Walton’s play is all over the map

OAKLAND -- Luke Walton’s yo-yo season continued in a 72-hour slice of basketball.

He couldn’t miss against Seattle last Friday, scoring 17 points on eight-for-11 shooting and adding five rebounds and four assists. Two days later, he had four points and three turnovers against Golden State.

Then on Monday, he was somewhere in between in a rematch with the Warriors -- eight points, seven rebounds, three assists.

Coach Phil Jackson could only shrug and smile.

“Well, I welcomed him back as a player after Friday night’s game. I’ll take that back after [Sunday] night’s game,” he said. “He looked like he was back in the fold Friday night, but he really struggled [Sunday] night.”

Why is that?

“His outside shot -- right now, they’re just backing off him,” Jackson said. “As a result, he’s trying to get involved in there and it’s tough to do when people just disregard your outside shot. So he has to hit a shot, he has to take a shot, he has to make some shots. . . . If he isn’t, he has to continue to create things for other guys, which he is capable of doing.”

Walton has made a career of being careful yet creative with the ball, but his turnovers have been rising.

“He’s doing stuff in a crowd,” Jackson said. “He’s been successful in the past with doing it and he surprises people with his ability to put the ball down and go into contact and come out of it with a shot. Right now it hasn’t been successful for him.”

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A day later, Jackson wasn’t concerned about the words exchanged by Ronny Turiaf and Jordan Farmar during the Lakers’ loss Sunday to Golden State.

Most of it was “just chatter,” he said. “There’s been no residual at all.”

Instead, he pointed a sardonic finger at Sasha Vujacic.

“Most of the irritation [Sunday] night was created by Sasha’s foray into the court and shooting one-on-three,” he said. “If we had 15 guns on the bench, there would have been 15 holes in Sasha at the moment. Sasha can do that somewhere else but not here. I didn’t have to say anything to him. They all jumped on him collectively.”

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Kobe Bryant is one of the cornerstones of Team USA, although Jackson doesn’t seem enamored of the long Olympic qualifying process, along with the increased commitment required by Team USA.

“We’re taking years out of their life as ballplayers,” he said recently. “It’s a financial loss to these players and to their teams. The fact that they get hurt in these international contests is unfortunate.”

Bryant is hoping to avoid surgery on a torn ligament in his right pinkie until after the Olympics, which will end the second-to-last week of August. The Lakers typically begin training camp in early October, although Jackson said Bryant could skip it, if necessary.

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How strong is the Lakers’ home-court advantage?

Not that strong, apparently.

“We don’t feel like we have a home-court advantage,” Jackson said. “We have a common court in the NBA. We share it with the Clippers. People are in there playing all the time. It’s just one of those common courts that people get used to playing at.”

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mike.bresnahan@latimes.com