Rambis Will Try to Be More Clear

In the aftermath of the Game 2 defeat against San Antonio on Wednesday, Coach Kurt Rambis lamented three Laker mental miscues in the final 18 seconds that led to the Lakers lugging an 0-2 series deficit back home.

First, Glen Rice went too late and too lightly on the prescribed double-team of Tim Duncan, allowing Duncan to work freely on the post against J.R. Reid.

“We were supposed to come down and double-team him right away,” Rambis said Thursday of the Duncan basket with 8.4 seconds left.

Reid failed to foul Duncan and force another Spur inbounds play, though Rambis informed the team in the previous timeout that they had a foul to give.

“I guess I didn’t do a real good job in telling them,” Rambis said. “I told them that we have a foul to give. I did not specifically say, ‘If a player gets you in a bad way, go ahead and foul him.’ Or try and take as much time off the clock as possible, no, I did not get that specific.

“But I did say that we had a foul to give, yes.”

And the players should have known to foul Duncan if he got the ball on the low post?

“That was an assumption on my behalf,” Rambis said. “I was obviously incorrect in that assumption.”

Finally, on the Laker inbounds play after Duncan put the Spurs ahead with a jump hook, Shaquille O’Neal did not go to the ball, forcing Kobe Bryant to whip a pass to Derek Fisher, who was not supposed to be an option on the play.

The ball was deflected, the Spurs recovered and the game was lost.

Rambis said that the inbounds pass from Bryant was designed to go to Rick Fox or O’Neal, depending on which the defense allowed, then right back to Bryant.

“But Shaq set a pick for Fish,” Rambis said, “instead of coming back to the ball.”

Rambis, who gave his team the day off Thursday after their seven-day playoff swing through Texas, said it’s all part of a team that is still learning and developing.

“The only thing I can do is just be a lot clearer [about] exactly what I want,” Rambis said.

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As he prepares the team for today’s practice and must-win Games 3 and 4 Saturday and Sunday at the Great Western Forum, Rambis said that, given the tight games in San Antonio, he isn’t about to start tearing up the Laker game plan.

“I don’t think that works,” Rambis said. “We don’t have the practice time to flush everything that we do down the toilet and just come up with a completely new scenario.”

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For the historically (or pessimistically) inclined, there is this nugget:

The Lakers haven’t rebounded from a 0-2 deficit to win a best-of-seven playoff series since 1968-69, when the Elgin Baylor-Wilt Chamberlain-Jerry West Lakers came back to win in six games against the San Francisco Warriors in a Western Division semifinal matchup.

Since then, the Lakers are 0-9 in playoff series in which they lost the first two games, including the last two seasons, to Utah both times, last season in a sweep.

Fox said he knows the Lakers will respond better this time: “I guarantee you this has to be something different than it was last year. . . . In no way can we look at an 0-2 deficit as the end of the series.”