Van Exel Gets a Chance to Rest on Some Laurels

For Nick Van Exel, this kind of court time is good too.

Van Exel reclined on the court for the entire fourth quarter, the part of it immediately in front of the Laker bench at the Great Western Forum, legs straight out, weight resting on his arms behind him.

After playing so much in recent weeks that stiffness and soreness with the left knee has flared anew, often doing his best to convince Coach Del Harris he could handle the increased minutes, Van Exel got some rest Wednesday in the 114-102 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks before 15,483.

Some night off.

Twenty-five minutes, his fewest since Oct. 11 . . .

. . . and 18 assists, his most since Jan. 5, 1997. That was the night Van Exel had 23 at Vancouver, making this the second-best production of his career.

“I could see it,” Derek Fisher, the backup point guard, said after Van Exel quickly exited the locker room without comment. “He knew he wasn’t going to be as able to be explosive offensively because of the knee.”

So he concentrated on setting up others for scores, like Shaquille O’Neal, who had 38 points, the most in his 12 games this season, or Rick Fox, who had 19 points along with five steals. Ten of the assists came in the third quarter, when the Lakers shot 62.5% and put the game away.

“As you could see, Nick was laboring a little bit physically,” Harris said. “I don’t think he’ll own up to it. But he wasn’t quite there. He wasn’t in pain, but he wasn’t quite there physically.”

The partial appearance--at less than 100%, at nine minutes less than his season average--would have to do against another sub-.500 club that happens to be in the Eastern Conference.

The Lakers were 6-6 against the East coming in, accounting for all but two of their defeats, and 3-3 in Inglewood before Wednesday.

Reputations are born of such things, deserved or not. Harris would counter that the only theory advanced was that the Lakers especially struggle from the line against the East--60% in a six-point loss to the Boston Celtics, 54.1% in a setback of the same margin to the Philadelphia 76ers--but he also knew what people might end up thinking.

The Lakers can’t match up with the physical style traditionally rooted in the other conference. The truth, of course, is that some of the teams, like the 76ers, are hardly the Bad Boys reincarnated, and that many of these meetings came while O’Neal was out.

“I used to say that the Western Conference was the softer conference in general,” said Fox, a first-year Laker after six seasons with the Celtics. “I said that even after I first came out here. I was getting a lot of fouls because I was supposedly this big bully underneath. But to me, that is how I am used to playing.

“The East is known for physicality. I don’t know if that makes us a vulnerable team because we keep losing to Eastern Conference teams, but there is a trend there. There’s also the trend that most of those teams [the Lakers have lost to] are not real good. I’m more concerned with that trend than the one against the East.”

How convenient of the Bucks to then offer them a chance to end both trends. The chance to beat up a weakling had been largely wasted again the night before, when the Vancouver Grizzlies, outmanned anyway but especially with starting point guard Antonio Daniels sidelined by flu, challenged into the fourth quarter. This time, starting a stretch in which six of the next 11 opponents would come from the East, the Lakers would also fall behind early.

The Bucks, waiting in Los Angeles on Tuesday while the Lakers played in Canada, grabbed a nine-point lead with 3:21 gone. The Lakers recovered enough to avoid trailing at halftime for the sixth time in eight games, using 19 points from O’Neal and 12 points and four steals from Fox to claim a 56-50 lead at intermission.

Given the Lakers’ inability to put teams away, this amounted to great intrigue. Then that ended, about midway through the third quarter, when the advantage grew to 16.