Cancellation Leaves Fisher, Jackson Disappointed

The Lakers were supposed to open Alltel Arena in Little Rock, Ark., Tuesday night, but instead spent only about an hour there, and the doors stayed closed to the public.

About 4:45 p.m., while the Lakers were on their team bus headed to the arena, Alltel officials announced that their exhibition season opener against the Washington Wizards had been canceled because of a crack in an upper-deck support beam.

So, Derek Fisher’s homecoming never happened, and Coach Phil Jackson didn’t get his first chance to test the Lakers’ new triangle offense.

“A very strange day,” Jackson said.

The Lakers spent about an hour in meetings at Alltel, then bused to the airport to fly to Kansas City, Mo., for tonight’s scheduled game, also against the Wizards.

“I feel bad for the people of the city of Little Rock and Central Arkansas and just the entire state,” said Fisher, who went to high school and college in Little Rock and had several hundred friends and family set to attend the game. “I mean, this doesn’t happen very often, just to have an event planned like this. . . .

“It’s something I’d been looking forward to since I saw this game on the schedule. You know, I would’ve loved to have gone out there and gotten a chance to perform in front a lot of familiar faces, but I’d rather them cancel it than some catastrophic event happening when we’re performing and people getting hurt or injured. . . .

“I don’t know if the Lakers will ever want to do this again, even when this is up and running.”

Jackson said that it was lucky he pushed the players through a much-harder-than-normal morning shoot-around.

“It’s frustrating, because you don’t get an intense practice because it’s a game day, and then you don’t have a game and you’ve kind of lost a day of progress,” Jackson said.

“It’s fortunate for us we took two hours this morning and had a real practice. We didn’t tape [the players’ ankles in preparation for contact], but we weren’t caught off guard.”

Jackson noted that it would have been better for all involved if the Alltel authorities, knowing this grand opening had been scheduled for months, had checked everything before getting the teams on planes and ready to play a game.

“We’ll have a full practice tomorrow [at Kansas City’s Kemper Arena],” Jackson said, even though it’s the morning of a game.

“We’re unhappy and we kind of feel bad for Derek Fisher who had an opportunity to play in front of his home crowd and his family and open this arena.”