Now Lakers Are Really Going to Be Defensive

Hey, well, this was going to be about how the Lakers won Friday and advanced to the . . .

Oops! The Portland Trail Blazers just drove the baseline and scored.

Anyway, as we were saying, this was going to be a good ol’ story about how the Lakers used their great athletic skill for . . .

Ouch! The Trail Blazers just grabbed an offensive rebound, scored again.

So, of course, you know, the Lakers showed up at the Rose Garden and stalked onto the court and . . .

Look out! It’s Bonzi Wells down the middle!

Call it Clinching, Interrupted: the story of a team that could have advanced to the NBA championships Friday but for a defense wracked by confusion and despair.

Portland won Game 6 of the NBA Western Conference finals by 10 points, 103-93, while outscoring the Lakers at the foul line by 15. But the story wasn’t there.

Portland won with nine more rebounds and one fewer turnover and by holding Shaquille O’Neal to 17 points, but the story wasn’t in any of those places, either.

The story was written in bold letters on the grease board that Phil Jackson waved at his team during a fourth-quarter timeout.

PLAY DEFENSE.

The Lakers came here with a mandate.

The Trail Blazers had the moxie.

The Lakers had the history.

The Trail Blazers had the heart.

Defense is emotion. It is energy. It is work.

Defense is not squealing starlets, it is squeaking sneakers.

For a couple of hours Friday, the Lakers played tippy-toe.

Damon Stoudamire drove through the middle as if there was no middle.

Bonzi Wells drove through the middle, and once again there is a Bonzi Wells.

The Lakers rarely stopped Steve Smith. And when they did, one of his teammates just grabbed an offensive rebound or loose ball and it started all over again.

The Trail Blazers shot 59% in the first quarter to give them the lead they never lost.

They shot 50% in the fourth quarter to nullify the Lakers’ 73% shooting from three-point range during that time.

From start to finish, the Trail Blazers were a speeding car, and the Lakers were so many orange cones.

“They played a lot more aggressive than we did,” said Brian Shaw. “When we didn’t help, they made us pay for it. When we helped, they made us pay for it.”

In defensive terms, the word “help” is loosely translated into “teamwork.”

If your man beats you, a teammate picks him up and everybody rotates.

That happened Friday about once.

If it wasn’t Smith backing up Kobe Bryant, it was Rasheed Wallace backing down A.C. Green and Robert Horry, or sometimes it was Stoudamire driving through half the team.

“They played desperado ball,” O’Neal said.

While the Lakers just played as if desperately overmatched, up until the time Rick Fox finally fought back in the fourth quarter with a few shoves of Scottie Pippen.

Pippen shoved back. Fox taunted him. Mike Dunleavy, Portland coach, cursed Fox so emphatically that his lips could be read in Des Moines.

We’ve come to expect such rough edges from the Trail Blazers, who have done everything this series from hacking Shaq to flagrantly elbowing John Salley.

But the Lakers should be above that.

They should behave like the defense that was ranked first in the league in fewest points allowed, the sort of defense that stops people cleanly.

Said Pippen: “Phil’s got them trying to get into my head, trying to get cheap shots on me, I know what he’s doing.”

Added Dunleavy: “They were taking fouls with a little extra mustard on them, and we didn’t appreciate it.”

The Lakers have won all season without such condiments.

It is not a good sign that they suddenly find them necessary now.

So now we go into Game 7.

And even though the Lakers have yet to lose three consecutive games all season, and even though they dominated their earlier series-deciding game this spring against Sacramento, one thing is clear about Game 7:

“That’s the last thing you wanted,” Glen Rice said.

The first thing they need to do is to rediscover their resolve. To uncover their passion.

And play defense, darn it.

“I just think the help wasn’t what it should have been,” Rice added. “It’s a matter of not knowing where to go on a rotation, and not being in the position where you are supposed to be.”

There we go with that “help” thing again.

It’s trite, but it’s true.

During the Trail Blazers’ 12-0 run in the first quarter, virtually every player on the floor was involved in getting torched.

Every clean Trail Blazer basket, it seemed, was accompanied by a dirty Laker look. Not at the Trail Blazers, but at one another.

“Now we have to bite, scratch, kick and claw,” Shaw said.

And trust.

It’s the one thing this team had been missing in previous seasons.

We thought it was one of the things that Jackson taught them.

Trust one another on defense. Know that somebody has your back. Stay aggressive and wait for reinforcements.

They lost all that Friday.

They need to find it before they lose something much greater.

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.