Portland Levels Lakers

By TIM KAWAKAMI

May 23, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

It was Phil Jackson’s nightmare scenario, taking physical form and taking enormous liberties with the Laker offense--or what passed for it--Monday.

Things were normal for a half. Then . . . everything . . . about . . . the Laker offense . . . slowed down . . . then . . . stopped. Cold.

It was one devastating third quarter, on the way to a potentially series-altering 106-77 Portland Trail Blazer victory in Game 2 of the Western Conference final, which evens the series, 1-1, with both teams heading to Portland for the next two games.

“We got a little desperate there,” Jackson said of the Lakers’ worst loss of the season.

In that stretch, Jackson found out what Scottie Pippen would look like inside the Laker offense, inside of Shaquille O’Neal’s jersey, inside of everything and anything the Lakers tried to do.

He found out what Rasheed Wallace could do too, swamping O’Neal and Kobe Bryant on double-teams, slapping away loose basketballs, and flipping in three-pointers of his own on the other side.

The other Lakers, so effective in Game 1, did not answer the bell in this one.

“They got all the calls, they hit all their shots,” said O’Neal, who was held to only nine points through three quarters by a terrorizing, collapsing Portland defense, and finished with 23.

“No one said it’s going to be easy. Now we’ve got our hands full.”

And everybody--Jackson, the Trail Blazers, the Laker players, the stunned 18,997 at Staples Center--saw what happens when the Laker offense screeches to a complete, awful halt, 12 minutes of flailing, frazzled, fumbling offensive frustration.

The Lakers managed to score only eight points in the third quarter, made only two field goals (in 15 tries) and were outscored, 20-0 at one point, handing the Trail Blazers a 76-53 lead at the end of three quarters. Their eight points in the period matched the franchise’s all-time playoff low in a quarter.

Wallace took care of pretty much all Portland needed on offense, burying three three-pointers in the quarter, and finishing with 29 points and 12 rebounds in 46 minutes of play--or 30 more than he played in Game 1, when he was ejected in the third quarter.

Pippen had 21 points, 11 rebounds and three steals, statistics that do not give the measure of his control of this game.

As the Lakers stood and passed and cut, Pippen and Wallace touched the ball at least as often as Bryant, much more than O’Neal, and the random fact that both were playing for the Trail Blazers seemed hardly to matter.

Asked what the Lakers could do about Wallace’s aggressive double-teaming, Bryant said: “Well, A.C. [Green] is just going to have to step in the hole and hit shots.”

One quarter of basketball that ended the Lakers’ seven-game home playoff winning streak.

One quarter, with the series heading up to Portland’s raucous Rose Garden for Games 3 and 4 on Friday and Sunday, that could change everything.

One quarter that tied a franchise record for the lowest points scored in a playoff quarter.

“Shaquille had the ball in there a number of times, came away empty-handed, missed foul shots, missed shots, no calls, things like that that created kind of a despairing kind of situation for us,” said Jackson, who, as is his custom, did not call timeouts during the panic moments to try to let his team recover on its own. “I thought moral-wise we kind of fell off . . .

“I took credit for this. I left them to hang out there to dry a little bit too long [to] try and find their own way back out of that morass and they couldn’t find their way out.”

After the game, the word “onus” was written on the Laker locker-room board, though that fact was obvious from the 12th or 13 consecutive Laker nervous possession in the third quarter.

It is now up to the Lakers to figure out what happened, to work out solutions, and try to beat Portland at least once in the next two games.

“This is a long series,” Jackson said. “It’s now going to be a long series because of [this loss], obviously.

“We’ve got our work cut out this weekend when we go back up there to Portland.”

Said Bryant, who was held to 12 points on two-for-nine shooting: “The positive is we have to go through some type of adversity to be a champion.

“If you’re going to get that ring, you have to go through some ups and downs. This is a big obstacle for us.”

Bryant said he didn’t feel desperate during the third quarter--which the Lakers began, trailing, 48-45--he just felt that, with O’Neal swarmed and the other Lakers unable to make shots, he wanted to get to the hoop.

And he couldn’t.

“I was just trying to get to the basket,” Bryant said. “See what we could come up with and still stay within the system. You know, there are some things we’re going to have to bend as far as the system goes to try and get around this defense.”

Until that third quarter, the Lakers were not looking brilliant, but they also looked as if they could handle things.

Until that third quarter, Pippen had carried Portland, mostly by pushing the ball into the Laker defense and drawing a handful of fouls, on his way to 17 first-half points.

“I thought it was just an awful first half, and we were down three points,” Jackson said, pointing out that O’Neal had managed only six points in the half.

“I went into the locker room and said, ‘If that’s as good as they can do with us playing that poorly, we surely can play a much better second half.’

“And we came out and played worse. I just couldn’t imagine us to play any worse or Shaquille to have the kind of game that he had the first half and us to be just three down to not be able to survive and come out and play much better the second half.

“You have to give them credit.”

THE SERIES

Series tied 1-1

UP NEXT

GAME 3

Friday at Portland

6 p.m., Channel 4

HIGH SCORERS

LAKERS

S. O’Neal, 23

TRAIL BLAZERS

R. Wallace, 29