Lakers Find a Calm Center

You can, too, go home again, as Shaquille O’Neal proves weekly.

O’Neal made his latest return to the Lakers with the usual thunderclap Sunday night, scoring 23 points with 11 rebounds as the Lakers ran up a 25-point lead over the Atlanta Hawks. . . then lost 22 points of it. . . then saw Isaiah Rider’s attempt at a tying three-pointer rim out and hung on to win, 93-88, before 18,510 in Staples Center.

“I’m human,” said O’Neal afterward. “I think two times in seven years isn’t a bad ratio. But I just plan to be a little bit smarter.

My team needs me.”

If Friday’s one-sided loss to the Rockets here was any indication, his team barely exists without him, which is why Coach Phil Jackson is pleading for a new, mellow Shaq.

“It’s a mind-set,” said Jackson. “Sometimes with these young men, they feel like their manhood is impugned and somehow or other, they have to stand up for their better selves. But basketball is not a game of retaliation. It’s a Christian game of turning the other cheek, or so David Stern says.”

As far as the Lakers were concerned, this was a Christian game of charity too, reviving the lifeless Hawks so they could make it a contest.

With a game coming tonight in Phoenix, Jackson tried to rest his starters in the fourth quarter.

When his second unit faded into the night, however, he was forced to reconsider.

“I told the second unit, if they don’t value playing time, I’ll find other guys who will,” Jackson said.

“It wasn’t a covert threat. It was an overt threat.”

The Hawks, last season’s top-rated defensive team, came reeling into Staples Center with a 1-5 record. They were ranked No. 27 in defense, having allowed 109.6 points a game. Of course since they started on this West Coast swing they were even worse, having given up 115 points in a loss at Denver, 102 in another at Vancouver and finally 131 in a fearsome beating Saturday night in Portland.

“We’ve got seven new people,” Coach Lenny Wilkens said before the game.

“Trying to get them all to understand the concepts. . .

“I mean, we lost a lot of good defensive players who really understood the concepts of what I wanted and how to play and stuff like that.

“So we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”

Just how much work soon became evident.

The Lakers scored 35 points in the first quarter (one less than they scored in Friday’s first half), had 57 points and a 22-point lead by halftime and a 25-point lead late in the third period.

O’Neal had 21 by then. Glen Rice had all of his 14; Jackson never did put him back in in the fourth quarter.

Then the Hawks began creeping back into it as the Laker subs threw up an assortment of bricks, in between turnovers. The Lakers only made one shot from the field in the last 6:41--Rick Fox’s layup, after a steal--and on came the Hawks.

With 2:00 left, the Lakers still led, 91-79.

At the 1:00 mark, it was down to 91-86.

With :47 left, Dikembe Mutombo scored on a rebound to make the score 91-88. At the other end, Robert Horry bounced a three-pointer off the rim and over the backboard and the Hawks had the ball back with :25 left and a chance to tie.

Rider, the oft-wayward Hawk who led them with 24 points, wound up taking the three, a 25-footer a stride behind the top of the circle. It arched high, fell into the hoop but rimmed out. O’Neal deflected the rebound, Derek Fisher grabbed it, was fouled and made both free throws to finally put the game away.

“Our defense,” said Wilkens later, “I mean. . .

“We go over it time after time with these guys. How we want them to play, how to rotate.

“But you’ve got to be focused.”

Someone suggested this season will require great patience.

“Yeah,” said Wilkens, laughing, “but I don’t know if I have any of that.”

The Lakers, who thought they had problems, are 6-2, with a test coming tonight but at least, they’re together again.

*

GRIZZLIES: 109

CLIPPERS: 89

Maurice Taylor is injured and Clippers blow a big lead in deflating loss, which drops L.A. to 1-5. Page 5