Making a Case for the Defense --in Small Doses

If we can forget for a moment the times Sunday’s Laker-Knick matchup looked like a wrestling match or a hockey game or a baseball game, there were actually a few brief stretches of basketball brightness for the Lakers.

This 99-91 Lakers victory showed more signs of a team descending into the theater of the absurd than building toward a championship. For sanity’s sake, let’s focus on the minutes in the second quarter when the Lakers actually played some defense, because until they start to do that more often they can’t even think about making the NBA finals.

Robert Horry stepped into the passing lane to make a steal and he blocked a shot when a couple of defenders converged on Larry Johnson during two of the first three Knick possessions of the quarter, and the Lakers jumped off to a 7-0 start. Defense leads to offense, and offense leads to . . . leads. The Lakers’ work on the no-fun end of the court helped them to a 29-15 edge in the second quarter, erasing a six-point deficit and putting them ahead 50-42 at halftime. The Knicks had to take most of their shots from outside in that quarter, and they made only 26% of them.

Derek Harper was very critical of the team’s defensive effort after losses to Phoenix and Sacramento last week. His voice is loud and clear, it can be heard all over the locker room, so his teammates must have picked up on at least the key words he mentioned, like “willing” and “mind-set” and “trust.”

Sunday, they acted like they listened. A little. While better, the defense is still “not what I’d like it to be,” Harper said afterward.

“Am I satisfied?” Coach Kurt Rambis said. “No.”

The Lakers, 23rd in the league in opponents’ scoring, held a team below 100 points for only the second time in nine games. But giving up 91 points to the offensively challenged Knicks is a disappointment in its own right.

Latrell Sprewell sprung loose in the second half to score 21 of his 25 points. Chris Childs scored 11. He had seven in his previous two games.

On offense, the Lakers are slowly working Glen Rice into the mix, having come to the realization that since they made the decision to trade for him it might not be a bad idea to get him the ball. They still don’t run him through enough screens--not that this team is the best at setting picks. The Laker Girls give opposing teams more interference when they’re returning to the bench for a timeout than the Lakers do on offense.

Rice still has to generate too many points on his own instead of simply catching the ball and shooting it. The Lakers are only a .500 team in the first 10 games since trading Eddie Jones and Elden Campbell to Charlotte for Rice and J.R. Reid. There’s much more work to be done, and now only 19 more games to do it in the lockout-compressed schedule.

“We’ve had adjustment after adjustment after adjustment, “ said Rambis, whose ascension the the head coaching spot Feb. 26 was one of them. “In a season that wasn’t conducive to making changes, we’ve made a lot of them.”

If the playoffs started today (and three-fifths of the way through the season is time to start thinking that way), the Lakers would be on the road for Game 1 of their first-round series against San Antonio.

Playing the Spurs anywhere probably doesn’t scare Shaquille O’Neal and the Lakers, but the prospect of facing Portland or Utah in the second round without homecourt advantage ought to frighten them into getting their act together.

If You-Know-Who wasn’t around, those would be the type of issues that came to the forefront when people ask “What’s wrong with the Lakers?”

In these Dennis Days, it’s all about chemistry. They might be in the same boat at times, but you never know who’s going to jump out to swim on his own for a while.

Dennis Rodman did it again Saturday, and so did Sean Rooks. They both had problems with the amount of time they spent sitting on the bench against Sacramento Friday night (the entire game, in Rooks’ case), so neither practiced Saturday. Now that Rodman set the precedent and showed you can skip away without serious repercussions, there’s no way for the Lakers to clamp down on the rest of the team without causing even more griping.

Rooks was deemed “an excused personal absence,” a term that’s starting to be used so frequently around the Forum it will soon start appearing in the box scores. Everything Rodman’s done has been excused, too, because he always comes back and apologizes. He met with Rambis after his latest practice blowoff and Rambis said that “I believe all issues are resolved.”

With this group? That’s a lot of faith. Rambis is probably counting on a nice big basket of treats from the Easter Bunny next Sunday as well. This Sunday belonged to the Worm. He successfully dragged the game down to his mud-wrestling level. He got Knick forward Kurt Thomas ejected by tangling with him, which led Thomas to overreact and yank Rodman to the ground by his jersey for a type 2 flagrant foul. He drew an offensive foul on Patrick Ewing when Ewing cross-checked him in the low post.

Later, Yale graduate Chris Dudley joined the proceedings. After O’Neal dunked on him and added a little shove to his follow-through, knocking Dudley to the ground, Dudley took offense. As Shaq jogged back downcourt, Dudley picked up the ball, wound up and delivered a strike to O’Neal’s backside some 40 feet away. The pitch was much more accurate than most of Dudley’s free throws, but all it succeeded in doing was getting Dudley ejected.

The carnival continues.

“This has been the hardest year, when it comes to staying focused,” said Harper, a 16-year veteran who was in Dallas for the Roy Tarpley drug saga.

“Just another day at the office,” O’Neal said.

What the Lakers need is a little more 9-to-5 type of effort, and a lot less Christmas party shenanigans.