Lakers Hope Absence Makes Those Skills Grow Stronger

Your 1999 Lakers reassembled Monday morning, all four of them.

And when a fifth, Sean Rooks, wandered through the gym doors at L.A. Southwest College closer to noon than the 10 a.m. scheduled starting time, Shaquille O’Neal jokingly, but meaningfully, let the thunder roar.

“Hey . . . don’t you know when 10 o’clock is?” O’Neal yelled at a stunned Rooks in front of about 20 reporters.

Hey Lakers, don’t you know when the start of the season is?

On the first day NBA players could work out with teammates at official practice sites, only O’Neal, Rooks, Derek Fisher, Eddie Jones and second-round draft pick Tyronn Lue showed up.

It wasn’t quite worry time: Laker officials said they weren’t concerned, that most of the rest had solid reasons for their delayed arrivals, and they said that Kobe Bryant, Tony Battie, Elden Campbell and first-round pick Sam Jacobson were all expected to join the workouts today.

And these are just conditioning workouts--with trainer Gary Vitti and strength-conditioning coach Jim Cotta--from which coaches and team executives are barred.

By all accounts--the workouts were closed to the media--the players there all were in good shape. O’Neal said he weighed about 335 pounds and was ready to “go get about 26 [points] and 10 [rebounds] right now.”

Training camp is scheduled to begin either Jan. 18 or 19, probably in Santa Barbara.

But with the drama of last week’s 11th-hour labor settlement still in the air and the Lakers eyeing a realistic chance at an NBA title run, the players who showed up didn’t hide a glimmer of disappointment at the season’s first symbolic moment.

“For the guys that are here, we do feel a little let down,” Fisher said. “There are a couple other guys who know about it and should be here. That’s the way we feel about it. Shaq feels that way, we all feel that way.

“Nobody’s making us be here, but we’re here because we’re committed to this team, and we’re committed to winning and that’s the way everybody should be.”

O’Neal wouldn’t say he was disappointed with the turnout, and repeated that as long as his teammates show up in shape for the start of training camp, their coming or not coming to a voluntary camp was not his concern.

But he said he did try to call all of his teammates to let them know about the Southwest workouts. This is the second time he and Fisher have tried to rally the players for workouts before and after the six-month lockout.

“It wasn’t really mandatory,” O’Neal said after the two-hour workout. “We were just running around, messing around and shooting.

“I called them one time and I told them, ‘If you want to come, shoot, get some running, come. But you really need to be ready on the 18th.’

“As long as guys are ready on the 18th, I don’t have a problem.”

Jones said most of his teammates probably were arriving in town--Corie Blount and second-round pick Ruben Patterson live in Cincinnati, Jacobson was in Minnesota, and the Lakers are not expecting an early arrival by Robert Horry, whose daughter is ill in Houston.

“I’m not upset,” Jones said. “I’m not disappointed either. I just think guys do things on their time.

“Actually, it’s our time now. But guys are going to do things when they have to do it. . . . If they come in Monday out of shape for real training camp, I mean, then there’ll be problems. . . .

“Maybe it’ll be better tomorrow. I think those guys will show up tomorrow.”

Jones said he was heartened that O’Neal came in looking so spry, especially after watching Shawn Kemp waddle his way, probably 20 pounds overweight, through the players’ charity exhibition game last month.

“Our big guy didn’t show up in that shape,” Jones said. “Shawn Kemp is a $100-million player. Shaq’s a $100-million player. Shaq didn’t show up like that.

“So that showed a lot for everybody else. Everybody else looked at Shaq and was like, ‘Man, he can show up any kind of way he wants to show up. And he didn’t show up out of shape.’ ”

O’Neal, for his part, said he was just glad, after coming so close to losing the season, that he has a season at all.

As an elite player, already making more than the new maximum salary for his experience level, O’Neal--viewed as a compromiser in the face of hawks such as Alonzo Mourning and Patrick Ewing--potentially lost out on $20-$40 million over the rest of his career in the new labor deal.

“Am I happy personally? Not really, but I’m a sacrificer,” said O’Neal, who denied a New York report that he was one of five players who voted against approval of the deal, saying he hadn’t voted at all. “Man, I don’t want to see guys start their own . . . league.

“The deal does affect me. You know, a lot of guys were complaining that really shouldn’t have been complaining. I mean, I was never complaining. But if anybody’s been affected the most, it’s me.”

And what if the hard-liners, Mourning and Ewing and others, are upset that he and his agent, Leonard Armato, worked so successfully to help this deal to fruition?

“I don’t care,” O’Neal said. “Whatever they want to do--they want to fight, they want to play . . . “

Laker Notes

Though the dates are not certain, the Lakers are planning two exhibition games with the Clippers, one at the Great Western Forum and one at the Sports Arena, which, if Commissioner David Stern’s announcement is followed, will be free to fans, although the process of ticket distribution has not yet been announced.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.