Lavin Sees the Silver Lining

They passed each other in the hallway and not a word was spoken.

Scott Skiles simply stopped and smiled at Phil Jackson.

Jackson wouldn’t look at Skiles, but he wore his best Sunday smirk.

And the temperature in the building suddenly dropped 15 degrees.

So a series heats up just as a cold front moves in. Two coaches unleashing a rivalry that has been simmering below the surface. Two teams discovering a healthy dislike for one another, prefacing what promises to be a very interesting night in Los Angeles.

“Tuesday,” the Lakers’ Ron Harper said, “We’re beating the . . . out of them.”

Yes, it’s getting ugly. And on Sunday, the games began early.

At halftime of a 117-98 victory, the Suns had scored 71 points and the Lakers were getting embarrassed on national television. Jackson would not go in the locker room to address his team.

On consecutive possessions in the fourth quarter, Rick Fox committed blatant, angry fouls on Cliff Robinson, earning a technical foul on each play and an automatic ejection.

“He seemed to have a problem,” Robinson said. “But I don’t know what it was.”

And then came the ridiculous ending. With 18.4 seconds left and the Lakers down 21, Jackson called a timeout.

“‘That was just Phil being a pain in the . . . “ Luc Longley said.

So after Todd Day missed a free throw, Skiles answered with his own timeout.

“I wanted the game to end on our terms,” Skiles said.

Problem is, four seconds later, Jackson called another timeout.

“‘I guess Phil was sending a message to rookie,” Blount said. “But Scott is not going to back down to anybody.”

What Jackson was hoping to accomplish is anybody’s guess. It could be psychological warfare on the Suns. It could have been a way to prolong his own team’s misery. And it could’ve been a way to divert attention from questions he didn’t want to answer.

Like why his team is suddenly struggling to win basketball games.

Either way, Jackson’s antics didn’t go over well in the Sun locker room. Especially to Anfernee Hardaway.

“It was a message: ‘This is just a little bit of what you’re going to get in Game 5,’ ” Hardaway said. “We’ll see.”

Earlier in the season, Jackson questioned the validity of the Spurs’ NBA championship in 1999, given the lockout and his own hiatus from the game. It irked Skiles so badly that he fired back, wondering why Jackson would belittle another team just to make himself look good.

Last week in Los Angeles, Jackson said it takes a special energy for an opposing team to win at the Staples Center. Skiles said Jackson was talking just to hear himself talk.

It is a rivalry that has been bubbling, and one that officially boiled over Sunday. Two coaches with distinctly different personalities.

“Sort of a duel, if you like,” Longley said. “But [Sunday] there was a clear winner.”

Two men who might provide plenty of commotion over the next four years.