Amazingly, Game 5 Will Be a Happening

This is not happening.

Shaquille O’Neal is not blowing his trophy.

Kobe Bryant is not blowing his cool.

Phil Jackson is not blowing his legend.

The Lakers are not blowing their season.

This is not last year, or the year before, or the year before that.

This does not have anything to do with anybody named Van Exel or Ed-die or Elden or Delmer.

Darn it, this is not happening.

Is it?

We thought we would have two months to find out.

We now only have about two hours.

The Lakers’ glorious championship march has been suddenly, strangely, frighteningly reduced to a single Friday night street fight.

Just after you pick up your paycheck, come watch the Lakers earn theirs as they host the Sacramento Kings on Friday in the deciding game of a first-round playoff series that was apparently decided last week.

Until the carefree Kings decided it wasn’t.

And the constricted Lakers decided, well, OK, the Kings were right.

And so the Kings rolled over them in a series-tying, 101-88 victory Tuesday in that deafening barn-turned-airport-runway called Arco Arena.

“Five, five, five, five,” shouted 17,317 fans as the Kings finally finished tossing around their wide-eyed victims.

Those fans weren’t reciting the point total that was topped by only one Laker reserve--but they could have been.

They weren’t reciting the number of free throws O’Neal made in 12 attempts--but they could have been.

They weren’t reminding everyone of a number that A.C. Green didn’t reach in points and rebounds combined--but they could have been.

Nope, they were talking about the one thing the Lakers wanted to avoid more than anything else in this five-game series, more than Chris Webber’s skills or Vlade Divac’s leadership.

They were talking about that Game 5.

That one-slip-and-your-season-can-be-finished Game 5.

“We believe, and it’s now down to one game,” King Jon Barry said. “And anything can happen in one game.”

Not that the Lakers still aren’t backed by all measurable points of reality.

If the outmanned Kings can scale this mountain one more time Friday, I will mark my arm with Jason Williams’ favorite tattoo and spend a day with my head in his favorite white towel.

It still says here, it’s not happening.

But the point about Tuesday was, now it could.

Ron Harper grasped at a straw in the final seconds when, while sitting on the bench, he slipped one of his Chicago Bull championship rings on his left hand and patted his head with that hand.

That might have worked a month ago when the Lakers were adopting a Bulls-type attitude while powering to the league’s best record.

But the point about Tuesday was, that point is now lost.

Fans behind the bench saw the ring and began shouting.

“Where’s Shaq’s.”

“Where’s Jordan?”

Then, with O’Neal sitting just feet away, the fans joined in a chant that he’s been hearing, one way or another, forever.

“Not with Shaq,” they repeated. “Not with Shaq.”

As if all that wasn’t enough, the game ended with Williams throwing a behind-the-back pass to smiling referee Hugh Evans, then punting the ball toward the ceiling.

“The Lakers ain’t ready for no championship!” shouted another fan.

And truthfully, at times Tuesday, you had to wonder.

The energy was spotty.

The bench was terrible.

From Glen Rice’s short miss that started the game to Webber’s steal from Bryant in the final minutes that essentially ended it, the Lakers did not play like a team that really believed it won 67 games in the regular season.

Or could win just one here.

“Everybody was playing cautious,” John Salley said. “Instead of being aggressive, we were all too worried about just doing the right thing. Now we have to be aggressive. We don’t have any choice.”

You knew it was one of those nights when Bryant’s most dramatic play was not a leap or a shot, but a shove of Divac, who has clearly gotten underneath his old team’s skin.

And Tuesday began with so much promise.

Implicit in hours of Monday meetings and drills was the promise that they would adjust to Game 3’s stunning loss.

“This is a situation, we’ve been around here three days, burying ourselves in here, going through a lot of things,” Jackson said beforehand. “It will be interesting to see where we’re at.”

It was all set up.

Then, with the gasping drama of the Kings’ trademark three-player, two-of-them-falling-out-of-bounds fast break, a different sort of reality set in.

The Lakers missed seven of their first nine shots, 12 of their first 15, and the Kings pulled out their favorite weapon, momentum.

The Kings had an 11-point lead before some courtside fans had finished their first White Russians.

How bad was it?

In the first three minutes of the second quarter, little Tony Delk stole two rebounds from the Lakers and turned them into four point for the Kings.

How bad was it?

At one point in the second quarter, Vanessa Williams was struggling with a question on the taped television show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.”

While her husband, Rick Fox, sat helplessly on the bench.

Fox had just returned from New York where Williams gave birth to a girl Monday. Jackson didn’t play him because, among other things, he was worried about his energy.

The coach had no idea that, apparently, the rest of the team was on that airplane with Fox.

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