Shaq’s Trouble at the Foul Line (and Houston’s Defensive Plan to Keep Sending Him There), and a Difficult Matchup With Charles Barkley Are Reasons for the Lakers to Have Some . . . : SECOND THOUGHTS

It sounds strange to say this about the winning team in Game 1 of a playoff series, but it’s the Lakers who need to make adjustments before tonight’s Game 2.

To their credit, they took advantage of the Houston Rockets’ mistakes and made some clutch plays Sunday. Relying on fluke plays won’t win many playoff series, though.

After riding their Shaq-first offense in the last four games of the regular season, the Lakers didn’t have a Plan B when Houston took that option away in the fourth quarter by fouling the big fella.

They stopped running plays for Glen Rice, who took only three shots in the fourth quarter. They should send him into the low post every once in a while, just to change things up.

The Lakers need more ball movement, more balanced scoring. Four Lakers scored in double digits, compared to six Rockets. And O’Neal, Rice and Derek Fisher took 53 of the Lakers’ 78 shots.

The Rockets have established what they’re going to do on offense. And even though the Lakers have three big scoring threats, they did not find a way to keep the Rockets preoccupied with all three at once.

The flip side of the Lakers’ position--the glass-half-full version--is that they have more room for improvement than the Rockets do, and thus have a higher upside for Game 2.

Rocket Coach Rudy Tomjanovich and his crew did so many things right Sunday. They positioned themselves to steal the home-court advantage, until the victory literally slipped out of their hands on careless turnovers by Scottie Pippen and Cuttino Mobley.

Their prescription for Game 2 ought to be more of the same. Dump the ball into Charles Barkley and force the Lakers to decide whether to double him. Foul O’Neal before he can do any damage in the fourth. See if Fisher has another 20-point performance in him.

There isn’t much the Lakers can do different on defense. The Lakers did the right thing Sunday by leaving one defender on Barkley, even though he wound up with 25 points. When they double-teamed him, they got burned by three-pointers. The next step is to double and rotate, but the Lakers haven’t rotated well all season so there’s no reason to think they can start doing it now.

You don’t want to let guys like Mobley, Michael Dickerson and Sam Mack get too many open shots and start feeling too good. Don’t give Barkley the chance to make his teammates better.

The Lakers said they need to mix up their coverage occasionally just to keep the Rockets off balance. The only time they should make a point of double-teaming is in crunch time, because it’s better to take chances with the ball in the hands of a rookie than a two-time Dream Team member, top 50 all-time player, future Hall of Famer, etc.

So if the ball’s going in to Barkley and the Lakers can’t do anything about it, the next-best thing is to make the Rockets take as much time off the shot clock as possible before they give it to him, which will limit his opportunity to set up a two-man game and execute it.

Still, the Lakers can’t just pick up the Rocket guards deeper in the backcourt and waste time that way because Houston can use Pippen or even Barkley to bring up the ball.

“The one thing that we can do better is push Charles out away from the basket a little bit more, so it will take him some time to back in,” Fisher said.

Easy for him to say; he’s not the one who has to do the pushing.

“[Barkley’s] going to get points,” Robert Horry said. “It’s just up to us to make them difficult points.”

Kurt Rambis, coaching his first playoff game, played it pretty safe. When Kobe Bryant picked up his fourth foul, Rambis took him out for the last eight minutes of the third quarter and the first 3 1/2 minutes of the fourth. Even though the Lakers needed more offensive punch during that stretch, they were probably better off not risking Bryant too early. They sure needed him at the end of the game.

Although Tomjanovich had a superior day overall, Rambis actually did things better down the stretch. On the Lakers’ last possession, they ran an inbounds play that got the ball to Bryant.

With the game on the line and those three Hall of Famers on their roster, the Rockets put the ball in Mobley’s hands.

You get what you ask for. Everyone knows how things work in the NBA. With Bryant, the league’s Chosen One, the calls will go your way. When he and Mack both fell down, Mack was called for the foul and Bryant made both free throws.

With Mobley, a rookie, you get no breaks. Even though O’Neal cleanly blocked Mobley’s last-second layup, O’Neal hit the ball with so much force it snapped Mobley’s arm backward and sent the Rocket guard tumbling to the floor.

You can rest assured if that Rockets jersey had said “Barkley” on the back, Houston would have shot two free throws and the whole complexion of the series would have changed.

Instead, the Lakers took a 1-0 lead. Just think what they might do if they actually played an entire good game.

J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com.