All Eyes on Shaq and His Workout

These days around the Lakers are spent studying Shaquille O’Neal--his mood, his gait, his manner.

He is the window to their goal, that being a third consecutive NBA title.

It is nearly O’Neal’s time, of course, but only if his vitality arrives at the same time his body and the team bus do. He is twice the most valuable player of the NBA Finals, but was reasonably healthy in both, and this year can’t expect to be.

And so he left the team’s training facility at El Segundo on Saturday with an obvious limp, and twirling his right wrist. That he participated in some of a Phil Jackson practice for the first time in the season’s second half would have seemed reason for Laker optimism, except O’Neal shook his head and twirled his right wrist again.

“I know,” he said, “but I don’t take the drugs on practice days.”

Without the Indocin, his anti-inflammatory of choice, his head was clear and his stomach calm, but his arthritic toe thumped and his sprained wrist tightened.

“It wasn’t a good practice for me,” he said. “I was slow. I was a bum today.”

The Lakers are only too pleased to have O’Neal’s four-day-a-week lethargy, if that means he can be dynamic on the other three. He’s almost certain to have surgery on his toe during the off-season, and he’ll have plenty of time to rest the other parts of him that hurt.

“I’ll be well-rested and well-prepared,” O’Neal said. “I’ll be ready. Playoffs are a good time for me.”

Three days after he flat-out skipped a practice, he ran with the regulars for more than five minutes, which was something.

“Well, it was a conditioning thing because we didn’t work [Friday],” Jackson said. “It’s good for us and him, too, I think.”

Jackson said the decision to practice was neither his nor O’Neal’s. It just happened.

“He didn’t mention it to me,” he said. “I just had him out there, the normal process of practice. He did pretty good.”

*

The Lakers play the Portland Trail Blazers today at the Rose Garden, the last of four regular-season games between the Pacific Division adversaries and a probable preview of the playoff matchup between the third- and sixth-seeded teams in the Western Conference. For the first time since Oct. 30, O’Neal and Rasheed Wallace will be on the same court, with various circumstances leading to O’Neal sitting out the second game of the series and Wallace the third.

“We’ll see how they [work] their rotation, how they’re going to play, what their defense is going to be,” Jackson said.

While there is some sense that the Lakers wouldn’t want to provide too hearty of an effort, for reasons of energy and strategy conservation, the Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs aren’t far enough behind.

“I don’t think we have any room to do so,” Jackson said. “We did gain half a game [Thursday] on Dallas. So, obviously, we have a little bit of breathing room. But we don’t have a lot of room to not play well or [not] play the game we want to play against this team, win the series against them and let them know we want to win on their home court.”

*

Chicago Bull Coach Bill Cartwright, settling the Shaq-Tim Duncan-Jason Kidd postseason awards debate: “The MVP of the league as long as he’s alive is Shaq.”

TODAY

at Portland

2:30 p.m., Channel 4

Site--The Rose Garden.

Radio--KLAC (570).

Records--Lakers 56-23, Trail Blazers 47-33.

Record vs. Trail Blazers--2-1.

Update--Rasheed Wallace averages 19.4 points and 8.1 rebounds. He also leads the league with 26 technical fouls. Bonzi Wells averages 16.8 points and six rebounds. The Trail Blazers score 96.3 points per game, the second lowest among Western Conference playoff qualifiers. The Utah Jazz score 96.1. The Lakers average 100.8. Portland is 28-11 at home.