Lakers Even Lose Word Game

It being a good time to catch their breath between the first two games of what promises to be a grueling playoff series Tuesday, the Lakers and Seattle Supersonics did what men of great discernment often do.

They fought anyway.

Shaquille O’Neal explained that he really didn’t mean his insensitive comment that SuperSonic Coach George Karl, “looks like a woman coach . . . like a woman who coaches and cries all the time.”

Actually, he said, he meant something worse.

“ ‘Woman’ wasn’t really the word I was looking for,” he said after Tuesday’s practice here. “What I was looking for is a word you can’t say on film.”

Karl responded that although O’Neal might have been the most valuable player in the league, he still cheats.

“If you slow down the video, you can see he takes steps,” Karl said. “And you look at that elbow--darn, that’s huge. If you let him clear out the lane with that elbow . . . that’s an offensive foul. That’s a foul.”

O’Neal countered that he never should have compared Karl to woman coaches . . . because that was insulting to woman coaches.

“Sorry about that, women,” he said.

Karl said he didn’t mind, there are plenty terrific women coaches. Besides, he noted, it might help him choose his wardrobe.

“I’m thinking about wearing an apron tomorrow night,” he said.

O’Neal replied, “If [Karl] wants me, he can come up on me.”

Karl shrugged and said, “I’m not going to play amateur psychologist. You guys can do that.”

Leave it to SuperSonic guard Gary Payton to end the back-alley debate. In five seconds, he bravely threw the one punch that O’Neal can’t handle, leveling the big man at the core of his very being.

He ripped his endorsements.

“[Shaq] is very entertaining and all that, that’s why he gets all of his endorsements in the media “ Payton said. “He travels around the country with two Coke bottles in his mouth.”

Coke? Shaq trembled.

“I don’t drink that nonsense,” he said quickly, in a voice fraught with confusion. “I don’t do that garbage.”

Enough, enough.

Before this all starts smelling like three-day-old salmon, some explanations are in order.

First, barking by old rivals between playoff games is as old as Michael Jordan himself. In fact, nobody does it better.

“I’d say Shaq is just bringing out his Michael Jordan repertoire,” the SuperSonics’ Jerome Kersey said with a laugh.

Second, barking is not always silly, it is often strategy. You bark in hopes of distracting your opponent so that he won’t be looking when you sink your teeth into his leg.

Karl is looking for some help in stopping O’Neal. He knows that even three men can’t do it, that he needs a fourth, one with a whistle.

Karl is looking for a call. Beginning with his pre-series comments that made O’Neal so mad in the first place, he has been lobbying for that call.

Karl is just doing is job.

By responding, so is Shaq.

He knows he is stuck with several guys whose games are strong, but knees are weak.

He was embarrassed after Game 1--as everyone in the organization should have been--that they were outrebounded by the worst rebounding team in basketball.

He is increasingly befuddled that even after two years, there are times his teammates have no idea how to play with him.

He needs to light a fire under inconsistent Rick Fox, confused Robert Horry, sometimes invisible Eddie Jones.

On Monday night, he finally decided that one way to inspire fight would be to show it.

“The type of person I am, I’m not going to let people step on me,’ he said. “I’ve been nice for six years. I’m not going to be nice anymore.”

So he swung back at George Karl.

Unfortunately, he threw a politically incorrect roundhouse.

In the context of a sports world in which struggling baseball players are said to “throw like a girl” and football coaches refer to their struggling players as “she,” his words were not unusual.

In the context of locker rooms across the country, what O’Neal said was as innocent--if not as immature--as accusing somebody’s mother of wearing army boots.

In the context of his personality and history, his words were also innocent. There are few Lakers as sensitive to community issues as he.

With his investments in depressed areas and attention to children, he has been nothing but good for our diverse population since arriving here two years ago.

But taken in context of society--which is where he plays, after all--Shaq’s comments were just plain dumb.

Too many barriers have fallen for intelligent people to feel the need to categorize feelings by gender.

A little research would have shown him that comparing someone to a female coach is actually a compliment. There are many tough female coaches dealing with much more difficult circumstances than men.

The best coach in the country, by the way, is a woman named Pat Summitt.

“When he said George was like a woman coach . . . was he talking about the Tennessee coach?” SuperSonic Nate McMillan asked hopefully.

So Shaquille O’Neal didn’t seem to mean any harm outside of trying to insult George Karl.

After another loud and colorful day on the NBA playoff front, the only thing that was shot was Shaquille O’Neal’s foot.

Fox sighed. “I don’t want to see us get all caught up in a war of words with these guys,” he said. “If they are quiet and we’re the ones talking, then they’re winning.”

One game to none, to be exact.