Lakers Win Deep in Heart of Texas

Some they win, some they lose and some you have to see to believe.

The Lakers arrived in the sold-out Alamodome on Wednesday night, with their starting guards, Kobe Bryant and Ron Harper, out. By the second quarter, Shaquille O’Neal was running on fumes and by the second half, even their Iron Horse, Chick Hearn, working his 3,272nd game in a row, had retired for the evening with laryngitis.

“Well,” Coach Phil Jackson said later, in a rare concession, “it felt like going in the woods to fight a bear with a club.”

A mind-bending two hours and 18 minutes later, the Lakers emerged from the woods with a bearskin.

The team that had degenerated into a two-superstar exhibition with 10 helpers, had seven players in double figures--for the season, only the Big Two have double-figure averages--among them, long-lost players like Rick Fox, who had 17 points, Horace Grant (12) and Robert Horry (13). For Horry, that was six more than he had scored in the last six games, combined.

The Spurs, winners of nine of the last 11 meetings with the Lakers and 12 of their last 14 games, fell on their faces. Afterward, a terse Coach Gregg Popovich spiked questions as if they were volleyball serves and 10 players scattered before the press reached their dressing room, leaving David Robinson and Avery Johnson to speak for all of them.

The Spurs will be OK. They just relaxed a little too long against an opponent that played a little too well.

Meanwhile it’s the Lakers, the defending champions, who are still trying to find themselves.

The Lakers have the game’s best 1-2 punch, which would be ducky if they didn’t spend so much time squaring off on each other. On this trip, which resembled their season, O’Neal continued to drop hints he was unhappy with Bryant, proving his Orlando comment was no fluke, misunderstanding or misrepresentation.

He went “no-comment” to a question about playing in Dallas, with a big smile.

Meanwhile, in Phoenix someone was telling two reporters from different newspapers Shaq wanted Bryant traded for Jason Kidd. Whether this was right or wrong was almost beside the point. Before it hit the Phoenix papers, someone had told Kobe about it and he didn’t take it as a compliment.

Nevertheless, on this trip, Bryant seemed to be trying to accommodate himself to a playmaker-first role, averaging 7.6 assists, against a season average of 4.8.

Not that it was always easy. A team meeting midway through the trip reportedly included a sharp exchange between Jackson and Bryant.

They were 2-2 on the trip when they arrived in Dallas in a highly charged scene, with Don Nelson making his return.

Sure enough, the Mavericks jumped out to a fast lead.

O’Neal was out of the game for a breather. Having seen the Laker role players begin to assert themselves when O’Neal was hurt, Jackson didn’t want to let them slip back into becoming spectators, but now he noticed four Lakers getting out of Bryant’s way.

So he took Kobe out to make everyone else play.

Voila! On the first play, Fox drove hard to the basket and made a tough layup, banking the ball high off the board, starting a 9-0 run that wiped out Dallas’ lead.

The Lakers went on to win, with O’Neal making 11 of 15 free throws.

Of course, Jackson didn’t want to play an entire game without Bryant--much less one in San Antonio--nor would he or anyone else have predicted what happened.

“I think we do, as teammates, recognize our go-to guys and maybe defer to them sometimes too much,” Fox said later.

“And Phil has made reference to that to us, not to be so apprehensive in our games and to be assertive at times within the offense. But I know as a whole, Kobe knows this offense probably as good as anyone, so he knows how to put himself in positions. And being unselfish basketball players and teammates, when he’s open, we give it to him. When Shaq’s open, we give it to him.”

O’Neal huffed and puffed, but he made four of five free throws too. Imagine the fear around the league when they see that in the box score this morning.

“My contention all along has been, as soon as Shaq starts making free throws, we’ll be a team to be reckoned with in the NBA,” Jackson said. “We’re not concerned or worried about what our status is. If he makes free throws, we’re going to go on and beat people in the playoffs.”

They didn’t go 6-0 on this trip as they did last season. They didn’t go 5-1 as Jackson had hoped. But late Wednesday night, 4-2 was looking pretty good to Phil.