It’s Twisted but It May Work

It’s time to be the devil’s advocate, and I do mean that literally.

Because there is a kind of twisted anti-logic to bringing Dennis Rodman to the Lakers -- 15 rebounds and a cloud of perfume -- even if you know the experiment is fraught with potential calamity and will make my life as Laker beat writer a 24-hour-a-day purgatory.

He can be all wrong, and everybody can scream out loud why.

This silly prolonged wait for him to finally sign, when it was clear there was no other option, was only the most recent warning sign, and Executive Vice President Jerry West knows it.

Rodman isn’t merely a disruption, he’s the disruption -- a walking, cursing, Las Vegas strip-clubbing nightmare -- and I wonder if the Lakers will need co-captains or co-exorcists a few months into his tenure.

But there’s a counter-intuitive way to look at Shaquille O’Neal and owner Jerry Buss’ grand idea of bringing the man O’Neal used to deride as a “cross dresser” to this young and impressionable team.

Maybe the Lakers, as they are currently constructed, could use a little touch of demon, and the players themselves seem to know it.

Here’s why:

1. Well, you saw those Utah and Indiana losses.

Without Rodman, the Lakers might not be able to win the title this season, anyway, and Buss has made it increasingly clear that only the championship this season will satisfy him.

The Lakers didn’t lose those games -- or the consecutive playoff series to Utah -- because of offensive woes. They lost them because they haven’t rotated quickly enough or banged hard enough or just gotten angry enough to stop good teams from scoring key late baskets.

So, without trading away anybody, you can go for it with Rodman, who probably could give opposing power forwards and centers migraines until his and Carmen Electra’s golden anniversary.

And his teammates always love those three or four extra shots a game he gets them from the offensive glass.

Come playoff time, picture Rodman versus Karl Malone, versus Antonio McDyess, versus Kevin Garnett, versus Tom Gugliotta, versus Vin Baker.

And then picture anybody else the Lakers have doing the same.

O’Neal dreams of having a thug beside him who can handle the toughest defensive assignment and let Shaq have some possessions off, all the better to keep his legs fresh to throw down on the offensive side.

Travis Knight, the heir at power forward, could watch and learn. What’s wrong with that?

2. If Rodman is not the same player he was when he won the last seven rebounding titles --granted, we are many cocktails down the line -- or if he starts going truly berserk, the Lakers can cut him with minimal financial loss and a well-we-tried shrug.

Repeat: Since he’s only costing about $475,000 this season and maybe a tossed-in $1.1 million next season, you can cut him at any time with minimal financial loss.

The only serious mistake the Lakers could make would be if Rodman is out of control and they don’t push the ejector button fast enough.

This is a short season, Michael Jordan is gone and it’s a wide-open league.

This is Buss’ gambit. He can pay for it if he wants to.

If things don’t work out in the playoffs, or even if they do, they can discard Rodman in the off-season and then go after a less shocking answer, perhaps Charles Oakley, a free agent-to-be, or Horace Grant.

If Rodman’s anything close to what he was last season with the Bulls, he’s the best bargain in the league, even better than Derrick Coleman making 25% of his shots for $9 million a season.

3. Yes, there’s nobody on the Lakers equipped to ride herd on him, as Jordan did in Chicago or Chuck Daly in Detroit, but there’s also nobody here for him to rebel against, since he is friends with the owner, since West is nobody’s foil, and since Del Harris wouldn’t be a fair match for Rodman.

Really, the Bulls mostly just ignored him. If the Lakers are winning, they’ll do the same, I’m guessing, and maybe even laugh along with him.

If you’re worried that he will be a corrosive influence on 20-year-old Kobe Bryant, you should know that Bryant has been pulled at since he was 16, and though you never want to test it this spectacularly, his resolve and focus are enough to coexist with just about anybody.

4. With Rodman at his manic best, as a player and a hype machine, all the hyperventilation about this team -- the chatter about Bryant’s development or O’Neal’s willingness to share the spotlight with him or Harris’ job security -- all the stuff that really does tend to distract this team, that’s gone.

Everybody will just look at Rodman, the greatest NBA sideshow ever created, while the rest of the Lakers, Shaq and Kobe included, go out and win basketball games.

“Dennis is Dennis,” Buss said a few weeks ago. “We’re not about to tell Dennis how to be someone else. We’d take him the way he is.”

This is a freak phenomenon that O’Neal philosophically calls “negativity-positivity,” the way Rodman can repulse and ignite a team and a franchise at the same time.

He gets the attention. Everybody else gets room to breath. Ask Scottie Pippen how that works.

5. Harris, after calling around to coaches who have dealt with Rodman and won with Rodman, has told people he wants to try it. Unless the coach is really ready for it, he’d have no chance around Rodman.

But Harris knows that if he can manage to look away from the glare, he can take advantage of one of the smartest basketball players around, and definitely one of the toughest.

Rodman’s addition could also do what Harris has been hoping to accomplish for years--bond him to O’Neal, who probably would assume primary disciplinary responsibility over Rodman.

If O’Neal wants him fined, Harris will fine him. If O’Neal thinks everything’s OK, Harris will nod and smile.

Coach and center, working together.

Rodman was as good a soldier as he can be last season, missing only two games and very few practices. Then he got crazy, as he always does, during the playoffs.

If he goes bananas only in prime time, against the Pacers or Knicks in the NBA finals, yeah, I think Harris can live with that.

I know Jerry Buss can.