Campbell With a Capital C

Yeah, but did he get to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom?

Elden Campbell will have to look elsewhere for confirmation that he has become a true power broker, around the Beltway and around the country. He just won’t have to look far. He may not have to look at all.

Thursday night, after the Lakers had whipped them, 122-107, the Washington Bullets became believers, just like the New York Knicks before them, the Seattle SuperSonics before them and the Chicago Bulls before them. Campbell got a game-high 38 points this time, two shy of his career best, and the Lakers got a much-needed morale boost before 18,756 at USAir Arena, a victory that also was highlighted by 31 points and 12 assists from Nick Van Exel.

This came four days after Campbell scored 40--largely at the expense of Patrick Ewing--even if it took 46 minutes and most of two overtimes to get it. He needed 42 minutes, in a regulation game, to take apart the various Bullets sent at him, making 15 of 25 shots in the process while also grabbing seven rebounds.

“Ewing being an All-Star and seven feet tall, I’ll take that one,” Laker Coach Del Harris said. “But, shoot, I’ll take either one of them.”

Campbell votes for Thursday’s showing, because the Lakers won. Either way, it has come to this: people considering his best game of the week and having options.

Or maybe it’s that they’re all starting to run together. The game before, the 19 points and nine rebounds against Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets on Tuesday, would have been celebrated in other times, but now looks more like an off night. The last seven games, since the knee injury to Shaquille O’Neal made him the new the starting center, Campbell has averaged 26 points, 9.7 rebounds and 2.43 blocked shots.

“I’m not in a role-player’s role,” he said. “I’m in a go-to guy’s role.”

He’s just on a roll, period.

“Elden, sheez, what can you say?” Harris said. “Thirty-eight and seven. He was so confident and fluid out there. His moves were so decisive.

“There’s an aura in there. He knows everyone is counting on him and believes in him. That’s a great feeling for an athlete.”

The showing by Van Exel came against a much different backdrop, that of a struggling point guard playing well in some areas but falling short in the end. Kind of like the team. They had lost four of five heading in; he had made nine of 34 field goals the last three games.

Of course, he was also contributing double-figure assists. But the missed shots might as well have been off-setting.

“I know I had been letting the team down,” Van Exel said.

The response was to lift them on his shoulders for the first quarter, before Campbell got going, Van Exel hitting seven of his eight tries that period, including three of four three-pointers. The one miss was a rushed jumper from behind the arc with one second left.

It was typical Van Exel, the streak shooter who emerged just as dramatically as he disappeared. He had 18 points in the 12 minutes, and had assisted on three other baskets. When the second quarter opened, Chris Whitney had replaced Rod Strickland at point guard for the Bullets.

Van Exel was slowed some. He had six points and three assists in the period, modest enough, but that still put him at 24 and six heading into intermission. That he cooled off from there, making just one of six shots in the fourth quarter, meant little to the Lakers.

“He came back like a good player will do,” Harris said.

Van Exel was not alone. If he needed this, the entire team needed it more, what the losses mounting and another tough challenge up next, the Atlanta Hawks, on the second night of a back-to-back at that. Just in case the Lakers were starting to feel too good.

“It was big for our confidence,” Van Exel said. “Hopefully, we can gain some momentum for the rest of the trip. People are trying to count us out, but we’re not out of it. We’re still one of the best in the Western Conference. It’s just a matter of hanging in there until the injuries get better.”

That’s all.