Win Fits Lakers to a T

The Lakers are a victory from their now annual playoff dismissal of Portland, that far from leaving the Trail Blazers behind for the third consecutive season.

Shaquille O’Neal had 31 points and 14 rebounds Thursday night at Staples Center, and the Trail Blazers were nearly as brutish as they promised they’d be, and then for fun everyone watched Dale Davis morph into Dennis Rodman.

The Lakers were 103-96 winners, primarily because they maintained their poise while Maurice Cheeks’ guys were kicking theirs around the arena. But that’s an old story for the Trail Blazers, still fragile after all these years.

“We lost a little composure,” Cheeks said after the Trail Blazers were hit with four technical fouls and the ejection of center Davis. “I was a little disappointed that we did it.”

The Lakers have won the first two games of the best-of-five series. Game 3 is Sunday at the Rose Garden, where the Lakers will play for their second first-round sweep of the Trail Blazers in two years. As it was, they won their sixth consecutive playoff game against Portland, beginning with the memorable Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference finals, when the Lakers overcame a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit to advance to the NBA Finals.

They’ve all been frantic, it seems. Behind by 21 points halfway through the final quarter, the Trail Blazers twice drew within six, causing pileups in the aisles as people stopped on their way up the stairs to gape.

Alas, just as Scottie Pippen and Rasheed Wallace began to make shots, a game jammed with 57 personal fouls closed, and all the Lakers had done by mid-way through the final quarter had held up.

“That game had many faces,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said.

O’Neal, freed from Game 1’s triple-teams by a Trail Blazer defense that tried to pressure the Lakers into turnovers, made 12 of 20 field-goal attempts and seven of nine free throws. Derek Fisher scored 18 points, 12 in the first half, and Rick Fox had 13 points.

Kobe Bryant scored 19 points. He missed 16 of 21 shots, but again was a regular at the free-throw line.

“I like playing physical, so when they play physical they’re just playing into my hands,” O’Neal said. “And we should have beat this team by 20.”

They didn’t because the Trail Blazers got hot in the fourth quarter, the first of eight in the series in which they shot well. The rest of the game consisted of the Lakers playing soundly and the Trail Blazers missing jumpers, and getting angry.

Davis, apparently frustrated by his inability to slow O’Neal and the officials’ inability to help, took two technical fouls within 27 seconds in the third quarter. The second came when he kicked the basketball into the seats. On his way out, he stripped off his jersey and scowled at the jeering crowd.

“Guarding Shaq and getting fouls called on him as opposed to not getting them in return, I think that could be frustrating for him,” Cheeks said.

By the end, the Trail Blazers also had accumulated a flagrant foul (by Ruben Patterson, on O’Neal), and two players--Pippen and Bonzi Wells--fouled out.

“It’s tough when you know what a loss for your basketball team does in a situation like this in a five-game series,” Fisher said, “so their emotions were running a little higher than they probably were in [Game 1].”

In between all of that, O’Neal was powerful and clever, scoring on turnaround jumpers and drop steps and free throws and once, in the fourth quarter, a left-handed fastbreak dunk that slayed the place.

O’Neal shrugged off the flagrant foul, and the Patterson glare, perhaps because Patterson thought better of the glare and later apologized.

“It’s a playoff game and nothing can really break my composure or break my spirits,” O’Neal said. “We’re up two games to none, and we don’t want to go up there and mess around with this team. We’re going to try and do away with them on Sunday.”

They got around finally to playing Game 2, four days from Game 1.

Although so much time had passed between games, the arena had a playoff vibe that wasn’t there Sunday. There were spontaneous standing ovations and chants for a three-peat, energy not often evident in afternoon games.

Patterson entered the game with 1:53 left in the first quarter and was booed. He picked a spot along the lane, smirked and gestured upward, asking for more, which he got.

A minute later, he thrilled the crowd by taking an eight-foot jumper and missing it by two feet.

Patterson ended the first quarter defending Robert Horry, but started the second in his usual place, across from Bryant.

The Trail Blazers missed 31 of 44 shots in the first half, and so the Lakers held a 51-37 lead.

Cheeks altered his defense, initially sending Pippen at Rick Fox and Wells at Bryant. The strategy was to give Pippen the easier defensive assignment, allowing him to roam and disrupt.

The Trail Blazers pressed harder and longer than they had in Game 1. As Patterson had said, “We don’t think they have good ballhandlers.”