Lakers Ready for Rodman

No announcement, no denial, no peace.

Dennis Rodman did not sign with the Lakers on Saturday, did not show up for practice, did not head-butt anybody of note.

But, with camera crews swarming, the mood around the team was clear and undeniable: Batten down the hatches, here he comes.

“I think the situation is very close,” said Shaquille O’Neal, who has teamed with owner Jerry Buss to lead the draft-Rodman committee.

What if he acts up? What if he is late for practice? What if he sticks his tongue out at Jack Nicholson?

Laker Coach Del Harris, the guy who will have to deal with Rodman’s eccentricities first-hand if he signs, said he would not prejudge anybody as uncoachable based on a flamboyant reputation.

“I would never say that,” Harris said. “There are always ways to work with people. You just have to find the different communicating methods that are required or in some cases non-communicating methods that are required and go from there. . . .

“I think you’re better off not listening to all the rumors and everything and just finding out ways to work with the people that you do have.”

Asked if he had ever dealt with a comparable player, Harris joked that nobody is comparable to Rodman, then threw out one former Laker as an example.

“Cedric Ceballos was a pretty free spirit, I would say, and he became an all-star player with us,” Harris said. “And hasn’t been since. So I guess we did all right with Cedric.”

Ceballos, of course, took an unscheduled detour to Lake Havasu in 1996, and eventually was discarded. But that’s another story.

Right now, the Laker players acknowledge that they are in need of power at the forward position, that the team could use added toughness, and that Rodman is the best player available to fill the need.

“He’s a good addition,” forward Robert Horry said. “You know, nobody is the answer. The only answer is probably somewhere playing golf right now.

“But he’s a good addition. . . . You look at it, the Denver game, we got outrebounded.

“We don’t know what he does in practice. All we hear is the stories . . . If he works hard in practice and does what we want him to do on the court, that’s all you ask him to do. What he does off the court is his business.”

And if Rodman, not known for perfect attendance or even for regular attendance, starts skipping practices and is not punished?

“That’s the problem,” Horry said. “We practice as a team, we play as a team.”

Said O’Neal: “That’s not my problem, that’s Del’s problem. I’m just going to try to lead by example and I’ll always be here, no matter what. I’m not going to be baby-sitting. . . . We’ll just play together and we’ll take it from there.”

Derek Harper, brought in this season to add veteran leadership, acknowledged that the Lakers don’t have Michael Jordan or Scottie Pippen on hand to keep check on Rodman, and said he didn’t know if he could be the one to do it.

But he said he hopes and believes that, if Rodman comes to the Lakers, he does so with the intention to be a solid character on this young team.

“I can’t eat and sleep Dennis Rodman and what Dennis Rodman does,” Harper said. “I don’t think he expects me to do that. I’m not going to sit here and throw darts at Dennis, because that’s going to be done anyway.

“But I feel that Dennis is going to come in here and he’s going to do the right thing.”