Bryant Turns Taskmaster

Kobe Bryant, the team’s youngest player, said the Lakers need to concentrate on maintaining intensity during practice as they head toward Friday’s opener against the Utah Jazz.

Toward the end of Wednesday’s workout at Southwest L.A. College, Coach Del Harris, unhappy with the pace, called the players together for a quick, fairly impassioned speech.

“Come on, you can see it,” Bryant, 19, said after practice. “People walk through drills, not running our sets properly. . . . We can’t have that.

“I think the good thing is that everybody knows that, everybody sees that, and it’s just a matter of making that little adjustment. I think it’s not something that’s going to be ongoing.

“There’s no secret or hidden formula to winning an NBA championship when the talent is there. You look at teams like Utah and Chicago--on paper, look at the lineup we have and they have, and you say, well, we can blow them out of the woods.

“[But] what do they do? They execute, they come ready to play every day. Not only the games, but practices.”

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Harris said he understands Shaquille O’Neal’s frustration about the abdominal muscle injury that has sidelined him for Friday’s game.

“Obviously, Shaq wants to play and he feels that he’s ready to play,” Harris said. “But, that’s probably more his competitive heart speaking. . . .

“Yes, we want to win every game. We’d like Shaq to play all 82 games. But we’ve got to try to do the thing that makes the most sense for having him the most number of games. That means right now he’s going to have to sit out.”