Spurs May Be Blazing the Trail to Title Run

Maybe the setup was all wrong. This was supposed to be a referendum on the state of the Lakers.

“Right now is a good gauge, to see if we’re really starting to play well,” Robert Horry said before the game..

As much as the Lakers have been racking up victories recently (eight in their previous nine games), their only one of great significance in that stretch was at San Antonio on Feb. 21.

And as the Lakers are discovering in their championship defense, it’s one thing to do it once, quite another to do it again.

But maybe this wasn’t about the Lakers so much as it was was about the Spurs. And maybe, just maybe, the race for Western Conference supremacy isn’t a matter of the Lakers and Trail Blazers in the Pacific Division. Maybe it’s in the Midwest Division, where the Utah Jazz holds the best record in the conference, with the Spurs only one behind in the loss column, hanging tight as a result of their 93-89 overtime victory against the Lakers on Friday night at Staples Center.

The Lakers have yet to recapture their title form of last year, while the Spurs are looking more and more like the group that won the championship in 1999. Better, even.

The Lakers played 53 minutes of basketball and only two players scored in double figures. You know who they were. It was so lopsided, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant combined to score 71 of the 89 points. No one else scored more than six. Even the balance between those two seemed out of whack again, as Bryant took more shots than O’Neal even though O’Neal was running through San Antonio’s front line most of the night.

The Lakers threw so many bad alley-oop passes Friday night it looked like a UCLA game. They fell behind by 15 points in the first half before rallying.

The Spurs showed much more balance. They totaled 44 points in the first half, with eight players contributing in the scoring column. They finished with four players in double figures. The last player to score 10 points was Avery Johnson, whose jumper with 1:37 remaining in overtime gave the Spurs a five-point lead.

And even when Tim Duncan isn’t dominating, as was the case for the first two quarters Friday, he’s always lurking. Call him the Quiet Storm. He rumbled for 22 of his 29 points after halftime Friday.

While Rasheed Wallace vents his frustration on the referees and keeps earning escorted trips back to the Portland locker room, each bit of Duncan’s anger seems to result in another rebound for him. For all of the free spending in Portland, for all of the off-season moves by the Florida teams, New York and Seattle, right now the best investment of the summer of 2000 looks like the Spurs’ re-signing of Duncan.

Now the Lakers trail the Spurs by one game in the loss column. The Lakers could win the Pacific Division and receive a higher seed than San Antonio (the division winners automatically get the top two seeds), but still not have home-court advantage against them if the Spurs finish with a better record.

It’s not always necessary. After all, the Lakers already have won one game in the Alamodome--and without Bryant at that. And Horry still remembers the year his Houston Rockets won the NBA championship despite not having home-court in any round.

“A lot of times you put a lot of onus on home-court advantage, but I think it’s just all about how the team’s playing,” Horry said. “If the team’s playing well it doesn’t matter where the team’s playing.”

It hasn’t made a difference to the Spurs lately. They have won six consecutive road games and 11 of 13.

Would Isaiah Rider have made a difference? There sure was a lot of lingering Isaiah Rider talk before Friday’s game. Rider’s drug suspension dominated the talk before the big Kobe-Vince Carter showdown against the Raptors on Wednesday, and his status--Is he coming back? Does Phil Jackson want him back?--was Topic A again in Friday’s pregame chat.

As valuable as Rider could be during the playoffs, he isn’t essential against the Spurs. It shouldn’t be too much to ask Rick Fox or Horry or Brian Shaw or somebody to string together a few baskets. Against San Antonio, the focus belongs to the Lakers’ other notable off-season acquisition, Horace Grant.

Grant’s duty is Duncan. Grant’s approach to that task: “Ask for help.”

“One guy’s not going to stop a dominant player like that,” Grant said. “You’re going to have to rely on your teammates a lot.

“You try to be as physical as possible. He’s so quick for a big man. He has so many moves down there. He’s one of the greatest.”

Actually, the Lakers gave Grant about as much help as you’ll see on a Phil Jackson-coached team. Everyone from O’Neal to Tyronn Lue came over to double-team Duncan at times.

Grant put forth one of his best efforts of the season in the first half, running and hustling his way to 10 rebounds (and going through at least one pair of goggles). But he seemed to tire in the second half. He also was the victim of some cheap foul calls.

Grant had enough energy left to deflect a Duncan entry pass into Robinson for a steal late in the going. And he even found the spirit to sing along with the Isley Brothers’ “Shout!” coming out of the final timeout in regulation.

It was the Spurs’ who were hollering when the overtime buzzer sounded, the Spurs who left in great shape. There still isn’t a clear-cut favorite for the championship, but the Spurs are one step ahead of the Lakers at the moment.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: ja.adande@latimes.com.