Road Safer for Lakers

Just another typical spring Laker business trip.

The hotel room key didn’t fit. The message light was burned out. The remote control was missing. The pillow mints were melted.

The Lakers began the first road game of their second playoff series Friday much like they have started road playoff games for as long as this team has been together.

Accidental tourists waiting to happen.

They trailed the Phoenix Suns by 10 points after one miserable quarter. They trailed throughout half of the fourth quarter.

The franchise that had lost seven of its last eight road playoff games, including both this postseason, was headed directly down the path to . . .

A concierge. Yep. They have one now.

His name is Phil Jackson, and he told them beforehand how they could survive this difficult road, and it had nothing to do with outscoring anybody.

“Defense and rebounding,” he said calmly before the game.

Defense and rebounding, he angrily said in the Laker huddle down the stretch.

So they did just that, holding the Suns to three baskets in 13 attempts in the final minutes of a 105-99 victory in Game 3 of a Western Conference semifinal series that is essentially over.

The Lakers lead three games to none.

And now they seem to know exactly where they are going, playing for a coach who seems to know exactly how to get them there.

“It’s about defense first . . . defense and rebounding,” Jackson said before the game. “You’ve got to find some way to stifle the other team.”

And when you do, said Jackson, it can stifle an entire arena, an entire series.

“At that point, you take it out of the crowd,” he said. “It becomes a sign that you have the other team’s number.”

The Suns’ number is now one, which is also the probable number of remaining games in the series, which continues Sunday.

So this year really is going to be different.

If you didn’t know that before now, you are darn certain of it by today.

“If we won a game like this last year, we would have only done it with an offensive explosion,” Kobe Bryant said. “This year we key everything defensively. It’s a big reason for our success.”

In the first five minutes Friday, the Suns beat the Lakers on three fast breaks.

In the final five minutes, the Suns beat them not.

With the Suns leading, 91-89, Rodney Rogers was hounded into a three-point attempt airball.

Robert Horry hit a free throw to pull the Lakers to within one.

Then Penny Hardaway was chased by Bryant into another miss.

And Shaquille O’Neal soared over two backs to tip in Ron Harper’s missed free throw to give the Lakers a lead they never lost.

While the Suns, with only one shot each time, and under constant pressure from the likes of Kobe and Shaq and Horry, just lost it.

“The fourth quarter was gut-check time for us,” Bryant said. “We knew we had to buckle down and get this one on the road.”

And to think, earlier, it was Phil Jackson who was losing it.

Jackson was shaking his head and looking as mad as he has ever looked after calling a timeout after the Suns went on an 11-2 run to start the third quarter and give the Suns a 61-54 lead.

Much of his glare was focused on Kobe, who had hit only four of 14 shots at the time with one assist and two turnovers.

Since beating the Suns with a hanging jump shot in the final seconds of Game 2 Wednesday, Bryant has been basking in the comparisons to Michael Jordan and his playoff-game winners.

But everyone forgets, Jordan averaged more than 40 points in some of those series.

While Kobe can perhaps win games like Jordan, and is increasingly playing defense like Jordan, he still needs more time to become the consistent everyday force of a Jordan.

Those comparisons paled even more Friday when it seemed as though, on every play during some stretches, Kobe was desperately trying to equal Wednesday’s dramatics.

Early, his fallaway shots just fell away.

But like everyone else, Kobe recovered, and was huge down the stretch, the irascible kid that he is, making a lunging layup, setting up a give-and-go, hitting free throws, grabbing rebounds, and, yes, stopping Hardaway.

Before the game, all the talk in the Laker locker room was about how important it was for them to make a tough showing on the road.

Not just good, but tough.

The team that lost only 15 games during the season has lost its last four road games dating to the regular season.

A franchise that has won two NBA championships with clinching victories on the road has lost seven of its last eight road playoff games.

“We have to prove the point that we can win on the road,” said Jackson. “The idea of us against them, of winning against the odds, all of that makes for winning basketball teams.”

The players, still shaky from the tremors and trashing at Sacramento’s Arco Arena, wanted this one for different reasons.

Everyone figured it was a good time to survive a tough environment.

But immediately there was a problem in that.

America West Arena was not a tough environment.

When the arena scoreboard blinked 7:30--the advertised game time--the seats were only half full.

Before the starting lineups were announced, the biggest cheer was for the televised playoff game between the New York Knicks and Miami Heat.

This reporter was seated in the middle of the Suns’ crowd, about 20 rows from the court, with the potential to be blocked from the action by standing fans.

Until the final few minutes, this reporter has never had a better seat in his life.

The fans rarely rose to their feet until then, except perhaps to cheer the halftime dog races. When the Suns fell behind, the fans fell silent.

This place makes the Staples Center sound like Cameron Indoor Arena.

Compared to Arco Arena, this place was no louder than one of those cow pastures outside that arena.

Well, OK. They were pretty loud every time Shaq picked up a foul.

Or every time they broke out a chant that include the words, “L.A.”

You know that. It’s OK, Portland fans. You can keep saying it, too. The Lakers are coming.

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