Shaq Says He’ll Be Set to Go

Shaquille O’Neal received treatment Saturday for a mild sprain of his left ankle and is expected to play without trouble today, when the Lakers play to sweep the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference finals.

O’Neal, who had 35 points and 17 rebounds in Game 3, rolled the ankle late in the game. He suffered some swelling. He left the trainers room after practice Saturday wearing a sneaker on his right foot and a thong on his left, and his left pant leg was rolled to his knee.

“It still hurts, but I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll be there [today] at 2:30.”

Coach Phil Jackson admitted to “limited concern.”

“I don’t think it’s going to affect his play as far as time on the floor,” he said. “It may stiffen, perhaps, a little because of swelling. There’s not a whole lot of swelling on it. We think he’s going to be able to function fine. I just don’t think he’s going to be as powerful or as dominant as he could be, because he’s going to lose a little power.”

After averaging 23.5 points in the first two games of the series, O’Neal was very active Friday night at Staples Center. In five playoff home games, he is averaging 35.6 points.

The Lakers are eager to run the playoffs, of course. No team has gone 15-0. But they are reluctant to consider it for more than an instant, to tamper with the rush of single-mindedness that got them here, a win from 11-0.

“When you do that, you’re not living in the moment,” said Horace Grant, a forward on the 1991 Chicago Bull team that was 15-2 in the postseason.

Grant declined to pick the better team from those Bulls and these Lakers. He did, however, have one prediction in the matchup of power forwards.

“I would have run this old Horace Grant to death,” he said, laughing.

Actually, Jackson recently instructed his players not to talk about 15-0, which would explain some of their hesitation. But the team also remembers the failure when it looked across the regular season and expected to sail through it.

Still, 15-0 won’t go away, particularly if the Lakers eliminate the dispirited Spurs today.

“It’s not important,” Jackson said. “What’s important is winning a series. And yet it’s distinction, and distinction is always something teams like to rise to. It’s almost impossible to consider that a team would be able to play its way through a series at the level of parity that’s in the league right now, especially when you’re playing the top teams in the league.”

All of this Laker unity is making potential future opponents uncomfortable.

“We would love to see that they were still bickering and having problems,” Milwaukee’s Scott Williams told Bloomberg News. “But that’s what good teams do--they find a way to get on a roll at the right time of the season. It seems like they’re having a lot more fun now.”