Van Exel Gives Knee a Rest

The latest battle between Nick Van Exel and his troublesome left knee came after a stretch in which the Laker point guard averaged 38.3 minutes in seven games, but Coach Del Harris on Wednesday night was not second-guessing his time distribution, even after learning that soreness in the joint had forced Van Exel out against the Denver Nuggets.

“There’s no guarantee this thing was not going to happen if he plays 15 minutes,” Harris said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to do with the difference of a few minutes here and there. And if people are unhappy now when we have the second-best record in the league, just games behind the best, they’d be really unhappy if we were several games back and I was saying, ‘Oh, well. It really doesn’t matter about winning games. We just want to protect Nick Van Exel.’

“I had somebody write me saying don’t play him until the playoffs. So you just can’t please everybody.”

Wednesday marked the first time soreness in the knee sidelined Van Exel this season. The problem flared up last Tuesday in Vancouver, prompting him to briefly come out in the first quarter, and that came immediately after the seven games in which he averaged 38.3 minutes. In the four games that followed, he was at 33.6--right on Harris’ target time.

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Kobe Bryant will team with Lisa Leslie of the Sparks in the 2ball contest on all-star Saturday in New York, a new shooting contest that matches NBA and WNBA players from the same city against other male-female duos. . . . More than just beat in the transition game Sunday against the Charlotte Hornets, the Lakers were caught drifting on defense. “They spent a lot of time just jogging back and I saw a lot of opportunities there,” Hornet guard David Wesley said. “As long as we were getting the ball out of the net quick, even if they made a basket, we pushed it back on them and caught them on their heels.”