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Don’t do it, Jerry.

You are being pressured to throw up a dramatic shot, a last-second bomb, save the season. There are people standing, screaming, pleading with you, counting.

Don’t do it, Jerry.

Hold the ball. Stick to the plan. It is not the final minute. It is not the time for panic.

What is needed from Laker boss Jerry West right now is not a desperate heave, but a timeout.

And a message.

He needs to let everyone know the Lakers are sticking with Coach Del Harris for the rest of this season.

Because to fire him while the Lakers are still in championship contention would be to essentially give up on this season.

A season, incidentally, in which that ogre Harris has led an injury-racked team to a 40-18 record, the fourth-best in the NBA.

Dig through the rubble of recent unconfirmed reports and unsubstantiated rumors and just plain poppycock about Harris’ future, and you will find this:

* If Del Harris is fired even before finishing a second full season with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant and the rest, West is chucking his plan to be patient with this young team until it blossoms.

* If West chucks that plan now, why didn’t he chuck it earlier this season and give up Eddie Jones for veteran Mitch Richmond? Why didn’t he also give up more youth in a trade for a legitimate power forward?

At the start of this season, Harris was deemed the perfect coach for kids.

Four months later, you’re going to dump him for treating them too much like kids?

Certainly, Harris should be able to guide this team to at least the Western Conference finals this year, and should be fired if he does not.

But at least give him the chance, especially considering the alternative.

By replacing him with an untested assistant, West will be giving the players’ permission to coach themselves.

This is exactly what the players have been trying to do.

This is exactly what they will continue to do as long as they view Harris as a sinking ship.

There was more fleeing and screaming Thursday at practice, with players looking idly around during Harris’ lectures while refusing to staunchly support him afterward.

Even Rick Fox, the most decent of men, who considers Harris as family, said this when asked for a vote of confidence:

“It’s not my place.”

This follows Nick Van Exel’s touching, “No comment” of Wednesday night, which accompanied O’Neal’s heartfelt endorsement of . . . West and General Manager Mitch Kupchak.

The thought of Harris being fired is now bolder than the lettering on the front of the Laker jerseys, hard to ignore, impossible to shed.

“It’s out there now, like a scar, and it’s hard to make a scar go away,” Fox said.

Only one man can do it and, so far, he won’t. And every day the scar grows uglier, fueled not by the media but by the players and their uncertainty.

So what do you say, Jerry?

West wouldn’t comment on Harris’ future Thursday because team officials said he did not want to address rumors.

However, West was thrilled to address rumors at the end of last season when he openly backed Harris in his feud with Exel.

Hmmmmm.

As with any public figure, West’s silence gives everyone the license to guess.

And from here, the guess is this:

Another two or three-game losing streak, and Harris is history.

Yet because of this silence, that streak seems inevitable.

After all, if the players want Harris to be fired--and by their lack of support, it seems that at least some of them do--then they can simply play him out of a job.

They can view West’s silence as a cue to grab a lifeboat and leap for their lives.

“It’s poison in the soup,” Fox said of the atmosphere.

And that’s simply not fair.

It wasn’t Harris who caused this team to take the floor without any sort of veteran leadership, either from the bench or otherwise.

It wasn’t Harris who made a big deal out of signing a power forward--Robert Horry--who wasn’t really a power forward.

And goodness, don’t blame Harris for giving $49 million to Elden Campbell, making it difficult to trade him when it became obvious that he was not paying off.

Was he a better coach for the Lakers four years ago, when they were more impressionable and not nearly as talented as today? Yes.

Have some of the players outgrown his professorial ways? Certainly.

Would the team benefit from someone more attuned to their individual styles? Perhaps.

But should Del Harris have a chance to finish the job he started so brilliantly? And a chance to do it while being publicly backed by his boss with a statement so forceful the players will be forced to shut up and play?

Absolutely.

With Harris, the Lakers at least have a chance to be playing another three months.

Without him, their season is finished now.

Don’t do it, Jerry.