Lakers Hope Home Friendlier : Pro basketball: After 116-102 loss at San Antonio, team wants to enhance strong play on road with better play at Forum.

By late Saturday night, after they had suffered a 116-102 defeat as the San Antonio Spurs turned the Alamodome into the best little scorehouse in Texas, the Lakers had bigger problems to face.

Home games.

The loss to the Spurs, as David Robinson had 32 points and 17 rebounds and Dennis Rodman added 14 points and 19 rebounds, represented more than the end of an otherwise successful four-game trip. It marked the end of a stretch in which the Lakers played 14 of their first 21 games away from the Forum, ordinarily good news. Except that ordinarily, teams aren’t 9-5 on the road and 4-3 at home.

Heading back now to the Forum for nine of their next 12 outings, starting with Minnesota on Tuesday, this suddenly becomes an issue for the Lakers. They know it better than anyone.

“Exactly,” said Vlade Divac, who played only 29 minutes against the Spurs because of foul trouble. “We have to do a better job at home. We should take advantage now of the schedule. We should win 85% of our home games and be good on the road. We’re in a good position. We have the (most road wins) in the league. Now we have to do the same at home.”

Added Eddie Jones: “The guys just get up for games on the road because we feel like everyone is against us. It’s kind of a good feeling for us to know that we have to rely so much on each other. We’ve done a good job with that. That makes us play even harder.”

It should help, then, that the Lakers’ home attendance is near the bottom of the league despite the very encouraging start, at 12,326. Ditto that they have only two contests over the next nine days.

“We’re definitely a better road team because of the situation with the limelight in L.A.,” Cedric Ceballos said. “It’s tough to get to the business at hand because of everything else that’s going on. Plus, we haven’t been there much.”

So what do they need to do now?

“Win,” he said. “That’s the only difference. Like I said, it’s real difficult playing at home sometimes because we don’t get the rest we do on the road. We don’t always have the same concentration.”

Indeed, rest shouldn’t have been a problem on the just-completed trip, not with a schedule that included at least one day off between each game and the resulting three victories and no tired legs.

From there, the Lakers took a 54-51 lead at halftime, even with Ceballos shooting two for seven and Nick Van Exel one for seven. The shooting percentage continued to drop in the third quarter, but it was still 69-69 with 4:02 remaining.

That’s when the Spurs pulled away, using a 13-2 run in the next three minutes for an 82-71 advantage. They followed that midway through the fourth period by scoring on seven of eight possessions to build a 104-90 lead, with Robinson accounting for three of the baskets.

Rodman? He was impossible to miss too. If it wasn’t the bright-green dye job, it was that nine of his 19 rebounds came on offensive boards.

“I felt a little bit off tonight, but I started to get my rhythm late in the game,” he said after his third game following a well-publicized suspension and leave of absence. “I could of had 25 rebounds if I wanted to, but I’m still trying to get in the flow of the game.

“I’ve got to start to put the ball in the basket more. I’ve got to start putting it back up when I get the board. I should be able to score 13 or 14 points a game, and then maybe I can win the most improved player award as well as the rebounding title.”

* CLIPPERS LOSE: The once-again stumbling Clippers lose to rejuvenated Mavericks, 106-87, for the first time in 12 games. C2