Lakers Fail to Get Fat Again and Lose to Celtics, 118-92

They are the teams most of the leaders fatten up on.

But the Lakers just seem to get clogged arteries and a high cholesterol count when they play them.

About to enter the stretch drive for playoff positions, the Lakers again failed to take advantage of a weak opponent Friday night. Mostly, they just failed, period, facing a team on a six-game losing streak and the second night of back-to-back games and then being crushed by those same Boston Celtics, 118-92, before 15,087 at the Forum.

The Celtics are 25-39. The Clippers are 14-51. The Timberwolves are 18-47. The Heat is 24-40. The Warriors are 20-43. And the Lakers (38-25) have lost to them all in the last 12 games.

“It’s going to cost you in some ways,” Vlade Divac said. “What we have to do is play better, because we are in danger of not making the playoffs if we stay like this. We have to do something.”

Beating the teams they are supposed to beat would be a start.

“That’s an unacceptable performance, obviously,” Coach Del Harris said after the Lakers suffered their worst home loss since Nov. 12. “It’s really difficult to understand how a team that plays hard and with competitive spirit all year would somehow fail to display that. It was a total team breakdown.

“This team (Boston) had lost six in a row. We missed so many layups and easy shots in the first half that we let them have a sniff of victory.”

From there, the Celtics decided to inhale the whole thing, building a 19-point lead late in the third quarter, then pushing it to 28 in the fourth. So much for Laker hopes of sweeping the season series from Boston for the first time since 1989-90. So much for being ready.

“We had a team meeting today and felt we could clear the air on some issues,” Sam Bowie said. “It’s almost like everything backfired. This is by far the worst performance of the year.”

The Laker problems of Wednesday, an eventual 11-point loss to the Warriors in Oakland, became the Laker problems of Friday thanks to another bad first half, the very thing that Harris said two nights was his only complaint regarding the last 15 games or so.

The Celtics didn’t hit them for 68 points before intermission like the Warriors did, but the start to the five-game homestand was so distressing that the fans sent the Lakers into a timeout with boos. Then they booed a St. Patrick’s Day dance by the Laker Girls.

That was part of a 14-2 run that lifted Boston to a 51-39 lead in the second quarter, when the Lakers shot 38.1% and were beaten on the boards by a staggering 21-4--by a Celtic team that was ranked 13th in the league in rebounding percentage.

The 12-point lead held up until halftime, 55-43, by which time the rebounding advantage was 32-16. The cushion became 15 points in the third quarter, marking the sixth game in a row the Lakers have trailed by at least 14.

The final rebounding margin was 55-30, with Pervis Ellison getting 14 for the Celtics in 23 minutes off the bench and Derek Strong 13 more in a reserve role. No Laker had more than the five by Divac.

Laker Notes

Boston’s Sherman Douglas led all scorers with 33 points. . . . Lloyd Daniels, signed last week for the rest of the season, won’t just be the Lakers’ starting small forward until Eddie Jones returns. He’ll also be the emergency point guard, behind Nick Van Exel and Sedale Threatt. “We talked about it briefly, particularly when we were just down to Sedale at one point when we weren’t sure about Nick’s health and Tony Smith’s leg,” Coach Del Harris said. “But it would have been very difficult because we have just had time to teach him the basics in the brief practice time since he’s been here. And a point guard needs to know more than just the basics.” Daniels is 6-feet-7, but broke into the NBA playing the point for San Antonio. He spent some time there some earlier this season with Philadelphia before being cut and landing in the CBA until the Lakers called. . . . Xavier McDaniel missed his second game in a row with a sore right knee.