Rider Says Other Players Need to Get Their Shots

They said they were going to change.

They said they were going to share the basketball and play defense and get tough and get in shape and then whip the NBA, the same way they did last season.

And now the Lakers have lost two games in a row and four of seven and are starting to look like Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant and a bunch of old guys who scrounged together enough quarters to come in out of the rain.

Their general manager observed that they were underachieving, and so motivated were they that they lost to the mediocre Seattle SuperSonics for the third time in seven weeks.

Guaranteed, if it continues like this, the fight won’t be whose team it is, but whose it isn’t. Forty-eight minutes from the season’s halfway point, the Lakers appear divided, uninterested and worn out.

“I think a lot of guys are living off the summer,” newcomer Isaiah Rider said. “They’re living off being defending champions. They have to realize that’s over.”

“Defending” would seem to suggest some kind of resistance.

“The thing that’s frustrating is that we run our triangle, but all we do is look for Shaq and Kobe,” Rider said. “And they take every shot. Defenses are gearing toward them. To answer the question, ‘Why isn’t anyone else contributing?’, well, everyone else is shooting three, four, five times a game for a possible six, eight points.

“You shoot once every nine minutes, it’s not going to work. It’s kind of wild. It’s tough to find a rhythm because our game doesn’t have a rhythm to it. We have two great scorers, and that’s fine. But they can’t complain and the coaching staff can’t complain, nobody can complain about anyone not making their shots.”

Rider’s point: Yeah, the Lakers lead the league in scoring. Yeah, the defense is awful. No, they aren’t always separate issues.

“I want our big two to realize it doesn’t have to be so hard,” he said. “There’s other people that can score to relieve those guys, and you don’t have to throw it to them every time down the court. If the triangle is run properly, everyone gets opportunities. It’s not there for one man. I think that carries over to defense sometimes.”

Rider isn’t always the most credible character. But he watches. And he thinks about the game. And he always wants to know why. And he’d like to win.

“It can be solved in one perfect game,” he said. “The next game we play, each man must challenge himself.”

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Six games ago, at the urging of friends who didn’t think he was playing aggressively, Rider said he’d decided to take 10 shots a game.

It led to five consecutive games in which he scored in double figures, a streak stopped Tuesday, when he took four shots in 15 minutes and scored two points.

So Rider has jacked up his expectations.

“From now on,” he said, “I’m going to go out and try to get 20 [points] a game, take the pressure off the guys and demand my respect. Up to this point I haven’t.”

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Ruben Patterson, self-appointed “Kobe Stopper,” moved out of L.A. when the Lakers didn’t re-sign him two seasons ago, but claims to have kept a winter home in Bryant’s head.

“Oh, I was fired up tonight,” Patterson said after Tuesday night’s victory. “I loooooove to play against Kobe!”

Bryant was five for 19 from the field, much of that against Patterson. At one point, he missed 10 consecutive shots over 2 1/2 quarters. Afterward, Patterson told Seattle reporters he felt Bryant’s frustration, saw the signs that the hand in Bryant’s face was beginning to change his game.

“That’s when I know,” Patterson said. “He’ll start taking some tough shots, some really crazy shots.”

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Mike Penberthy said his shoulder is 95% sound. He is eligible to come off the injured list. . . . Forward Horace Grant, who sat out games against Miami and Seattle because of back spasms, was improved Wednesday and decided against further tests. He expects to practice today and is probable for Friday’s game against New Jersey.