Trial by Fire

Kurt Rambis! Your Laker team had just lost three games in a row and six of eight, you had recently released one of your owner’s good friends, your two superstars were on increasingly wobbly terms, your contract as interim coach could have been expiring any day!

Where were you going to go next?

Las Vegas!

Land of slot machines, lost dreams, gambling fiends, and it so happens, one of Laker owner Jerry Buss’ favorite places in the world.

In a previously scheduled meeting that happened to fall right at the Lakers’ lowest ebb--after their 22-point demolition at the hands of the Houston Rockets--Rambis flew out for his first major face-to-face with Buss on April 27 after two long and passionate team meetings.

Maybe not the best timing, you think?

But what could have been a dampening meeting turned out to be a relatively comforting chat that was not publicly revealed until Rambis mentioned it Wednesday.

“It was just, ‘Hey, what’s going on with the team, what’s the difference in the team? Where are we struggling, where do we need to improve?’ ” Rambis said.

“It was just a general, get-to-know-each-other, let’s-talk-about-the-team kind of conversation. . . . We haven’t really talked before; let’s just get together and talk. I mean, I can’t describe it any other way.”

Rambis says Buss did not promise him anything about his future with the Lakers, and management says it will not comment about Rambis’ status until after the season.

But since that meeting, Buss has been a very public presence around the Lakers, popping into the locker room and rubbing elbows with Rambis at midcourt early before the Portland game April 29.

And coincidentally, the Lakers won their final four regular-season games after that Vegas summit to head into their playoff matchup against the Rockets with significant momentum--and the crucial home-court advantage.

“I think it was great,” Rambis said of the meeting with Buss. “And I think it’s great that he comes around. I think it’s great that he shows his face. I think it’s great for the players.

“Just to say hi to the players, let the players know that he’s involved, that he cares. . . .”

And so it goes in Rambis’ rambunctious, often-random rookie (and perhaps only) season as Laker coach.

He and his players seem to exist from crisis to crisis, changing shape and definition each new moment and emotion, from deflating defeat to comeback victory to roaring winning streak then back again, improvising and battling every inch of the way.

If there is a hallmark of Rambis’ tenure since he took over Feb. 26--two days after the firing of the refined, meticulous Del Harris--it is that, amid the messiest Laker season ever, their rookie coach can be counted on to tackle issues hands-on, with his voice bellowing and sarcasm dripping.

He has barred bodyguards and buddies--and reporters--from practices, plastering up signs and sending glares at anybody who would cross the line. He has tossed distracting Dennis Rodman, Buss’ buddy, off the team.

He has put himself on a very thin line, coaching a very talented team for a very expectant owner at a very significant moment in Laker history.

There might not be a giant plan here, but there is an attitude: You go through Rambis first, if you want to get to the Lakers.

It’s a version of his rumbling playing days, when he protected Kareem and Magic and Worthy and listened to the sharpened words of Pat Riley.

Rambis, right or wrong--and he says he will always admit it either way--remains insistently at the front line of this battle to save a season.

To save his fledgling career?

“I haven’t worried about that from the beginning, and I’m not worried about that now,” said Rambis, who went 24-13.

“I’ll know when the season’s over with, I did my best. I did what I thought was right. I know I worked my butt off to do the best I could given the circumstances under which I had to work with this crazy season.

“I can’t change their opinion about me. I can’t influence them one way or the other. I’m not in control of what they do. So why worry about it?”

Laker General Manager Mitch Kupchak said this week that, generally, he and Executive Vice President Jerry West have been pleased with Rambis’ handling of the assorted events--from Rodman’s arrival and departure to Glen Rice’s adjustments to the comatose play at the end of April to the signs of life, teamwork and sacrifice in the last week of victories heading into the postseason.

“Though the circumstances have not been ideal for any coach,” Kupchak said, “whether it was a coach in his first year or a coach in his 10th year, I don’t think that either Jerry or I would do anything different than what he’s done to date.”

Instead of being obsessed with the potential of being unemployed, Rambis says he has pitched himself into the immediate questions:

Will the Lakers ever play championship-level defense? Can he broker harmony in a distracted locker room? Why don’t the Lakers give total effort in every minute of every game?

To grab his players’ attention and maybe merely to blow off steam, Rambis has smashed a clipboard during a timeout, yanked Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant off the floor a couple of times and engaged in at least one sideline shouting match with Bryant.

The explosions have been noticed in a Laker locker room accustomed to Harris’ long talks and soothing (sometimes sleep-inducing) tones.

“It’s something that sometimes surprises you or catches you off guard, but I also think it sets the tone,” point guard Derek Fisher said.

“You know, sometimes a team takes the identity of their coach. And I think now we’re starting to take on the identity of who Kurt is as a coach. He’s an intense coach. He’s a guy who played hard.”

Rambis, without naming Riley, seems to go out of his way to avoid comparisons to the former Laker dictator-motivator, saying he is his own man and doesn’t need lessons or instructions from former coaches.

“My best guess is they’ve been real emotions,” Kupchak said of Rambis’ mood-swing motivations. “Players are smart. Something is staged, they can tell. And when it’s real, they can tell.”

The idea, Rambis says, is to create a level of consistency and genuine back-and-forth.

“I pride myself on being honest with the players,” he said. “They may not agree with what I say, they may not like what I say. But I’m going to be honest with them.

“I think I’m more than willing to admit when I make a mistake, and I think that encourages them to be willing and accept responsibility when they make mistakes.”

The most important relationships for Rambis on this team, of course, are with O’Neal and Bryant, and with them he has walked the trickiest path.

Those two players are obviously more embedded into the future of the franchise than Rambis, whom they knew as an assistant for two seasons.

“It’s been a learning experience for him too,” O’Neal said.

Does O’Neal support Rambis as the long-term Laker coach?

“Would I vouch for him? Yeah. He’s good,” O’Neal said. “He’s cool. . . . We’re all in the same boat here. If we win, he’s great, I’m great. We don’t win, he’s nothing. I’m nothing.”

Even more complicated is dealing with the off-and-on relationship between O’Neal and Bryant--two markedly different individuals who probably never will be friends but must be compatible on the court.

“It’s important for them to realize, and I think they are starting to realize, that they are better off together than they are apart,” Rambis said. “But it takes time.

“I can’t just go, well, ‘You guys get along on the court. You play together.’ Doesn’t happen that way. It takes time to develop that.”

After a players-only meeting last Tuesday--hours before Rambis’ trip to Las Vegas--Bryant, O’Neal and their teammates, motivated by impending disaster and Rambis’ urgings, appear to have removed at least some of their tensions.

“When we were up in Seattle [last Sunday] and Kobe got hot, Shaq was the one that said, ‘Let’s just keep getting the ball to Kobe!’ ” Rambis said. “I think that’s great. That shows great signs of teamwork and camaraderie and making sacrifices for the benefit of the team. . . .

“And the fact that the players will now kind of chide each other when they see something wrong on a videotape. And the guy will accept it, ‘You’re right, you’re right, I shouldn’t have done that.’

“You know, I even see Kobe, when he does something instinctively, and he knows that it’s wrong, I see him, he gets frustrated with himself.

“And I’m hard on him. I’m more hard on him than I am with anybody else in terms of being consistent with it. I’m on him every day about things.”

With other Lakers, Rambis has clubbier relationships. Last Tuesday, he wrapped up practice by donning his old thick-frame glasses and playing a bristling three-on-three game with reserves Travis Knight, Tyronn Lue, Sean Rooks and Ruben Patterson and injured rookie Sam Jacobson.

After it was over, and Rambis’ team had lost badly--no thanks to several errant Rambis jumpers--Rambis sprinted with his defeated teammates, then wearily plopped onto a chair as Fisher, watching, laughingly pronounced to reporters: “He isn’t going to be able to talk to you for a while.”

Teased Lue: “Kurt, don’t be shooting so much! That’s not your role!”

And Rambis basked in the moment, sweating, laughing and charging up for more.

Unlike Magic Johnson, who took the interim spot to finish the 1993-94 season then said he didn’t want the permanent job, Rambis isn’t about to walk away voluntarily from this coaching gig.

“I like it. I like it a lot,” he said. “It’s fun. It’s something that I thought about doing the last three or four years of my [playing] career. . . .

“This team has a lot to learn; I have a lot to learn. But I think that’s the nature of a good player, and I think that’s the nature of potentially a good coach--that they are willing to have an open mind.”

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The Rambis Factor

After a 7-6 start, the Lakers went 24-13 under Coach Kurt Rambis to finish at 31-19 and earn the No. 4 seeding in the West. How the Lakers fared with Rambis in 10-game increments:

Victories: 9

Defeats: 1

*

Victories: 6

Defeats: 4

*

Victories: 5

Defeats: 5

*

Victories: 4

Defeats: 3