As Opener Approaches, Lakers Get Dunleavy’s Daily Double

The Lakers’ exhibition season is over, the real one starts Saturday at San Antonio, so what can they do till then?

How about some nice two-a-days?

New Coach Mike Dunleavy says they will practice twice Wednesday and perhaps today, too. Among other reasons, he has more of his system to install.

“We got behind, there’s no question about that,” Dunleavy said Monday. “But I think we have time to make it up.

“I just thought we would be further along, that by this week I’d have things in and then we’d pound ‘em and pound ‘em. We went basic, instead. We got exposed a little against Golden State (a 146-116 blowout loss in San Diego, before sweeping the New Jersey Nets in Calgary and Edmonton). There are some counters we could have used.

“There’s a lot of changes and some of them, I guess, are going to be slow in coming. But overall, we played fairly well in the exhibition season. Basically, we were 6-2 and we haven’t shot the ball yet (43% as opposed to last season’s 49).”

Vlade Divac, thought to be in slight danger of losing his new starting job, scored 13 points with 10 rebounds Saturday against the Nets. That followed a talk with Dunleavy, who told him he wanted Divac to be more aggressive and more offensive minded. Dunleavy drove home the point by pounding the ball in to Divac in the exhibition to get him going. Divac responded with a big first quarter against Chris Dudley.

Now, for the David Robinson test.