Some Quick Suggestions for the Lakers

It’s only 2-0, but it doesn’t feel as if it’s only 2-0.

It feels like a slow walk down a narrow, concrete corridor. It feels like the first steps toward a windowless room where somebody has a very long finger on a very big switch.

It’s only 2-0, the Lakers lost where they were supposed to lose, and they are but one long Forum weekend from catching the Utah Jazz in the Western Conference finals.

But strangely, it feels as if they are a dead team walking.

As if it’s time for last requests.

“It’s the same way in every playoff; you have to win your home games. It’s like that with Indiana now; everybody seems to understand it there,” Del Harris mildly complained Wednesday. “‘But when it’s us, everyone panics.”

Of course we do.

Last week the Lakers looked like the new world order.

This week they are on the verge of being conquered by a couple of old guys running the oldest play in the book.

Last week, magic.

This week, essentially one loss from poof.

Today, last requests, pleas for changes, anything to help win four of five games against the smartest team in basketball, stop that long walk in its tracks.

Not that Harris, who this spring has consistently put his team in a position to win, needs any help. But could we at least offer him more than a cigarette and a blindfold? While there’s still time?

“Utah has done things to us that nobody has done to us in two months,” said Nick Van Exel. “We need to come out Friday and show them something different, something new.”

Something you might find in last requests.

Request: Start Van Exel.

The veteran guard said Wednesday that one of his teammates encouraged him to ask Harris to remove him from his self-imposed benching.

That makes two of us.

Initially it seemed Van Exel’s personality was better suited to the reserve role he requested after his February knee surgery.

Into calm, he injected chaos. The Lakers would play a steady six minutes, then drop him in like a seltzer tablet.

But against the disciplined Jazz, the waters have changed. The Lakers need to bubble from the beginning. They need Van Exel not to change the tone, but to set it.

From the start, they need someone unafraid to whack John Stockton, or run over Howard Eisley, or take the ball into the belly of Karl Malone.

Derek Fisher has been steady, but the Lakers need steamy, and Van Exel is a lot of that.

Besides, look at the numbers.

During the regular season and playoffs combined, Van Exel has averaged six more minutes a game when he starts, scoring about three more points with three more assists.

“We’re not going to change at this point,” Harris said. “We had that option before but now . . . that has nothing to do with our situation here.”

Your initial thought is, of course not.

Then you think, why not?

You wonder, why play arguably the team’s most important game in seven years with the team’s all-star point guard on the bench?

Van Exel might also be wondering.

“It’s too late . . . I would never ask now,” he said Wednesday. “I made a decision and I’ll stick with it.”

But if Harris asked you to start? Van Exel smiled.

Request: Start Corie Blount for Robert Horry.

Another reason to ignore conventional wisdom and believe your eyes.

The only Laker besides Shaquille O’Neal who is completely nonplused by Malone is Blount. The only Laker besides O’Neal who will fight Malone punch for punch is Blount.

Throw Malone off early, he gets mad, and maybe he doesn’t come back. Blount can do this, and he leads the team this spring in rebounds per minute. A limping Horry cannot.

Is Blount a scoring threat who has to be guarded? No. But neither is Dennis Rodman.

“Malone gets away with so much . . . ,” Blount said. “I know I have to stop the little stuff he does. I try to play when the refs let me play.”

So let him play.

Request: Play Kobe Bryant only when the team is trailing.

The following statements will undoubtedly be clipped by someone who will have great fun with them in 10 years after Bryant wins his fifth MVP award. That doesn’t make them any less true now.

Bryant is instant energy for a team on the ropes. But the playoffs continue to expose the fact that he is only 19, and sometimes a distraction for a team in the flow.

When the Lakers are playing well, they are working the ball around like the Jazz. Sometimes when Bryant gets the ball, everything stops.

He stares at his opponent. Teammates stare at him. By the time he decides whether to pass or attempt another highlight clip, momentum has suffered.

He was on the court when the Lakers lost their fourth-quarter lead Monday. Better he be on the court when they are making a fourth-quarter comeback.

Request: Place an alarm clock under Elden Campbell’s seat that occasionally rings, “49 million bucks . . . 49 million bucks.”

If Campbell thought like a power forward and worked harder on defense, Harris could use him with Shaq and clog up the pick-and-rolls and force the Jazz away from the basket.

But even after two years, Campbell still doesn’t. And Harris can’t.

“Elden has to get himself more involved in the game,” Harris said.

Request: Buy an ad.

Mike Piazza just did it, and he’s not even playing here anymore.

The Lakers can call this newspaper now, pay about $18,000, and a nice-sized advertisement will run in this section tomorrow.

Like Piazza, they can make it an open letter.

Like the one they sent to their players a couple of months ago, it can be from Jerry West.

To Fans Holding Tickets To Game 3: You are cordially invited to show up early, stay late, and cheer your ever-loving guts out.

We welcome the obnoxious, the sniveling and anyone who can figure out a creative way to insult Greg Foster.

Help give us the same advantage enjoyed in Games 1 and 2 by those obnoxious snivelers from Utah.

Would it work? As with any last request, would the Lakers be any worse off if it doesn’t?