Lakers Are Not Shaken or Deterred

By TIM KAWAKAMI

May 12, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

PHOENIX —

It was not a perfect rescue, not at least, according to Kobe Bryant.

A day after Bryant had dribbled down the clock and then made a hanging jump shot over Jason Kidd with 2.6 seconds left, turning a potential Laker loss into a Game 2 victory and a 2-0 series lead over the Phoenix Suns, the 21-year-old guard said the play was like a dream, except for one nagging detail.

“I was a little upset, actually,” Bryant said before the Lakers’ Thursday flight to Phoenix for tonight’s Game 3.

“I wanted to hit it at the buzzer--like Larry Bird used to do.”

So it went with the Lakers on Thursday: no major loss of confidence despite letting Phoenix back into Game 2 with a fourth-quarter fumble, and some sense that they took the Suns’ best shot, and topped it with Bryant’s.

The Lakers missed critical free throws in the fourth quarter--two by Shaquille O’Neal after an intentional foul, one by Bryant, another by Ron Harper--they turned it over several times in the late going against Phoenix’s frantic pressure defense, and they saw what had been a 13-point lead turn into a late Phoenix lead.

But they also won, and Coach Phil Jackson and his players were not about to forget that.

“We don’t look at it as, ‘Hey, we just happened to win this one by luck,’ ” Jackson said. “We led 30-something minutes in that ballgame and we had the majority of the energy out there.

“But we know that Phoenix is capable of a rush and they came at us real hard last night and we weren’t prepared for it. And their energy overwhelmed us in the fourth quarter. We have to be prepared for that.”

Said O’Neal, “We just got kind of complacent. [In Game 1], we had a 15-point lead and we just kind of got them off their game and 15 went up to 20 and 25. I guess we thought it was going to be like that last night. . . .

“We played our ‘C’ game in the fourth quarter.”

Bryant went further, saying the Lakers lacked spark for much of the game, but still were able to maintain a lead for much of it, and win it in the end.

“It was a pretty horrible game,” Bryant said. “We had certain stretches where we played well. . . . Then there were some points in the game we just kind of dropped off and let them get back in it. . . .

“I hope it kind of shook us up. Because we had been cruising up to that point. Ever since the fifth game against Sacramento, our confidence has been sky high, and after the first game against Phoenix, which really wasn’t a tough game for us. [In Game 1,] we felt they kind of rolled over.

“So it was a good scare.”

Jackson said he anticipated the Suns playing the same kind of scrambling, full-court defense that helped them attack the Lakers--and get Penny Hardaway and Cliff Robinson into top gear--but said he wasn’t too worried.

“We think we handled the pressure defense all right, except for the two first offensive opportunities in the fourth quarter [when Robert Horry turned it over],” Jackson said.

“Yes, their pressure defense activated them, got them more motivated. But can they run it for 48 minutes? That’s what we’ll have to see.”

The Lakers head to Phoenix with an 0-2 record on the road in the playoffs so far this season.

A victory tonight at America West Arena, where the Lakers won twice this season, would give them a commanding 3-0 lead, a deficit from which no NBA team has come back to win. It could, Jackson agreed, be a Laker kill shot.

“Historically, they have been, you know?” Jackson said. “There’s no one that’s come back off it. Somebody will come off a 3-0 deficit someday. But it hasn’t happened yet.

“So it’s pretty obvious that it means a hell of a lot.”

For the Lakers, having Bryant--who memorably put up several airballs at the end of the Lakers’ series-clinching loss at Utah in his rookie season three years ago--make his first pressurized game winner also had some significance.

“I think it gives you that confidence to be able to do it again in this type of pressure situation,” said Bryant, who acknowledged he rarely lacks confidence, anyway.

“You just have something that’s fact, that you’ve done it. Not just having the confidence that you think you can do it. You’ve done it before.”

Said O’Neal, who was one of the options that Jackson planned in the play, before Bryant waved off the pick-and-roll move, “Kobe’s probably going to take those shots. And we don’t mind him taking those shots.”

Jackson said it would’ve been fine with him if O’Neal had gotten the ball, even with O’Neal struggling at the free-throw line.

But it did not surprise him that Bryant saved the last shot for himself.

“Well, that’s Kobe’s billing,” Jackson said. “I mean, that’s what he’s going to be as a basketball player, the kind of guy that can do that, and we want to see him have that success. . . .

“We just don’t want games to have to come down to that situation; we want to eliminate that kind of thing. . . . Yes, we want him to hit them. I think he can.

“He has shown it in the past. He has had struggles in the past. So it’s a 50-50 proposition right now.

“But we think that we can eliminate those kinds of Hail Mary-type opportunities.”

Tonight’s Game 3

Lakers at Phoenix,

7:30, ch. 9, TNT

Lakers lead series, 2-0

NO CONCERNS

Shaquille O’Neal won’t make any changes in his foul shooting. Page 7

SUNS REFLECT

Kobe Bryant’s game-winner recalls Michael Jordan for Phoenix. Page 7

ALSO

PORTLAND: 103