Strutting of Stuffs Isn’t Nice : Lakers Improved, but Their Swagger Raises Hackles

Go southeast a little and there’s Charles Barkley, saying the Phoenix Suns don’t like the Lakers’ attitude.

Go north and there’s Seattle Coach George Karl, calling the Lakers cocky, even if he means it as a compliment.

Cut across town to the Sports Arena, and the Clippers are noting that the Lakers are immature.

Being a Laker in 1994-95 means making a bad first impression among your peers, even while making a great impression as one of the success stories of the NBA.

The rest of the league was hoping they would be down, for a while anyway, considering they had run roughshod for so many years. But now some people, having gotten a good look at how second-year point guard Nick Van Exel swaggers, have a new definition for a while. Say, like 2010.

It’s not as if they will be voted Public Enemy No. 1, or worse--the successors to the Pistons of the Bad Boy era. They don’t play dirty. They don’t spit on fans.

But they do irritate some of their peers. Something about their personality. No, something about their attitude , with Van Exel setting the tone.

“I’ve been a Laker fan for a long time,” Clipper Pooh Richardson said. “I like to see them do well because I have a lot of respect for the organization, but I never saw Magic and those guys do that stuff when they were world champions. That’s the old Lakers. These are the new Lakers.”

Said Richardson’s teammate, Loy Vaught: “They’re just having a taste of success and it feels good. It’s premature, but I’m not the kind of guy to get caught up in that verbal stuff. It’s just a sign of immaturity. They’re young.”

So they irritate some peers?

As if they care.

“They can say what they want to say,” Van Exel said. “There’s only one team that’s the champion right now and that’s Houston. For anybody else to say anything, they can just keep quiet. . . . We’re not worried about the other players and the coaches in the NBA. We’re out there doing our job. They don’t know anything about us. All they can do is play against us. That’s it.”

The Lakers would be so much of what is wrong with the NBA today if they weren’t so much of what is right. An exciting team to watch, they have come to rely greatly on one another during traps and presses to create a promising defensive core and are an unselfish group on offense. The definition, in so many instances, of a team.

But the way some opponents see it, the Lakers talk the talk before they have walked the walk. Win a playoff series, they imply, then pop off.

What bothered the Clippers was Van Exel’s stopping by their bench on the way to his own huddle during a timeout to wave goodby as the Lakers surged ahead in the fourth quarter at the Forum, and then saying afterward that he knew the game would slip away from the visitors because, “It’s the Clippers, man.”

Said Clipper Harold Ellis: “That wasn’t professional. Why would you even do that? I think there’s other ways you can go about showing your pride or self-esteem.”

What bothered the Suns was the Lakers’ winning at America West Arena in late December in the first meeting of the season and then making sure that the Suns not only saw it, but that they heard it too. So when Barkley & Co. won the rematch Jan. 11 at the Forum, the response was hardly surprising.

“They kind of rubbed it in our faces last time,” Barkley said in the visitor’s locker room afterward. “We don’t like their attitude at all. We’ve been talking about it. They were pretty cocky and doing a lot of talking last time.”

But Barkley backed way off those comments when the teams played again recently in Phoenix, saying cocky in the case of the Lakers is good because the positive attitude has helped them make big strides from last season.

But even with a one-time critic coming to their defense, it might have been too late. The sirens and red flags had already gone off in Del Harris’ head.

“I think it comes with youthfulness and winning, and a certain amount of it is OK,” the Laker coach said of Laker bravado. “I think you have to still maintain a respect for opponents and your position with kids and things like that. But, again, as long as you keep it in decent taste, there’s nothing wrong with a little exuberance.

“The thing is, this is a closed-in league and you’ve got to play (teams) a number of times. I’ve just seen it so many times where it’s always better to let sleeping dogs lie as opposed to give teams extra incentive to come out and play hard against you. Sometimes these teams won’t play hard unless you give them an extra reason to do so. As a coach, we’re always hesitant to say or do anything that would end up being good bulletin board material for the opponent.”

Said now-injured Cedric Ceballos, along with Van Exel the marquee player: “Del, he’s from the respectful days. He wants everybody to just calm down and get the win. He knows about the memories of teams, that they remember when you run the score up and remember when you keep the starters in when the game is over and talk trash and really give them some fuel to burn the fire with.

“Don’t get me wrong. Not everybody on the squad does that. It’s that the people who do do it, do it so well that it kind of stands out.”

Along the way, old and new have reached a compromise. On those occasions when Harris has felt the need to tell the guys on the bench to go easy with the words, to not go overboard, the players will tone it down. Then they just wait until Harris returns to his usual spot at the head of the bench, at which point they pick right back up.

“You never know,” Ceballos said. “Somebody may antagonize or be talking trash to us. Like, ‘You guys are just getting lucky,’ which we get a lot of. Teams come in and say, ‘You got no talent in your squad, you’re just getting lucky.’ That kind of eggs us on to talk back. We can’t just back down. And when we’re out there winning, it easily can be done then.”

But as Ceballos points out, this is not a team-wide personality trait. He isn’t much for trash talk, at least not much beyond some playful words with Barkley, a good friend. Vlade Divac can be demonstrative on the court, but is not the type to talk trash. And neither are two of the other starters, Eddie Jones and Elden Campbell.

Leaving the demonstrative and moody Van Exel.

Ceballos said, “We’ve got a lot of things to be cocky about, especially when you start at the point guard position, Nick Van Exel. He had everybody doubting him, doubting his abilities, and he’s proven them wrong.”

Van Exel has his own explanation.

“I don’t know if we’re cocky,” he said. “We’re a good team that plays together. I’m probably about the only one out there talking. It’s jealousy because the Lakers are back winning again.

“The things we went through last year, it’s been a big turn-around. Everybody’s excited and happy to be out there winning. Whatever little motivation that we can get, it helps us. When we go into other arenas and the crowd is booing us, I think everybody on the team likes that. It makes us play better.”

It’s kind of like what Seattle’s Karl was saying when he explained the Lakers’ cockiness.

“I’m saying that as a compliment,” he said. “I wasn’t saying that as a negative. I think their style and the way they play, they’re very confident and it shows in how they’re playing on the road.

“It’s unusual for a team to have such a bad year and then come in and win (15) games already on the road. That’s what I was talking about. You’ve got to be confident. And, to a point, on the road, sometimes cocky. You’ve got to overcome the mental insecurities of the road, and to do that sometimes you’ve got to believe that you’re better than you probably are.”

Believability. The key to making a good second impression.

Laker Notes

Kurt Rambis on Monday was signed to a second 10-day contract, after playing an average of 15 minutes in five games. The Lakers, in a formality, also placed Cedric Ceballos on the injured list. Ceballos had surgery last week to repair a ruptured ligament in his right hand.