The Lakers teetered. They tottered.

They ultimately faltered.

And tempers were lost, along with a costly game, 108-95, to the woeful Charlotte Bobcats at Staples Center on Wednesday, in an outcome equipped with all the makings of a giant "huh?"

As in, did the Bobcats, owners now of all of 26 victories, really dominate the Lakers from start to finish?

Indeed they did, with Kobe Bryant not around to see the unsavory ending. He picked up two technical fouls in the span of 29 seconds in the fourth quarter, ejected by official David Jones with 3:40 left after arguing a foul call and kicking a ball at Jones.

His season total grew, quite rapidly, to 15. With one more, he receives an automatic one-game suspension from the league.

But the loss was well on its way before that, an outcome that had Phil Jackson baffled.

"Well, I may look like I'm here to explain something, but I have nothing to explain," the Lakers' coach said. "I can't explain it, so don't ask me any questions. It just looked like we were out of character, tremendously out of character, in more ways than one. Irrational play at times, inconsistent at best, but some just poor judgments, poor decisions."

He then walked off.

For giant spells, the Lakers (49-23) could not make a basket or defend one. They dropped a game behind New Orleans (49-21) and are tied with Houston and San Antonio at 49-23 in the Western Conference standings.

Maybe those home-court bookings for the playoffs should wait awhile.

Derek Fisher hesitated before putting it along with the team's worst losses of the season.

"Based on the timing and the fact we just didn't play with the passion we should have been playing with at this point," Fisher said.

Bryant finished with 27 points. He scored the Lakers' first 15 in the third quarter and 17 of their 24 in the stretch.

He went scoreless in the fourth quarter before his ejection and made only eight of his 22 shots.

The Lakers trailed by as many as 19 and by 14 heading into the final quarter. They scored the fourth quarter's first 10 points, eventually reducing the margin to 84-81, but never got closer then that.

Jason Richardson had 34 points and 10 rebounds for the Bobcats and Gerald Wallace scored 15 points.

After recently staging their own mini-playoff series up and down the coast with the Golden State Warriors, the Lakers again acted as if they needed some drama.

A porous first-half first led to some crowd boos and later progressed into obvious crowd boos.

And this is the relatively breezy portion of the schedule with the Memphis Grizzlies coming to Staples on Friday.