REACHING FOR THE TOP: Lakers Were Best Team in Regular Season, but the Real Test Starts Today

Erase the smiles and end the celebrations, the Lakers are starting the playoffs and are in no mood for sweetness and light.

Instead, after their last practice before today’s playoff opener against the Sacramento Kings, Laker players and coaches on Saturday were determinedly antisocial and purposely seeking a high state of snarl.

Coach Phil Jackson departed with a tight smile, but without comment.

Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal exited the Lakers’ El Segundo practice site in near silence, and at high rates of speed.

And Ron Harper, the Lakers’ co-captain and Jackson’s emotional conduit, gave voice to the entire be-fierce-or-be-beaten attitude, addressing the team after practice, then issuing a public call to arms and a warning for anybody who would not or could not follow:

“We’re a team that needs to change its attitude--we need to change it,” he said. “We need to be harder.”

After the relaxed, sometimes slipshod last two weeks of the regular season, and with the dangerous eighth-seeded Kings to deal with, Jackson did not surprise Harper when he declined to speak to reporters.

Jackson, who on Saturday said only that he had nothing left to say after two days of interviews and had an appointment to get to, has been in an intense mood for a week, Harper said.

“He’s yelling at some guys,” said Harper, who won three NBA championships under Jackson with the Chicago Bulls. “Guys need to understand one thing: This is what you get your big paycheck for. This is the time. . . .

“He knows that we have to change some on this team. There’s some guys who just think it’s the same thing [as the regular season].

“This year, we had a great basketball season. But now’s the time we need guys to be more on that edge, I think.”

Even though only two top-seeded teams out of 32 have dropped first-round matchups to eighth-seeded opponents?

Even after accumulating an NBA-best 67 victories, and after clinching home-court advantage throughout the playoffs in early April?

“That doesn’t mean [anything] right now,” Harper said. “They will learn real fast, 67 games don’t mean anything. It’s the hype.

“They feel that some teams are going to hand us this thing. [But] we’re going to have to earn the championship ring.

“We may have to lose one or two games, but they will learn that we’re going to have to earn this thing and fight every ballgame. No ballgame is going to be an easy ballgame.”

Rick Fox said he agreed with Harper’s post-practice comments to the team, and thought that, after such a successful regular season, the Laker players needed a little bit of a wake-up holler.

Other Laker teams have gone into the playoffs with high expectations only to fall rapidly the first time a hard challenge arose, Fox said.

“Ron put it best when he said, ‘Don’t believe the hype,’ ” Fox said. “We haven’t won anything yet. No one’s going to go handing us any rings tomorrow at the Staples Center.

“I mean, it’s true; it’s so true. We had a great regular season, but that means nothing.”

Said Harper: “Sac’s got a good basketball team, they’ve got some ballplayers that have been there. So they’re going to be fired up. They know they’re not a team who should be seeded way that far down.”

Early last week, Jackson--who has the highest playoff winning percentage in NBA coaching history--hinted at this theme, and evoked the playoff failures of the Lakers’ recent past to illustrate his point.

This must be, Jackson said, a completely focused team.

“It’s without a doubt a time for players to put everything else aside and make this commitment,” he said, “because this is really our Lenten season, so to speak, to get to the finale.

“And anything that doesn’t match that effort at this time--selfish interests or whatever, that get in the way of players giving wholehearted dedication for this . . . [is] inexcusable, because that’s what you really play for in this game. So that’s the message. . . .

“You relax in this amount of tension, you find a way to be able to not only play with that tension, but you also have the ability to enjoy it and look forward to it, so it becomes something you embrace.

“So this team has got to find that. For us, this is our Kentucky Derby [and it] lasts for a five-week period of time until the finals come around the first of June.”

A.C. Green, a member of the last two Laker teams to win titles (in 1987 and 1988), pointed out that the core of the current team has a few playoff failures on its resume.

“It’s good to be on a very dominant team,” he said. “But I know being a paper team is nothing.

“That’s what this team is used to being--good on paper, but not good at getting final results. So, hopefully, we can change that now.”

Said Robert Horry, a two-time champion with the Houston Rockets but also a member of the last three Laker teams that have fallen short of the NBA finals:

“I think certain guys feel a lot of pressure, they put a lot of pressure on themselves. If we just go out and don’t think about that, just play our normal game, don’t worry about, ‘Well, I’ve got to put the team on my shoulders and carry us,’ go out and play regular basketball, everything will take care of itself.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Lakers’ 60-Win Teams in Playoffs

Laker teams with 60 or more victories and how they fared in the playoffs (The Lakers finished with a 65-17 record this season):

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Year Coach Record Result 1972 Bill Sharman 69-13 Beat New York Knicks in finals, 4-1 1973 Bill Sharman 60-22 Lost to New York Knicks in finals, 4-1 1980 Paul Westhead* 60-22 Beat Philadelphia 76ers in finals, 4-2 1985 Pat Riley 62-20 Beat Boston Celtics in finals, 4-2 1986 Pat Riley 62-20 Lost to Houston Rockets in West finals, 4-1 1987 Pat Riley 65-17 Beat Boston Celtics in finals, 4-2 1988 Pat Riley 62-20 Beat Detroit Pistons in finals, 4-3 1990 Pat Riley 63-19 Lost to Phoenix Suns in second round, 4-1 1998 Del Harris 61-21 Lost to Utah Jazz in West finals, 4-0

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* Lakers started season 9-4 under Jack McKinney, who was replaced because of injuries suffered in a cycling accident.

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LAKERS vs. SACRAMENTO: Game 1: 2:30 p.m. today at Staples Center, Channel 4