All Talk

The Lakers returned to work Monday intent on tackling the biggest challenge of these NBA Finals.

Keeping a straight face.

“We’re David, and they’re Goliath,” Robert Horry said.

Thus beginning this revival with an allusion containing all the Biblical accuracy of Moses parting Lake Michigan.

The playoff-unbeaten Lakers are underdogs to the playoff-bloodied Philadelphia 76ers?

And, what, the Lakers are going to smite them with a break-dancing, 330-pound stone?

“How many awards did they win?” Horry asked of the 76ers. “How many awards did we win?”

We should have figured. The Lakers’ first play of the series is the award card.

Based on the regular season, members of the 76ers were voted most valuable player, coach of the year, sixth man of the year and defensive player of the year.

The Lakers didn’t win anything other than the respect of Jerry Springer.

From the moment this matchup was set Sunday night, one guesses Phil Jackson has been searching for any sort of slight in hopes of inspiring a team that could win this shindig in five games simply by showing up.

Lacking the evidence to accuse the 76ers of drug trafficking or aberrant behavior, he apparently settled on something new.

You know, like, how can Allen Iverson be a more valuable player than Shaquille O’Neal? Aaron McKie is a better sixth man than Jack Nicholson? And so on.

“It’s the fair-haired group from the NBA this year, obviously,” Jackson said of the 76ers.

As opposed to his team, which, if Rick Fox continues his superstitious grooming habits, could be the creeping-foliage-haired group from the NBA (We’ll get to that last Rick Fox hair joke any day now).

“We’ve got to use that as a motivational tool,” Horry said of the awards. “You’ve always got to find something.”

Of course, leave it to Jackson to find something else, punctuating the quiet of their El Segundo practice gym Monday by noisily flipping up a second card.

The cheater card.

If you believe the coach, all those tattoos on Iverson, if placed together on a piece of neatly folded paper, would make up a very nice road map.

He says the little dude travels.

“We couldn’t find a way to officiate Allen Iverson, so we gave him all the liberties to run with the ball and turn it over and do the things that he does and now he’s like a monster out there on the court,” Jackson said.

A monster? Seems he could be slowed with a spinning of an official’s arms, no?

“That’s not gonna be called, they won’t call it,” Jackson said of the referees. “They’ve tried to do that, they couldn’t get it done this year, so we’ve had to live with it.”

The Lakers enlisted Tyronn Lue to imitate Iverson in practice Monday, white elbow sock and all.

He ran wildly, shot wildly, and hopefully took about five steps between each dribble.

“It was great, it was like I was back in college,” Lue said.

With one exception, a detail that might be of interest to the little dude himself.

“I have never been knocked around like that,” Lue said. “Shaq bent my back, said he was doing a Scott Williams on me. Every time I came in the lane I was knocked down. They sent two and three people at me and were very physical.”

Undeterred, Lue plans on being Iverson again today in the final practice before Wednesday’s Game 1 at Staples Center.

“This time, I’m going to do my hair in corn rows and put on some of those bubble-gum tattoos,” he said.

So the NBA writers think the 76ers have better personnel, and the NBA officials allow the 76ers’ best player to break the rules.

Are we missing anything?

What does the Big Sensitive say about all this?

Well, O’Neal left the building Monday without talking to the media, which is answer enough.

Here’s a guess that, as he does before any big matchup, O’Neal is playing the insult card.

In this case, it appears to involve the theory that the 76ers can play him one-on-one with Dikembe Mutombo, the NBA’s defensive player of the year.

It wouldn’t be the first time that what one team considers a strategy, Shaq considers a slight.

Jackson, of course, was happy to fuel that strange but familiar fire.

First, he essentially dissed Mutombo’s award, saying: “That’s just something he gets annually. When he leaves the game, they are just going to rename it the Dikembe Mutombo Award.”

He termed Mutombo’s battle with O’Neal as “The matchup of the series, as far as I’m concerned.”

Then, in his own way, he challenged the 76ers to actually attempt to win with that matchup. As if he wants them to try it. As if we don’t know why.

“If they choose to double-team [Shaq], that will open up the game for us,” Jackson said. “If they don’t double-team, that will be perhaps a better team defense for them.”

Anything to make Shaq mad. Anything to make anybody mad.

Such is life for a team beginning the final, stressful, possibly treacherous steps toward sports history. A team whose biggest worry is that it doesn’t have any.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.