This Time, Rider Is Too Ready

One game after Isaiah Rider hurt the Lakers because he wasn’t mentally ready to play, Rider’s only problem Friday night was that he was too eager to help.

On one fourth-quarter possession, with the Lakers trailing the Seattle SuperSonics by two points, Rider forced three hurried tries. Seattle scored on a three-point play on the other end and the Lakers had a 103-95 loss.

Rider gave the Lakers 16 points Friday. He gave the Lakers the scoring they desperately needed on a night when Kobe Bryant’s shot was off and Shaquille O’Neal’s free-throw shooting dropped to a historically bad level: 0 for 11.

Except Rider has yet to give the Lakers a definitive answer to how much they can expect from him, and when? Is this one project that’s too much even for Phil Jackson to handle?

After the SuperSonics successfully deposed Paul Westphal, Gary Payton might not be the first person you’d think of consulting on player-coach relationships. But the fellow Oakland native is one of Rider’s best friends in the NBA, and he knows what works for his boy.

“J.R. has just got to be J.R.,” Payton said. “You guys just have to let him go. Leave him alone. He’s going to make mistakes. If you just let him go and talk to him and be on his side, he’ll understand what his role is.

“I know him well. He’s a good guy. He’s going to make mistakes. People need to leave him alone and stop writing about him all the time and let him hear all this crazy stuff. That makes him want to do some things. If you leave him alone, he’ll be fine. He’s a great basketball player.

“He’s got to get adjusted to Coach Jackson, and I think he’s getting adjusted to him.

“The way he’s been talking to me, he said he’s got to obey stuff, he’s got to accept what he’s got to do.

“He’ll come along. He respects Phil Jackson to the ultimate. And I think Coach Jackson respects him. As long as they’ve got respect on both ends, it’s easy to relate with each other.

“But you can’t take advantage of the respect. When [the coach] gives you leeway, I don’t think you should go ahead and be late again or do something crazy.”

Wednesday night’s Oaktown escapade, in which Rider missed the team bus, then tuned out Jackson in the pregame meeting, was the first time this season that Rider’s actions really hurt the Lakers. They were ripe for a letdown when they traveled to Oakland to face the lowly Warriors right after winning a statement game against the Philadelphia 76ers. They could have used a little spark from Rider. But Jackson kept him on the bench and the Lakers lost in overtime.

“It hurts whenever we’re down a man, for whatever reason,” Rick Fox said.

This was Rider’s second episode, coming a little over a week after he was an hour late for a game against the Indiana Pacers.

Rider’s presence has brought up inevitable comparisons to the two Dennis Rodman experiments, which worked with Jackson and the Bulls but failed in L.A.

The leadership factor of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen is usually credited with the success in Chicago, but as Jackson explained Friday night there also was more bonding.

“I had players that embraced him, even got tattoos because of Dennis--much to my disapproval,” Jackson said. “It was when they were going to those bars . . . which had both sexes stripping and multiple activity in the cloak room, I thought I had to step in and talk a little bit about going too far to accommodate Dennis.”

The Lakers don’t have the strong locker room presence. O’Neal prefers to let the coaches and front office dispense the discipline, while Bryant does his own thing.

There also isn’t anyone on the Lakers for him to hang with, which was a concern I heard from one of Rider’s old Portland teammates in the preseason.

So he’s on his own, while Jackson hopes everyone can gather in the tent.

“The important thing for us is to know that this is a group process,” Jackson said. ‘It’s not me, it’s not an individual thing, it’s not between he and I--although I’m the one regulating time. That’s what I wish for this team, that the leadership and veteran experience, that’ll be easy for him to accommodate them and for them to accommodate him.”

Rider was the accommodating sort on Friday. He usually arrives at Staples Center during the 10 minutes when Jackson conducts his pre-game meeting with the media in the hallway outside the Laker locker room. This time, as if on cue, Rider walked in as Jackson was talking about him. But this time he promptly changed into his uniform and made his way out to the court for extra practice before Jackson finished speaking. Clearly, this was a night he was ready to play.

He was greeted with cheers when he checked into the game with 45.7 seconds left in the first quarter.

The Staples Center fans haven’t given up on Rider. It’s as if they recognize he could be the determining factor on whether there’s another parade through downtown next year.

They practically will the ball toward the basket every time he shoots. It might not have been the triangle offense, but Rider was doing his thing. He backed down Brent Barry for a baseline jumper, a classic Rider move. He drove to the hoop. He threw an alley-oop pass to Bryant for a layup and he D’d up Payton. He made a straightaway jumper and scored eight points in the second quarter, which might have been his best period as a Laker.

And yet in two different ways, he has hurt the Lakers in these back-to-back losses.

*

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