Seattle Is Raining Hard on Cold Lakers' Parade

By TIM BROWN

Jan. 24, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SEATTLE —

Phil Jackson hated it again. But then, they all did. It’s too much crummy basketball being played by a previously decent team to see it any other way.

Since they won their championship, the Lakers have lurched around, occasionally falling into their usual game but mostly not. First it was the defense and Tuesday night against the so-so Seattle SuperSonics they couldn’t have made a shot if their dads had given them a boost to the rim.

“I was disappointed,” Jackson said.

The Lakers missed nearly two-thirds of their shots and so lost, 91-80, at KeyArena, where Gary Payton scored 34 points and former Laker Ruben Patterson gloated again about being “The Kobe Stopper,” which brought a sneer from Kobe Bryant himself.

They have lost two consecutive games, and four of their last seven. Seattle has beaten them three times this season alone. Bryant was five for 19 from the field, the Lakers were 28 for 81 (34.6%), and Shaquille O’Neal’s 29 points couldn’t salvage it for any of them.

“These trials and tribulations are something you have to deal with,” O’Neal said. “I just have to deal with it. We have to keep playing. It can only get better.”

O’Neal said he is frustrated but not yet demoralized.

“Never,” he said. “Never.”

And so it has gotten worse before it gets better. That’s assuming it will get better, and the Lakers are generally of that mind-set.

It would be one thing, probably, to be playing decent basketball and getting beaten by other teams playing better basketball. Before all of a very giddy Seattle, however, the SuperSonics didn’t shoot particularly well themselves, had no chance against O’Neal, and hung around long enough for the Lakers to give up 27 fourth-quarter points, their signature failure.

As far as championship defenses go, this is no victory lap. This is harder than they ever reasoned it to be, whether they’d admit it or not.

“Everybody warned us it’s not easy,” said forward Rick Fox, who made three of 11 shots. “But, you know, what I’ve seen is there’s a certain sense of being defending champions that breeds overconfidence.

“There’s a feeling that you have to show up and things will happen the same way they happened last year. That’s a dangerous thing. It’s not the case. We’re not the same team we were last year.

“It shows itself in the fact we apparently have a margin for error as short as some of the worst teams in this league. Even though we’re defending champions, that margin for error from night to night might be a five-minute lapse, a 10-minute defensive lapse. Five minutes of poor shot selection or poor execution.

“I remember when I was with the Celtics. We stunk. We still wanted to play the Bulls. We beat them, hey, maybe we don’t stink anymore.”

The Lakers are 26-14. Nobody but O’Neal and Bryant has found any kind of offensive rhythm, and Bryant’s left elbow is so sore that in his last nine games he is shooting 42.5% from the floor.

The pain has “most definitely” changed his stroke, Bryant said.

“It’s gotten a lot flatter,” he said. “It’s like I’m launching.”

Bryant missed every shot he took from the end of the first quarter through the middle of the fourth, all 10 of them. Devean George, who started for injured power forward Horace Grant, was three for 10. Robert Horry missed all five of his shots, and is 0 for 12 from the floor in the past two games.

To make things worse, Patterson preened afterward.

“I told everybody when I got here and everybody didn’t believe me--that I’m ‘The Kobe Stopper,’ ” said Patterson, who played 24 games with the Lakers in the 1998-99 season. “And I’m here now.”

Bryant, who missed 41 of 60 shots in three games against the SuperSonics this season, snorted.

“Ruben knows it’s not him,” he said. “He knows it’s their team defense. He knows it.”

The crises keep coming for the Lakers in tiny, annoying increments of failure. They keep expecting their old, familiar game, the one that won for them before. Instead, they don’t have the legs to play defense or the eye to make their shots or the head to regulate the pace, certainly not all at once.

“I was disappointed in our effort tonight as a basketball team,” Jackson said. “Not that we didn’t hustle and not that we didn’t do things defensively that were better. But just the professionalism of taking care of business, making free throws [the Lakers were 16 for 32], taking advantage of turnovers [they forced 21], illegal defenses [four], situations we got ourselves mired into.

“I just don’t know how many more open shots guys can miss.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Seattle Slew

With Tuesday’s loss, the Lakers are

0-3 against Seattle this season. A look:

* Nov. 30--at Seattle 121, Lakers 88

* Dec. 8--Seattle 103, at Lakers 95

* Jan. 23--at Seattle 91, Lakers 80

* Avg. points scored: 87.7

* Avg. points scored, season: 102.1*

* Avg. points allowed: 105

* Avg. points allowed, season: 97.4*