The Road Is Rough for the Lakers

They were boxing’s Willie Pep. All the Cavaliers did was make the lunging Lakers miss, which was not as hard as you might think.

The Lakers’ missing piece missed shots. The missing forward missed another game. The defense missed assignments.

The Lakers are a big and uproarious pageant these days, and in Thursday’s 100-93 loss they were a regular Miss Congeniality.

“Unfortunately, we’re taking a step backwards,” said point guard Derek Harper. “We were pressing that fast-forward button for a while there. But now we’ve stopped, and we’re hitting rewind and going backwards.”

Only halfway through this six-game road trip, it was the Lakers second loss in three games after winning 10 straight.

The Laker victory formula got all mucked up by the dinky-sized Cleveland Cavaliers, who have virtually no center, a depleted roster, and the happy ability to highlight everything the Lakers would rather hide.

Shaquille O’Neal was an irresistible force--37 points, 19 rebounds, five blocked shots, four assists--but the rest of the Lakers were very movable objects, letting the unheralded Cavaliers pull out a victory before a capacity crowd at Gund Arena.

Afterward, O’Neal could only suggest the truth: He was basically alone out there, with perimeter teammates who couldn’t figure out what to do when Cleveland triple-teamed him and who let Brevin Knight and Wesley Person run wild for open shots.

“The big man did his work--everybody else has to step up,” O’Neal said. “Their guards just dominated our guards the whole game. They got rebounds and shooting jumpers and we weren’t smart . . .

“We just have to be smart, especially against a team with no big man.

“If I do get doubled and I kick it out, guys have to be confident about what they want to do--not fool around with all that dribbling, all that monkey crap.”

Glen Rice couldn’t save them this time--after a big late rush Tuesday in their victory over Minnesota, he was off-line from the start on Thursday, missing 12 of his 21 shots, and only compiling 24 points by the grace of several desperation three-pointers.

Meanwhile, Dennis Rodman missed his third straight game.

This is not an argument, but a fact: The Lakers are 8-8 without Rodman in the lineup this season, 9-0 with him, and have played with a noticeable lack of defensive fire on this Rodman-less road trip.

“Well, what do you think I thought about it?” Rambis said when asked what he thought of a Laker defense that surrendered 20 points to Shawn Kemp, 20 to Knight and 18 to Person.

“It was just overall intensity. Defense is something that can be there every night. Like Glen’s shot, it wasn’t there tonight. You can’t count on it.

“But you can count on your defense to be there every night. And it hasn’t been that way, it hasn’t been consistent by any stretch of the imagination.”

Cleveland scored on its first eight possessions, jumping out to an 18-10 lead that was triggered by two three-pointers and one two-pointer by Person.

“A lot of that was my fault,” said Kobe Bryant, still adjusting to his new role as the starting off-guard after spending most of the season at small forward. “Wesley Person came off and got started with some jump shots coming off of screens, and I was trying different techniques.

“It was my first time chasing somebody off of screens like that, and I’m a quick learner. I learn fast.”

Nobody blamed the defensive shortcomings on Rodman’s absence or the adjustments forced by the recent Eddie Jones-for-Rice and J.R. Reid deal. They pointed to a mind-set.

“If you’re looking for excuses, that can be one of them,” said forward Rick Fox. “But I don’t think excuses are going to get us a championship.

“There’s 28 teams that are making excuses about why they didn’t win it. But we’re not going to be a team of excuses, we can’t be. We’ve had enough years of that . . .

“We’ve got scorers, that’s for sure. But that ain’t going to win no championship.”