Momentum Feels Good to Lakers

As early morning passengers on arriving United flight 2601 from Portland to LAX heaved at their carry-ons, the man on the tarmac below leaped up and down, waving the morning newspaper at the faces in the portholes.

The headlines carried news of Laker victory, of Portland Trail Blazer failure. So did the jumping luggage handler’s grin.

“Oh God,” one woman said, poking at her husband with one hand and pointing through the window with the other. He nodded, amused.

There will be more embarrassing moments for the $89.7-million Trail Blazers and their fans, it seems. Funny, though, it wasn’t all that long ago that the Lakers appeared to have issues at least as large.

Then they started to win games, and their streak is at 11 now, the last three for the first-round sweep giving them a second-round date with the Sacramento Kings or Phoenix Suns. Their personality is changing as quickly as Kobe Bryant’s image. The plain kid from Philly is wearing fancy suits, and for Sunday’s postgame press conference, he sauntered in with great clumps of diamonds adorning his left ear, right wrist and left ring finger.

“At the end of the regular season, right before the playoffs started, we knew that we had momentum,” Bryant said. “We liked the style of basketball we were showing. We were working hard every day in practice. We felt good about ourselves.”

Few of the Lakers, though, are so bold as to say they saw it coming. And, indeed, it might be time to wonder what kind of a chance the Trail Blazers would have had against any playoff team, as depressed and vulnerable as they were.

By Sunday, Rasheed Wallace could barely feign interest. Scottie Pippen had had it.

To their credit, the Lakers didn’t wallow around with the self-pitying Trail Blazers. They played a sturdy game and got out. With the opener of the Western Conference semifinals scheduled Sunday, Coach Phil Jackson gave them Monday off. They will reconvene for practice today in El Segundo, more confident than they were when they left, more comfortable with their games than they’ve been in months.

“I think every guy on this team stuck with it,” guard Derek Fisher said. “It did not seem at any time this season that we had given up on being able to become champions again. I think that’s the one constant that has helped us to get to this point. There wasn’t any person in our locker room or on our bench who doubted what we were capable of becoming. It wasn’t about what we were then, but where we were going.”

Fisher sat out the first 62 games recovering from a stress fracture in his right foot. He returned and passed the ball and played defense and made some shots, and that wouldn’t sound like a whole lot if the Lakers hadn’t so desperately needed all of it.

“It seemed that some days, we were fragile as an egg,” he said. “Other days, we were really solid and were able to come up with big wins. But, I don’t think we were as solid as we wanted to be at home. It kind of led to some of the lack of confidence when we went out on the road. I think we definitely feel our best right now. Hopefully, we won’t get complacent or overconfident.”

That would seem almost impossible, except that the last time the Lakers felt really, really good about themselves was coming out of training camp. And it took them about five months to stop playing as if they had nothing to worry about.

“I’ve been in the league long enough to know if you play a certain way for 60, 70 games, that’s usually what you’re going to be,” forward Rick Fox said. “To finish the season the last eight, nine games the way we did, to play the way we’re playing now, it’s amazing. It shows a lot of resiliency, and the ability to still remember that we’re champions.”

Their eyes have brightened because of it. Shaquille O’Neal played against the Trail Blazers with a meaty smile across his face, and he averaged 27 points and 15.7 rebounds in three games. Bryant averaged 25 points. Fisher, who averaged 15.7 points, didn’t have a turnover in 114 minutes. Fox averaged 13 points.

They pounded each other’s backs through most of the series, then hugged on the bench at the end of it. Something’s changed.

“I was surprised during that eight-[game winning streak] at the end of the season,” Fox said. “It was almost like a switch, like the trust factor for each other showed up.

“We just trust each other. I trust you. You’re the open guy, I’ll throw you the ball. You miss 10 shots, I trust you’re going to do the right thing on the 11th one. Whether it’s pump fake and drive, whatever it is to get us a win. Now teams have to respect the guys on the weak side. It’s given Shaq and Kobe more opportunity to dominate too.”