Familiar Opening Look

They played in seven other towns this weekend and returned to 14 other locker rooms with varying takes on reality, but the hard truth on the occasion of another Laker victory was that the NBA playoffs might not really start until the Lakers lose a game.

Playing for their third consecutive championship and at the end of another fitful regular season, the Lakers defeated the Portland Trail Blazers, 95-87, Sunday afternoon at Staples Center.

Shaquille O’Neal scored a workmanlike 25 points, six in a 14-3 run early in the fourth quarter that finished the Trail Blazers. Kobe Bryant was a little flighty, but scored 34 points, 12 from the free-throw line. Derek Fisher scored 12 points, six in the fourth quarter.

The Trail Blazers missed nearly two-thirds of their shots, in part because Laker forward Robert Horry played 30 minutes, most of them with grit against Rasheed Wallace. Horry was questionable for the game because of an abdominal injury, but was agile and aggressive, and is expected to play Thursday in Game 2.

And so Phil Jackson lurched into their locker room, picked up a black marker and wrote the number “14” and drew a line under it, just as he has after the first of 15 victories in their last two championship seasons.

“It was a fine game,” Jackson insisted, a fine game to have behind them.

They did not rout the moody Trail Blazers as they did last season in the same place, at the same time, when all it took to force surrender was a gentle nudge.

But their lead in the best-of-five series is 1-0, and that’s what they came for, and that’s why the playoffs are here first, and everywhere else second, until defeat, even momentary defeat.

“I think we would have liked to have had the type of game to start the playoff series with a 30-point blowout,” said forward Rick Fox, whose three-pointer pushed the Laker lead to 10 in the fourth-quarter run. “This team has a lot of history with Portland. They’re coming in here and, as you’ve seen, have spoken a lot about how they feel they can beat us and how they basically don’t respect us. It’s a matter of going out and playing accordingly.”

Or well enough.

“A win is a win,” O’Neal said. “It doesn’t matter how many points you win by. A win is a win.”

They just won, with just enough effort, the kind of thing they train for in their first six months, when they measure their foe first and play next.

The Trail Blazers sent an extra man or two at O’Neal at every entry pass, and that bogged the Laker offense well into the second half. That’s why Bryant took seven three-pointers, as many as he’d taken in a game this season, and that’s why O’Neal took only eight first-half shots.

“It took a while for us to get adjusted to what we had to do,” Bryant said, “to get in the rhythm and know how to get them under control somewhat.”

O’Neal would hear nothing of the Trail Blazer tactics.

“I’m not really worried about what they’re trying to do,” he said. “We just have to keep our composure, not get involved with the antics they try to put us through, and keep playing.”

Wallace scored 25 points and took 14 rebounds and guard Derek Anderson scored 22 points in 24 minutes. It was Anderson whom the San Antonio Spurs had hoped would help them out of a two-games-to-none hole in the Western Conference finals last season. He returned from a separated shoulder for the last two games and scored four points in 41 minutes, and the Lakers went off to their repeat title.

The Trail Blazers said they wasted a decent chance to unnerve the Lakers when they were one point behind with 11 minutes to play. The Trail Blazers had won a similarly played game in two overtimes a week earlier in Portland, coming back from a 13-point deficit in regulation, and from eight points in the first overtime.

This time, the Trail Blazers missed late shots and failed to gather late rebounds. As usual, the postseason Lakers proved a bit tougher than their regular-season counterparts. They made 10 of 18 fourth-quarter field-goal attempts, three of five by Bryant, who for the game missed 18 of 28 shots.

“Every little thing about their game stepped up in the second half,” Trail Blazer Coach Maurice Cheeks said. “The second half is indicative of the way this team wins championships.”

In the fourth quarter, Horry ran the floor with his hand over his stomach, but later said he only winced because Ruben Patterson elbowed him there, presumably unintentionally.

He hated the way he played, but was satisfied with his physical condition.

“I felt good,” he said. “I got a little fatigued there from not playing in so long, but I felt good and went out there and did some things.”