1-Loss Wonders

What, us three-time defending champions, worry?

No, of course not, there’s no reason for anyone in Lakerdom to really be concerned about the Dallas Mavericks keeping up this 17-1 stuff. Sooner or later, perhaps starting tonight, they’ll go back to something closer to last season’s level (.695), in which case, to catch them, the Lakers will have to go only ... uh ... 54-8.

OK, maybe it’s OK to worry a little, if not about the Mavericks’ start, then about the Mavericks, themselves.

Once, no one took a Laker challenger seriously if it didn’t have two seven-foot future Hall of Famers (San Antonio) or a seven-foot center and a 6-10 power forward (Sacramento). But now it’s a wacky new NBA world, with the launch-ready Mavericks sitting on top of it.

The Lakers, prohibitive preseason favorites, have a rotund and mortal look, already so far back -- 11 games behind Dallas in the West, 8 1/2 behind Sacramento in the Pacific -- that Phil Jackson poohs-poohs the need to overhaul them.

Not that the Mavericks have any illusions about having done anything yet, but they can count it as a mark of respect that the Lakers didn’t dump all over them before this game, as the Lakers would have, if they had felt like their old selves.

New seasons mean new realities and this is the newest season we’ve seen since the Lakers’ three-year run started.

“We’re watching the Lakers with interest as they move through this year,” Maverick Coach Don Nelson said Thursday in his hotel suite overlooking Marina del Rey.

“As much as they poke fun at Sacramento, we thought Sacramento probably should have beaten them last year in the playoffs. Probably deserved to beat ‘em and probably had ‘em beat, had ‘em on the ropes. But still the Lakers won and all you can say is, ‘Well, the Lakers still won.’

“But clearly, Sacramento was the best team in the regular season and is the best team this year. And I don’t think you’d better call them the Queens anymore. I think you’d better pay them a little more respect. If I were the Lakers, I would and I sure do....

“The Lakers have a really great blend of veteran players who have played together for a long period of time and Phil has done a marvelous job of nursing that, making that work. But for that to work, you’ve got to have Shaq in the best of shape and playing and working together and that just takes time.

“I would still say the Lakers are probably a better team than we are, that it will prove itself out to be that, come playoff time or come midseason, that they’ll have all this behind them and be kicking butt, like we would all expect them to.

“But right now, they struggle for a bunch of reasons and mainly because Shaq isn’t in a good rhythm. Even though he’s getting good numbers, he’s not in good rhythm like he was last year and there’s reasons for that ... the operation, the time off without playing, the conditioning aspects, being sharp with his shots and quickness and the rest of it. It’s pretty obvious.”

The problems for the Lakers now are twofold: themselves and their rivals.

No one, even the Lakers, thinks they’re better than they were. They aspire only to be as good as they were, which used to be plenty good enough.

On the other hand, the Mavericks and the Kings, to name two rivals, might be a lot better.

Sacramento’s rotation players have actually lost more games to injury or suspension -- 46 for Mike Bibby, Peja Stojakovic, Hedo Turkoglu, Doug Christie, Vlade Divac and Keon Clark, to 36 for Shaquille O’Neal, Rick Fox, Devean George, Robert Horry and Samaki Walker -- but the Kings are first in the Pacific, and the Lakers are last.

Meanwhile, the Mavericks have learned to play an effective zone defense, which is better than last season’s, when they might as well not have even gone back down the floor.

They ranked 29th in defense. Then in the playoffs, according to their own charts, they gave up an astounding 115 dunks and layups to Sacramento in a five-game series, of which the Kings won four.

In the pivotal Game 4, the Mavericks let Bibby, who stands only 6-1, dribble down the lane and lay the ball up for the tying basket at the end of regulation. Then they let him drive the baseline and lay the ball up for the winning basket in overtime.

Had Bobby Knight been coaching them, none of the Mavericks might have made it out of the arena alive.

Nelson, the thinker, went to Plan B.

“We’re not stoppers individually and we need team help, whether we’re playing man-to-man or zone,” he says. “I think Del Harris [his assistant, who runs the defense] said it best: It’s like a pitcher with an 85-mph fastball, you need to throw some junk out there if that’s all you’ve got....

“Right now the zone defense is ahead of the zone offense. I think it’s clear, coaches will catch up with it, find out how to attack it better. And then we’ll probably have to play more man-to-man or combinations, but we’re well aware of that.”

The Mavericks aren’t usually thought of as big -- the word “soft” comes up more frequently, as Portland’s Bonzi Wells informed Nick Van Exel -- but with 7-6 Shawn Bradley, 7-0 Dirk Nowitzki and 6-10 Raef LaFrentz, that’s a lot of hands a long way up in the air in a zone.

The Mavericks are now 10th in scoring defense, and third in the number the coaches look at, opponents’ shooting percentage. With their No. 1 offense, they have the No. 1 point differential, 13.3 a game, almost doubling the 7.1 total for No. 2 Indiana.

Of course, sterner tests await, such as tonight, when the revived, or awakened, Bradley encounters O’Neal, who will try his famous bulldozer-meets-stork technique.

These have been trying times for the Lakers, which was undoubtedly why O’Neal was moved to note they were playing with so little fire, it was as if Harris were still coaching them.

Actually, the Lakers owe Harris a lot for taking a 33-49 team and improving it by 20 wins in two seasons, so Shaq would even consider signing with them.

It’s true that Harris came up short in the title department. On the other hand, when he was here, O’Neal cared enough to come to camp weighing less than 350.

Times have changed. The Lakers just hope they haven’t changed too radically, too recently.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Challenging

*--* 45.0 (5) Reb 45.2 (3) How the Lakers compare to the Dallas Mavericks (with NBA rank): Lakers Mavericks 7-13 (22) Record 17-1 (1) 92.9 (16) PPG 103.9 (1) 95.8 (19) Opp. PPG 90.6 (10) 41.6 (23) FG% 46.1 (1) 43.0 (16) Opp. FG% 41.4 (3) 31.1 (23) 3pt FG% 39.4 (3) 38.1 (25) Opp. 3pt FG% 33.1 (11)

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