No Application Yet for a Grant-in-Aid

Horace Grant is out there, somewhere between retirement parties and birthday parties, maybe willing to be talked into one more stretch run, maybe not.

Though he suggested Thursday he would call Grant, waived Wednesday by the Orlando Magic, Phil Jackson said Friday he hadn’t yet, and might not.

In the hours after Grant’s release, it became plain that his surgically repaired knee was not the crux of his issues in Orlando, and that Coach Doc Rivers was. So it’s possible he has some basketball left in him, at 37.

In a nice bit of coincidence, the Magic is here Sunday, too soon, probably, to get Grant his old gold uniform back.

“In all fairness to the players that are on this team, the group we picked out to be our chosen 13, we’re not talking about change until after the holidays,” Jackson said.

That might be fine with Grant, who joked with an Orlando Sentinel writer Wednesday that he’d be happy to resume his career with the Lakers ... in March.

“We have to assess where we are as a basketball team,” Jackson said. “We haven’t been able to do that yet. I think Shaquille is getting into condition. I think the players are learning how to play together again.... So, I think we’re getting close. We’ve been playing pretty good basketball. Although we can’t sustain it for a long period, that’s part of conditioning.”

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Jackson said he found himself rooting for the Laker role players to stand up to the Laker superstars in a clumsy week for Laker camaraderie.

“They’re not chopped liver, you know,” he said. “They’re players of some renown and they’ve been on championship teams and they’ve been able to perform under pressure. They have a role to play.”

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Greg Ostertag, in the wake of his ejection and fine for arguing O’Neal had fouled him in the first quarter Sunday: “I have nothing against Shaq; he’s a good player [and] deserves the credit he gets for being the guy he is. But at the same time, a lot of stars in this league are very, very well protected [by referees]. Guys like me -- I’m not a star -- they’re out here just trying to do their best against guys like him, and they get ticky-ticky fouls. That’s just not right.”