No list of “big winners” from the Beijing Olympics is complete unless it has the name “Kobe Bean Bryant” near the top of the list.

Olympic gold usually isn’t something that defines an NBA player’s career. Since the pros began showing up at the Summer Games, in 1992, a gold medal was assumed, and having a good tournament was nice but yielded little more than a warm-and-fuzzy wavelet-size publicity/marketing bump in the NBA offseason.

Kobe Bryant, however, got much more out of  this. Much more. And it capped off a basketball cycle in which he won his first MVP trophy and took his team to the NBA Finals.

The man who just a year ago was defined by a panoply of “negatives” — selfishness, an inability to play well with others (on both the basketball and kindergarten-type levels), a rape trial in Colorado — has effected a near-complete image overhaul.

I now am convinced that the typical basketball fan (American or otherwise) has decided he/she likes Kobe Bryant. A man who previously was admired as a one-on-one talent but derided for being deficient in nearly every other characteristic.

He now is seen as a leader, a great teammate, a (yes) patriot and a winner. He may not quite be Michael Jordan as a champion and icon, but he’s leading the hoops pack right this minute.

It has been a fairly amazing year for KB24. Last August, the Lakers weren’t sure if Kobe would play for them, and were at least considering the concept of trading him.

Then came his mopey reporting to the club, a decent start and the clear development of 7-footer Andrew Bynum, which gave Bryant hope — and provided the springboard for whatever happened next. Which was the trade for Pau Gasol, the Lakers’ push to the best record in the Western Conference, the clear victory in the MVP race — and the two-victories-short NBA Finals appearance.

That was a heavy schedule of events. But Kobe had one more big date — reclaiming the Olympic basketball gold after the stunning failure of the 2004 team (“led” by Kevin Garnett).

Bryant was, from the start, clearly the emotional focal point of the team, eclipsing veteran Jason Kidd and the more heavily marketed LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. It was Kobe’s team from the first practice right through to the championship game

And it didn’t hurt that everyone knew Kobe needed surgery for a torn tendon in his hard — surgery he was putting off to play for the U.S. in the Olympics. (What a guy!)

I don’t know how much attention the hoops team got from NBC (limited, I would think), but the basketball tournament was huge in Beijing. In China.

Any games involving the Chinese or the Americans generated massive attention in the multi-ethnic Main Press Center. Walking down a street late at night was to see basketball (last game, a 10 p.m. Beijing start) on televisions.

The Chinese know the game more than a little because of Yao Ming, who now easily is the biggest sports celebrity in China (with the early disappearance of hurdler Liu Xiang), and they also seemed already aware of Kobe Bryant and extremely interested in his performance.

Every time the U.S. played, Kobe got significant “face” time on camera. His dunks were replayed time and again. When the Americans did something good, his smiling visage nearly always was where the cameras went. He was the Official Reaction Shot of the basketball tournament.

It helped, of course, that he played well, that he was known for being the team’s defensive stopper and that his team crushed all opposition.

This was a new Kobe, to outsiders, willing to sacrifice his offense for the sake of his country’s basketball reputation, and it played extremely well.

And, at the very end, when Spain hung around a bit too long in the gold-medal game, it was a four-point play by Bryant that was the deal-sealer, a victory punctuated by widely seen images of a giddy Kobe doing jersey tugs on his “USA” uniform.

It ended what was a fabulous run for the Lakers’ superstar. Now, officially, the best player in the league and, unofficially, The Man of USA hoops and the global face of the NBA.

He is primed to go several years as the biggest star of our most personality-driven of sports. I expect advertisers to flock back to him, and I am convinced no one will sell more tickets or bring more eyeballs to NBA telecasts than will Kobe.

But I don’t expect him to kick back. That’s not in his makeup. He is too competitive.

And he still has that one box to check on his resume: An NBA title without Shaquille O’Neal in the post. That will keep him focused — and at the very center of all NBA discussions for the foreseeable future. In a positive sense. Not in a negative one.