It’s like a broken record for Lakers

The Lakers don’t have many things to worry about right now, but there’s one item at the top of a very short list: They’d better not play Portland in the playoffs.

They came up here once again and lost once again, the result now as predictable as clouds in the winter in the Pacific Northwest.

Kobe Bryant has had too many memorable games to catalog in one story, let alone a series of them, but he was way off the mark in the final minute Friday night, helping the Trail Blazers take a 106-98 victory, their eighth in a row over the Lakers at the Rose Garden.

Bryant had 32 points on an atypical nine-for-24 shooting effort, including two badly missed three-point attempts and a key turnover late in the game.

As such, the Lakers (63-17) fell 1 1/2 games behind Cleveland for the league’s best record. The Lakers have two games left, the Cavaliers three.

It looks more and more as if the Lakers won’t have home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. It also looks as if they can expect a battle if they see the Trail Blazers (51-28) in, say, the second round.

Bryant passed Charles Barkley for 17th on the all-time NBA scoring list, but that was the most memorable part of his night.

With the Lakers down three, his long three-point attempt from the left side glanced off the right side of the backboard with 48.9 seconds left.

On the Lakers’ next possession, his pass intended for Lamar Odom was intercepted by Steve Blake.

Bryant also airballed a three-point attempt, missing badly to the left, with 11.9 seconds to play and the Lakers down seven.

“[Portland Coach] Nate McMillan knows how to defend Kobe after dealing with him in the summer,” said Lakers assistant Kurt Rambis, who coached the team in Phil Jackson’s absence. “He was going to converge on him and make it very difficult for Kobe to get into those high-quality environments. Kobe had hit those long shots in the past, but there were times I just felt that we should have gotten better shots.”

McMillan was an assistant coach for Team USA at the Beijing Olympics.

Said Bryant: “We just got beat because they played better in stretches, obviously.”

Jackson stayed in L.A. because of painful swelling in his lower right leg, leaving Rambis to slide over on the bench and try to stop the Trail Blazers’ streak.

In the end, however, Portland fans howled with delight when the scoreboard screen showed Lakers fans heading for the exits with 8.1 seconds left.

Throughout the week, Portland talk-radio shows were atwitter with how Trevor Ariza was a terrible person, and how the Lakers were a band of bullies, and how their evil empire ideally wouldn’t see the light of day when June rolled around.

Clips of Ariza’s flagrant foul on Rudy Fernandez from the teams’ last meeting were shown on the scoreboard a few minutes before tipoff. Not surprisingly, Ariza was soundly booed when he was introduced with the rest of the starters before the game.

In other news, Andrew Bynum had 13 points and six rebounds in almost 31 minutes, though he faded in the second half of his second game back from a torn knee ligament. He had only four points and one rebound after halftime.

There was also more playing time for Shannon Brown, who again was the first guard off the Lakers’ bench. He had 10 points, making all four of his shots in almost 20 minutes.

More minutes for Brown meant fewer for Jordan Farmar, who was scoreless in five minutes. He did not play in the second half.

All in all, another bad night for the Lakers, though Bryant tried his best to put a positive spin on a situation that continued to befuddle the franchise.

“Even when we had championship runs, we usually come up here and get our butts kicked,” he said. “They always play us tough here. It just means we’re overdue.”

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mike.bresnahan@latimes.com