Laker Win: Thanks, We Needed That

You can only use the side streets and back alleys for so long. Eventually you have to face the bully on your way home from school.

If there was one missing element to the Lakers’ championship run last season, it was that they didn’t conquer their old nemeses -- the San Antonio Spurs and the Utah Jazz -- along the way.

The Lakers took a detour last season when Tim Duncan’s knee injury kept him out of the playoffs and the Spurs out of the second round.

The statistic they liked to use in San Antonio is the Spurs had beaten the Lakers in nine of their past 10 game before Friday night’s meeting at Staples Center , including their 4-0 sweep in the 1999 playoffs.

Which is why there’s special meaning to the Lakers’ 109-100 victory. But it carries a warning that the Spurs won’t go away easily.

They Lakers bolted to a 20-point halftime lead, fell behind by three during a horrendous third quarter, pushed ahead by 17 again, then survived one last Spurs’ push.

“We felt like we had to beat these guys,” said forward Robert Horry, who played some critical fourth-quarter defense. “Not only because they beat us nine of the last 10, but just to come back from that debacle we had against Seattle [Thursday night]. We had to come with some energy. We had that in the first half. We’ve got to learn how to sustain the energy.”

The other lesson, even on a night when Kobe Bryant scored a career-high 43 points, is offense still runs better when Shaquille O’Neal is the focal point. That’s the way it worked in the first quarter, when O’Neal made five of six shots (and both free throws to boot).

But they only managed to get him two shots in the third quarter, when Bryant took nine, made five and finished with 12 points. The offense completely fell apart. It had no sense of direction and the Lakers were forced to throw up shots just to beat the 24-second clock.

Bryant’s most important shot of the quarter was his last one, a three-pointer in the final second to put the Lakers ahead by four.

Then Bryant poured in 15 more during the fourth quarter, which should be his time. He can create his own shots, he can make free throws and he’s evolving into one of the better clutch players in the league.

“we knew we could beat this team,” Bryant said. “We had to send a statement to them that we could do it.

“The first step is knowing that you can beat them. Then you go out there and physically do it.”

At the moment, the Spurs look like the largest roadblock between the Lakers and another parade through the streets of L.A.

And apparently San Antonio victories not only come with asterisks, they come with footnotes.

For instance, Phil Jackson discounts the Lakers’ loss at San Antonio in the final week of the 1999-2000 season for a variety of reasons.

“We played without Shaq, they didn’t play Duncan, we sat our starters the last quarter and couldn’t coast a 17-point lead into victory,” Jackson said before Friday’s game. “It wasn’t a critical thing. We were looking to just pad another ‘W’ on our season, we were looking to get our players in shape for the playoffs. There was no idea to send them a message.”

His tone of voice changed abruptly as he began to talk about Friday’s game.

“This is a game that I think we want to win,” Jackson said. “We’d like to have the night off like they did last night and come in here in a different situation, but it’s not so. So we’ll take it and go with it from there.

“We want to prove a point tonight, that we can match their energy and we can match what this game demands of us and live up to the capabilities and standards that we have.”

The Lakers lived up to every expectation in the first half.

They began by following what should always be their prime directive: get the ball to Shaquille O’Neal. As a result, O’Neal scored 10 of the Lakers’ first 14 points and he drew two early fouls on Tim Duncan.

Shaq had 23 points and nine rebounds by halftime. The Laker offense looked smooth and efficient even though Bryant shot only 5 for 13, in part because he also dished out five assists.

On defense, the Lakers held the Spurs to mostly jump shots when O’Neal was in the game.

The first half Friday night might have been one of their best 24-minute stretches of the season, and J.R. Rider wasn’t a part of it until the final couple of minutes.

(Rider was so eager to get in he stepped on the court before the horn sounded and the officials waved him in. Imagine that -- Rider checking in for work early.)

The lesson from this week is that Rider’s transgressions -- such as his lateness for Tuesday’s game against the Indiana Pacers, his subsequent benching by Jackson, his threats to reporters and half-hearted retraction -- aren’t enough to derail the Lakers’ train of thought. And his absence from the lineup isn’t enough to keep the Lakers from winning two big games. The Lakers’ low-key handling and resolution of the incident was the proper response. But he just forfeited most of his deposit in the trust bank.

Overall, it was a good week in Lakerland.

Jackson didn’t refer to the Lakers’ five-game winning streak as being broken Thursday night, he said it was “interrupted.”

That’s a pretty good way to describe it, because there wasn’t much the Lakers could do against an inspired Seattle team that has turned its attention to winning games now that it accomplished its primary mission of getting Paul Westphal fired.

The Lakers look like the defending champions again. They’re walking tall, and they probably can’t wait to tell the kids at school that they just beat down the Spurs.

But as the Spurs showed last night, they’ll be lurking around the corner.

You get the feeling their paths will cross again.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: ja.adande@latimes.com