Jackson Satisfied With Decision

Phil Jackson slept on his decision to have someone other than Kobe Bryant take the final shot Saturday in Denver. Of course, there was no final shot, which pretty much was the point.

The basketball rattled around on the left wing, where Bryant most certainly wasn’t, and the Lakers lost by a point. It wasn’t lost there. But, it might have been won there.

Jackson viewed the videotape, saw the play he acknowledged the night before might have been his strategic mistake and returned more adamant than ever that Bryant should not have had the responsibility.

Again, for the sake of clarity, Jackson was asked for the reason he did not simply give the ball to Bryant, arguably the best one-on-one player in the game.

“I had about five of them,” he said, not at all defensively. “One, he had plenty of opportunities. Two, every time he gets double-teamed he tries to dribble through the whole team. He might lose the ball. He might never get his shot. Three, after I told him to take the ball to the basket after he had taken three outside shots he charged. So forth and so on.”

It did not matter to Jackson that Bryant made a game-tying three-point shot 48 hours and three seconds before, in Sacramento.

“That was a situation where he had the ball,” Jackson said. “It came to him. I knew J.R. [Rider] had the size advantage against [Nick] Van Exel.”

Asked what Rider might have done to improve the outcome, Jackson grinned and said, “Passed it.”

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Bothered by the sprain in his ankle and the soreness in his Achilles’ tendon, Shaquille O’Neal said he had acupuncture performed after Sunday’s shoot-around.

He said it helped.

“Oh, it was good,” he said. “In fact, I’m going to marry me a Chinese woman. I’m going to marry [actress] Lucy Liu. You can quote me on that.”

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O’Neal played, even though skipping the game would have given him five consecutive days off of the ankle.

He suffered the injury Thursday in Sacramento and sat out Saturday’s game in Denver. The Lakers don’t play again until Wednesday against Golden State.

“I don’t think it’s that time of the season,” Jackson said. “If we were in March or April, the tough days when the guys have accumulated 60, 70 games on their bodies, then yes. But, not this time of the season. Everybody’s healthy and not too tired.”