Kobe Picks Up Slaq

They darkened the barn, turned on the black lights, surrounded their nervous visitors with 17,137 flapping, glowing handkerchiefs.

The Lakers could be forgiven Friday for thinking they stepped into a haunted house.

Imagine, then, the chill that filled Arco Arena when it was the Sacramento Kings who were surrounded by ghosts.

Horace Grant . . . sinking a cover-their-eyes jumper . . . eerie.

Rick Fox . . . hitting a leave-them-gasping layup . . . spooky.

Robert Horry . . . nailing a duck-and-cover three-pointer . . . frightening.

All while Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant were gathering, you know, cobwebs.

The first-half apparitions added up to the reality that the Lakers are not a two-man team, and these Western Conference semifinals are not going to be last much longer than four games.

A 46-37 lead was grabbed by Bryant and stretched into a 103-81 victory that, according to Fox, meant one thing.

“You can get beat by Superman, or beat by his Superfriends,” he said.

It also means an historically insurmountable three-games-to-none lead by a Laker team that has won six consecutive playoff games and seemingly improved each time.

First the sweep of the Portland Trail Blazers, and now this. With each night, the success of a team that had supposedly choked on success gets harder to figure.

The Kings finished only one game behind the Lakers during the regular season, right? Yet they have been beaten as if they come from an entirely different league.

“I’m just kind of wallowing in this self-pity over this loss,” King forward Chris Webber said.

The Kings finished tied with the San Antonio Spurs for the league’s best home record--just eight losses in 41 games--yet the Lakers turned those cowbells into odd-looking necklaces.

“This was the most quiet I’ve seen that crowd,” Fox said.

The most amazing sight on another amazing night occurred with 5:30 remaining and the Lakers leading, 87-69.

Because fans began streaming for the exits.

Yep, in the final minutes of the first home second-round playoff game in this city’s history, some of the league’s greatest fans bailed.

And to where? The only thing outside the building was, well, Sacramento.

“We’re all deflated right now,” King Coach Rick Adelman said.

And why not?

O’Neal scored half as many points as his series average, and the Kings still lose by 22.

Bryant misses more than half of his 22 shots, and the Kings never lead.

“When the right jab isn’t working, you go to the uppercut,” said O’Neal.

While Bryant (36) and O’Neal (21) combined for “only” 55% of the team’s points, far less than in the first two games of this series.

The bench, which scored just one point in Game 2, scored 15 times that many points Friday.

Derek Fisher and Fox scored a rare double-double, with 12 points for Fisher and 11 points for Fox.

“I think it was important for our team to find a rhythm offensively. . . . I told the team to go anywhere but to Shaq in the first half,” Coach Phil Jackson said.

Turns out, he told more than that.

Worried about their reaction to the noise--which unsettled them into two playoff losses here last year--Jackson says he gave them a pregame speech about . . . music?

“I told them to play to the rhythm in their head,” Jackson said, talking about overcoming the noise. “Play to the rhythm they know. Our rhythm.”

A few minutes later, Grant was asked about this philosophy and smiled.

“Rhythm in our heads?” he asked. “That’s the first I’ve heard of that. Maybe it’s Phil who’s been smoking something.”

They laughed, but they listened. Jackson’s words were about the rhythm of teamwork, the thumping of defense.

Grant hit the Lakers’ first basket. Fox hit the Lakers’ first free throws. Fisher made the Lakers’ first steal.

By the end of the first quarter, the Lakers held a 10-point lead despite just two shots from O’Neal and two turnovers from Bryant.

The role players helped increase the lead to 15 points with 4:08 remaining in the second quarter when, after Bryant and O’Neal were benched with foul trouble, they were forced to be the stars.

The crowd rose. The cowbells clanged. It was time for the sort of Kings’ run that Jackson had warned about.

“Anything could have happened any which way,” Fox said.

But it didn’t. During those last four minutes, the subs were only outscored by the King starters, 12-6.

“We knew what could have happened,” Fisher said. “We knew what we needed to do.”

At halftime, the Lakers led by nine point, but it felt like 19, and that was that.

In a crowded Arco Arena restroom, somebody began shouting, “Lakers (bleep), Lakers (bleep)!”

Usually, here, that is a rallying cry.

But this time, the room was quiet, except for the one King fan who shrugged and explained the silence and the series.

“The Lakers are too far ahead to (bleep).”

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.