STREAKS AND VALLEYS

By TIM KAWAKAMI

Feb. 13, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Face it, they have you hooked, and every episode is a revelation.

Big, charismatic stars. Award-winning director. Absorbing opening scenes. Dramatic push toward glory. Characters you understand, characters you can’t. A stumble. A hurried, worried atmosphere. Dramatic tension. And . . .

We’re not even to the really interesting parts yet.

“I’ve never been on a championship team, so I don’t know what to compare it to,” Laker forward Rick Fox said last week.

“But in the 16-game [winning] streak, I was sitting there going. . . . It was as good as I’ve felt on a team. This was as good of a team as I’ve been on.

“Then we got to the 3-6 stretch and I’m going, ‘Wh-wh-what’s going on here?’ ”

Fox is not alone.

There are a thousand ways to get to a 37-11 record, second-best in the league at the all-star break, and the Lakers took about the strangest one.

“This team has had a penchant for having ups and downs,” Coach Phil Jackson said recently, pointing to the Lakers’ regular-season booms and postseason busts the last few seasons. “And we’re trying to right that.”

So goes the right-wrong teeter-totter of the Jackson Era’s first 48 games:

There are traces of the old Laker patterns (incredible high-end talent, fatal flaws in the machine), echoes of the precision and command of the Chicago Bull dynasty, and dissonant patches where you can see a mishmash of both.

This team raced to a stunning 11-4 start without Kobe Bryant, went 20-1 with him back in the lineup, then started sputtering before a recent return to form.

“It ain’t the first big horse out,” veteran guard Ron Harper said. “It’s the first horse that crosses the finish line.

“We got off to a very fast start. But it’s a long, long year.”

This Laker team can seem smarter, tougher and more cohesive than any of recent vintage, and a week later seem more fragile and deeply worried than it ought to be.

This is a high-concept, low-tolerance, short-attention-span Laker season, and get ready for more of the same and less of what you expect.

“You’re going to lose close games,” Jackson said. “But you don’t want to double it up in this game [with consecutive losses].

“And the situation with our team is that we have to find a way to right ourselves. And that’s one of the things that this team has not historically had, which is a good ability to come back and right themselves and correct the mistake.”

So this team continues to struggle with its own demons and talents, and no one knows which potent force will prevail by playoff time.

But as Shaquille O’Neal, Bryant and the rest of the Lakers have surged, sagged and searched for an even keel, they have provided intriguing clues about where they may be headed and what might impede their greatest leap forward.

O’Neal is playing too much, because the Lakers need him to play too much.

Bryant is shooting too much, because the Lakers probably need him to shoot too much.

Glen Rice is not effective enough, but the Lakers might be effective enough without him, especially if they can get a strong big man or a more active scorer and defender in a trade for him.

Everybody worries too much, but there is too much to worry about.

Zen, and the art of Laker basketball.

“I think we’ve got a situation where we’ve got to have more enthusiasm about playing ball, playing selfless basketball, which is a problem for us,” Jackson said. “And play through situational things that are difficult on the floor.

“Sometimes, we get mired into a game and it looks like mental fatigue is the biggest problem we’ve got, we’ve got too many worries by the end of the game.”

Breaking It Down

Really, the first 48 games can be sliced up into four pieces:

* With Bryant out because of a broken hand, the Lakers got off to a surprising 11-4 start, led by O’Neal playing by far the best, most complete, most dependable basketball of his career.

The Lakers weren’t exactly running Jackson’s triangle offense to perfection, and there was no expectation that they could so swiftly.

But O’Neal was on a rampage, shooting 59.5% from the field and rebounding and blocking shots at a clip that, if maintained for the season, would be career bests. And the defense tightened significantly--opponents averaged only 90.7 points during that span, more than five points fewer than the previous season average.

Jackson counts this period as the surest sign there might be bright things ahead for his team.

“We didn’t pack it in and played better as a unit and even got inspired,” Jackson said of playing without Bryant. “We lost one of our key players for more than a month of the season. . . . To overcome those kind of odds and still be where we’re at, we’re in fine shape.”

Theme: Jackson always said the triangle will flourish with a dominant post player.

Question: So what happens when Bryant comes back?

* The Lakers were either going to get bogged down trying to readjust to Bryant’s manic energy, or, if everything worked smoothly, leap to a new level.

They leaped, adding his spontaneity and speed to the formula, running off 20 victories in 21 games, including the 16-game streak that had the rest of the league trundling behind.

They destroyed Seattle on the road, after spotting the SuperSonics a 19-point third-quarter lead, one game that even Jackson acknowledges was impressive. They defeated San Antonio at Staples Center on Christmas Day.

But they also had three easy victories over the Clippers, which is enough to throw any streak into question.

“We weren’t really playing that great,” O’Neal said recently of the streak. “We played good, we played smart, we gutted a couple games out. And, you know, it’s a long season and it has peaks and valleys.”

Theme: Faster, stronger, smarter, better.

Question: Were the Lakers that good or was the league that bad?

* Then the Lakers hit their first road bump--a tough loss at Indiana on Jan. 14, to end the streak and give them pause for thought.

“When you’re on a streak like that, you’re really on top of your game, and there’s incredible pressure to remain focused,” Laker General Manager Mitch Kupchak said.

“Then, when the streak’s finally over, quite naturally that pressure’s gone and maybe you let up a little bit.”

There was no shame in losing to the Pacers, but, for 37 days, the Lakers hadn’t felt what it was like to lose, and suddenly, they were about to face one of the toughest spans of the season.

They defeated Minnesota in the next game, but the Lakers went back home with dead legs and woozy heads, and lost to Seattle on Gary Payton’s three-point shot in the final seconds.

A game later, the Lakers lost to Portland, then in double-overtime at Utah--their first losing streak of the season.

The Lakers had second-half leads in all four losses but could not find the shooter or the defensive stand to meet the clutch moments in any of them.

O’Neal, who averaged 49 minutes, made 50% of his shots in those four defeats, had several single-digit rebounding games, visibly began to drag and pointed out the Lakers’ need for a dependable backup center all too clear.

Then, the Texas free fall--a disoriented loss at Houston, and a 24-point pounding at San Antonio, sending the Lakers to a 3-6 skid after the win streak ended.

“As the season goes, we’re going to have our ups and our deep, deep, deep downs,” Harper said at the end of the Texas trip. “And we’re deep down right now.”

Jackson talked about a lack of energy, mentally and physically, during the losing spell, statistically borne out in one glaring area--rebounding.

In their first 40 games, getting huge numbers from O’Neal and consistent play from A.C. Green and Robert Horry at power forward, the Lakers outrebounded the opponent 28 times.

In the worst stretch, the Lakers were outrebounded four times in five games, and lost all four games. Overall, they are 30-1 when they outrebound the opponent, 7-10 when the opposite occurs.

Also, following a trend begun by Indiana’s Travis Best and Payton, the Lakers were wounded primarily in Texas by screen-and-roll plays and deep penetration by Bryce Drew, Steve Francis and Avery Johnson against the Lakers’ bigger guards and step-slow rotations.

“I think it starts defensively, all the time,” Jackson said. “Some nights you’ll have bad shooting nights and it’ll hurt you.

“But more or less, in the course of a season, it’s going to be defense that holds you together. It didn’t do that for us.”

Theme: Hold on--the bench is inconsistent, the power-forward situation isn’t a slam-dunk, neither Green nor Harper is getting any younger and that all might cause problems when the Lakers have to win playoff games against Portland or San Antonio.

Question: Weren’t those the same questions that faced the Lakers at the start of the season?

* And right when things threatened to spill out of control . . .

The Lakers marched into this break with home victories over Utah, Denver and Minnesota, keeping them right on the heels of Portland for the Pacific Division lead and the best record in the NBA.

Ahead is a tough six-game trip, which probably will set the tone for the next portion of Laker basketball.

Theme: Holding opponents to 40.8% field-goal shooting this season (which, if maintained, would easily be the franchise’s best mark since the league started keeping the statistic 29 years ago) is a giant sign that this is a team better suited for the playoffs than in a long while.

Question: But what are they going to do about Rice, who was not a significant factor in any of the three games--or really, since before the Texas trip?

Tough Grind Ahead

This Laker team sometimes can size up an opponent about midway through the first quarter, pound it in to O’Neal regularly, use Bryant to zip around the edges, find Rice when he’s open, and almost inevitably grind out double-digit leads by the third quarter.

This Laker team also has not been able to count on anyone but their top three scorers to produce double-digit outings, has proved vulnerable to pick-and-roll offenses and does not have the ability to get out on the break for easy baskets with regularity.

So many extremes, in so short a time.

We know a lot about this team already, but we do not know precisely how the gears and pulleys will work under pressure, in the Rose Garden or Alamodome, when there is every excuse to grind and collapse, as they have so often in the recent past.

And, Jackson suggests, this is when his real work--the job he wanted, the job for which there has never been a better candidate--begins.

Del Harris or maybe even Kurt Rambis might have been able to get the Lakers somewhere near where they are now.

But probably only Jackson can be asked to do more.

The first 48 games have shown that the Lakers can and want to learn, and that there is plenty for them to learn, maybe too much to jam into three more months.

“Maybe I’ll be able to help this group play together better and hopefully we can build a better community as we go through this next [portion] of the season,” Jackson said.

“So that when the tough grind of the playoffs [is here], we have the chemistry so we can hang tough together.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Lakers at the Break

Where the Lakers rank in the NBA:

RECORD

37-11, 2nd

OFFENSE

99.5 ppg, 8th

DEFENSE

90.8 ppg, 3rd

AVG. ATTENDANCE

18,733, 7th