Barkley Was Right--Just Ask Him

This series has the future Hall of Famers, the high profile and the NBC spotlight, and most of all it has Charles Barkley, putting it all into cranky but logical perspective.

Starting today, the Lakers and Houston Rockets will hack it out, probably over four or five games, premier centers raging, Scottie Pippen and Kobe Bryant flying at each other, superstars bumping bodies all game long.

But, Barkley reminds, these are teams that were a long distance from dominating the Western Conference this bumpy regular season, both earning middle-of-the-pack playoff seedings and needing late-season rushes to earn even that.

“Come on, I don’t know what you all are expecting,” Barkley said before the Rockets’ workout Saturday at the Great Western Forum. “This is the first round of the playoffs. Whoever wins this series ain’t really done anything. Got a lot long way to go.

“We’re not the favorites in the West--them or us. But it’s still going to be a dogfight from here on out.”

At the beginning of the season Barkley chided the media for picking the young Lakers to replace the Chicago Bulls as the NBA’s power team.

“I didn’t think they were the favorites, and they’re not the favorites,” Barkley said. “They’re just what they are, they’re the No. 4 and 5 team, just like us.”

He said then that the Lakers were overrated and doomed to blow up.

Since opening night, the confusing procession of Laker moves--signing and then dumping Dennis Rodman, firing Del Harris, trading Eddie Jones and Elden Campbell for Glen Rice and J.R. Reid--only proved Barkley’s theory.

“They obviously thought they were overrated, they made all those changes,” Barkley said.

Does he think the Lakers, who come into this having won four in a row after playing about a month and a half of mediocre basketball, are better now than they were to start the season?

“I think they really do miss Elden Campbell and Eddie Jones,” Barkley said. “I think they’ve proven that. I think probably right now they’re playing as well as this group has played in the last two months.

“But we knew they were going to miss Elden Campbell. I like Eddie Jones as a player, but we knew they would miss Elden Campbell. And they proved their worth on the East Coast.

“I think they missed them all season.”

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Over the last six years, the Rockets have won plenty of postseason series as a lower-seeded team, so Coach Rudy Tomjanovich has no trouble putting a spin on the Lakers having the home-court advantage to start and placing the pressure on L.A.’s shoulders.

“It’s like a tennis deal in there, trying to break a serve,” Tomjanovich said. “And there’s pressure on the team that’s trying to hold serve, especially in that first game.

“And if you happen to get that, it changes the whole psychology of the whole series.”

The Lakers’ Kurt Rambis, about to start his first playoff coaching tenure, shrugged off the proposition that his team must win Games 1 and 2 at the Forum or else risk trouble.

“We want to take care of business on our home court,” Rambis said. ‘It’ll definitely make it easier going down to Houston.

“But we have confidence now . . . And no matter how both of these games come out, I think the team has the confidence that we can be successful in Houston, as well.”

The home team won all three games in the regular-season series.

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Rambis expects Shaquille O’Neal to be the Lakers’ emotional and physical leader in the playoffs.

Last season, O’Neal averaged 30.5 points and 10.2 rebounds and shot 61.2% in three playoff series.

“As he goes, our team goes,” Rambis said. “He’s going to have to step it up offensively and defensively. We put a lot of pressure on him as the leader of this ballclub and the hub of this team to deliver for us on both ends of the court.

“That’s what superstars do, they step it up in the playoffs when they have to. I think those last few ballgames that we played are an indication that he’s ready to go and he’s ready to play.”

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Laker starting point guard Derek Fisher was practicing at full speed, a day after straining a shoulder muscle during Friday’s practice. . . . Houston has lost 13 consecutive NBC-televised games, including 1998 playoff games.