Meditate on This: They’re 0-2 Since

Last Thursday, before a long videotape session at L.A. Southwest College, Coach Phil Jackson took the Lakers through a short period of meditation--his first with the Lakers after initiating many such sessions during the Chicago Bulls’ championship runs.

Jackson turned down the lights in the gym’s back room, which the Lakers use for tape study, and asked the players to close their eyes.

“I think he just really wanted to mentally leave everything that we brought to the gym and or that we were thinking beforehand,” guard Derek Fisher said.

“He wanted to just kind of clear everything out and talk about what we had to talk about [in the videotape session].”

Said Kobe Bryant: “It was pretty intense. We just went in there and did it. No candles or nothing like that.”

And the effect? “You’re more aware,” Bryant said. “You wake up--like even now when you just close your eyes and then open them, things look a little different. . . .

“I’m sure we’ll do it again.”

Fisher said that the players felt comfortable.

“He kind of set the lights off and kind of let everybody just relax,” Fisher said. “He didn’t really get us to think about anything. . . .

“He’ll be good at picking and choosing when to do things and in what fashion. He knows we’re new to everything that he might try to do. So I don’t think he’ll do anything that’ll blow our minds out, you know?”

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Jackson said that, for the foreseeable future, he probably won’t greatly alter his use of Shaquille O’Neal, who played a career-high 55 minutes in the double-overtime loss to Utah on Monday.

“It doesn’t feel compelling to have to play anybody off the bench behind Shaq,” Jackson said, pointing to a two-minute O’Neal rest in Monday’s third quarter that saw the Jazz turn a 61-60 Laker lead into a 66-61 Laker deficit.

“As a tired player, he’s probably better than what we have to offer, and that’s pretty obvious. . . .”