Is This Really the Right Time for Lakers to Become a Forward-Thinking Team?

Glen Rice said Friday he has figured out the answer to this suddenly baffling playoff series with the Houston Rockets.

It is--what do you know?--Glen Rice.

“One of the things we’ve got to realize is that their game plan is to keep Glen Rice out of the game,” he said Friday before practice. “We have to work harder to keep me involved.”

Now, few of us around here know Glen Rice very well.

Maybe he cares only about winning. Maybe he is so certain that he must handle the ball for the Lakers to win, he is willing to risk sounding selfish by asking for it.

But on a day when the Lakers were carefully piecing together their fragile version of teamwork, Rice delivered a monologue that threatened to swing through them like a hammer.

On a day when the Lakers desperately needed to think only about each other, it was hard to shrug off the idea that Rice was only thinking about himself.

“We’ve gotten back to that stand-still stuff,” Rice said. “It’s not what I’m about.”

He didn’t speak out of anger or make threats. He finished his statements with the promise that, “Everything is going to be all right, there is no need to panic.”

But Rice was clearly not thrilled that in Thursday’s 102-88 loss, which pulled the Rockets back in striking distance and swirled up old Laker doubts, he was ignored late.

After the Lakers had their last lead with five minutes left in the third quarter, Rice shot five times, making none.

Meanwhile, during that same 17-minute stretch, Shaquille O’Neal shot nine times, Kobe Bryant eight.

Forced to run his own plays in that span, Rice lost the ball three times on bad dribbles and poor passes. He had one rebound, no assists.

And enough, apparently, is enough.

“This is one of the things I tried to express most before I came here,” said Rice, who has been bewildered since the trade with Charlotte on March 10. “I didn’t want to come here to be just a jump-shot shooter. So far, that’s mostly what it’s been.”

He said being a lower priority “has been weird . . . . it’s been pretty much up and down. It’s hard to put a finger on whether they are going to go with me or not. It’s been frustrating.”

Coach Kurt Rambis implied that the Lakers tried to run plays for Rice late in Thursday’s game, but nothing worked.

“We were very stagnant,” Rambis said when asked about Rice. “We knew during the game we weren’t doing the things we had to do.”

When he heard Rambis’ implication, Rice looked especially frustrated.

He stared. He shrugged. He smiled.

“It don’t take much to set a screen,” he said.

It also doesn’t take much, however, to realize that the Lakers outscored the Rockets, 31-12, in the first quarter of Game 2--with Rice taking one shot.

To Rice’s credit, he emphasized that one of the reasons he wants the ball is so he can tire Scottie Pippen on defense, making Pippen less effective on offense.

“Even Pippen said it . . . we have to take away his legs,” Rice said. “We let him get too much energy. If I’m moving, it’s only going to help us.”

He also credited the Rocket defense, saying, “I don’t think my teammates forgot about me, I just think Houston put a lot of pressure on us.”

But despite countless speeches and stories since he joined the team, Rice still doesn’t seem to get it.

“If you use me correctly, I’ll be a hell of a headache for the other team,” he said.

Yet what is correct for one team may be dead wrong for another.

Maybe it was different in his previous stops as the hero of Charlotte and Miami. But he needs to know, again, that the Lakers are not about Glen Rice.

They are, first, about Shaquille O’Neal.

They are, second, about Kobe Bryant.

Rice needs to listen to the words of football great Gale Sayers, who once wrote a book entitled, “I Am Third.”

Sure, he can thrill the fans and inspire the team with nights like May 5, the season finale against Portland when he scored 40.

And certainly, he is a good first option in the final seconds, as evidenced by his game-winning jump shot against Phoenix in April.

But only if he works for it. Only if he can do it in a style that complements the four other players.

And only if he can do it within the framework of an offense that must begin with Shaq.

The Lakers cannot win consistently unless the ball goes inside first, and then comes out.

If Rice is there to catch it, fine. If Rambis runs a few screens to keep him interested, fine.

But the only person who can get Rice more seriously involved is himself.

And on this team, simply asking for the ball won’t do it.

Particularly not when asking for it one day before the season’s biggest game.

Rice said that he has “not even thought” about next year being an option year and possibly getting a long-term contract that would increase his $5.4-million salary to a hoped-for $14 million a year.

“That’s not even on my mind,” he said.

Fine. We’ll buy that. The other stuff is harder to swallow, particularly in the wake of how Rice came here, and who left to make room.

Implicit in the trade was the promise that Glen Rice would do things that would never be done by Eddie Jones and Elden Campbell.

Well, now he has done one.

The Lakers may indeed need to run plays from new and different sets to counteract the Rockets’ harassing defense. The I-formation should not be one of them.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.