relinquished.

The big Laker charge?

The late-game Kobe heroics?

The Jordanesque finish?

The Kobe of myth.

Not last night.

He finished with 24 points, nearly eight below his average. A good night for sure. But not a super one. No indeed. Not the kind of night the Lakers needed if they were going to win here last night.

Bottom line?

Kobe was not Superman, and the Celtics won.

Connect the dots.

breynold@projo.com