Jackson Is Finding it Difficult to Motivate Defending Champs

Two months into a championship defense they promised would be played full-bore and without regard to the unconscious softening that sometimes comes with achievement, the Lakers don’t practice hard enough and haven’t taken the season seriously enough, Laker Coach Phil Jackson said Friday, a day after their 37-point victory at Phoenix.

Leaning against a cinder-block wall at the club’s El Segundo training facility, Jackson admitted he has been unable to reach this team as he had his first NBA champions, the Chicago Bull teams that won 61 games in 1990-91 and 67 games the following season.

The Lakers are 21-10. They lost 15 regular-season games last year.

“It’s hard to tell a team that’s played in June what’s important or what’s an emergency,” Jackson said. “At that point, you’re railing as much as you can for them to hear the call of “Wolf” or “Fire.” You can only say “Fire” or “Wolf” so many times. Our response level is decreasing. They don’t think there’s an emergency. There isn’t an emergency until the playoffs start. In reality, you want to play hard every night so it becomes second nature. The difficult thing for us as a coaching staff this year is we can’t get them to play as hard every night as we did last year.”

Jackson said he recently sat and discussed the overall effort with the team, and came away convinced that this was a club gliding toward the postseason.

“I think there’s a malaise that comes with seeing there’s only five or six good teams in the league,” he said. “It becomes a challenge to get yourself going for a basketball game. You see how hard the season is going to be, so you step into that level 10 times a month, when you’re really playing hard, it’s difficult. I’m used to having teams that come out hard. So, it’s a big disappointment to me about this team’s expense of energy. It’s like they’re saving energy all the time. Except for Kobe [Bryant] and Rick Fox. Those are two players, I’ll tell you, that have given great effort, great energy, this year.”

To that end, Jackson ran the players hard in practice Friday. They ran wind sprints at the end, though he didn’t get complete effort there, either.

“With energy, the more you put out, the more you get in return,” Jackson said. “That’s been my theory. The better shape you’re in, the more you can do. This team has not put out that kind of energy.”

In the meantime, there is no runaway team in the hearty Western Conference, so the Lakers are not yet in danger of spending homecourt advantage in the conference finals or semis. Shaquille O’Neal has had nagging injuries to his ankle and Achilles’ tendon, which have made him less mobile. Jackson said O’Neal has asked out of recent games for short periods because of fatigue, only reinforcing his theory that this is not a well-conditioned team.

“The ultimate hunger and thirst a team has in their first excursion as a championship club, as opposed to knowing this stuff, wonderful as it is, these games don’t really count until April 27,” Jackson said. “What we’re doing is seeding ourselves and placing ourselves in position. It’s hard for a coach to get their ear, at times, when the games are not really that critical. This isn’t unusual from what I’ve done after championships. It’s hard to get importance into games until they become really important.”

*

Horace Grant practiced Friday and is expected to play tonight against the Clippers. He had suffered from back spasms. . . . Jackson on Isaiah Rider’s game Thursday: “I felt he was a reluctant performer for some reason. . . . I didn’t think he had his heart in the game. That bothered me. But, for the most part, he’s been a willing and able performer.”