Upgrading May Not Be Option

Whether the Lakers are a good team playing poorly or a poor one incapable of playing well is up to Coach Phil Jackson and General Manager Mitch Kupchak to determine, though the answer might not lead to a solution.

The organization’s last in-season trade was almost four years ago, sending Eddie Jones and Elden Campbell to Charlotte for, basically, Glen Rice.

The Lakers have made three in-season trades in a decade, which, in part, speaks to the difficulty of finding a partner in what Jackson calls “our socialist cap structure [that] keeps us in a communist structure.”

So, it is possible that they all are stuck with each other, for better or worse, with 11 victories in going on two months, with Sacramento in town Wednesday and the frustration gathering in a locker room impatient with the losing.

On Sunday the disappointment found Robert Horry, just as it had Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal before him. Horry was disgusted by the seemingly unshakable complacency.

Asked if he assumed the Lakers were a capable team not playing to its potential, Horry said, “Do I assume? I don’t want to make any assumptions.”

The Lakers so rarely offer the routine -- or what came to be accepted as routine in their three championship seasons -- one suspicious victory now coming for every two spectacular defeats, the assumptions built over three years losing clarity by the day.

Still, they hang in there, willing to believe that the small successes are growth, to dismiss the failures as temporary, ever-resilient souls in a game that rewards 45-win seasons with playoff opportunity.

Besides, they have O’Neal, the only player who can’t be guarded if he really, seriously doesn’t want to be.

Now, if they would make the jump shots that would get the triple-teams off him....

“I want to go on record, saying I’m not tired of winning,” Rick Fox said. “I’m not bored. I’m very proud to be a Laker and proud of my teammates and I recognize where we are as a group, what we did for three years.”

Fox also said, however, that it was time to return to the system that had brought them success, an implication that they’d misplaced their loyalties to Jackson and the triangle.

“At some point, you have to step out of the shadows of Phil’s previous teams and make your own history,” he said. “We’ve definitely taken his lead from the day he walked in here. We believe he had the road map and we’d follow like soldiers with blinders on.”

Triangle, here they come.

“It may seem boring,” Fox said. “It’s darn sure a lot better than losing games.”

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At a Sunday morning shoot-around at Air Canada Centre, Fox and Brian Shaw bet $60 on the outcome of a game in which each took three shots at the basket while sitting on the bench.

After one round and six misses, they doubled the bet. After Fox missed again, Shaw, a frequent winner in half-court shooting contests, made his shot.

When Shaw tried to collect, Fox, with a grin, offered $80. See, Fox explained, since the bet was made in Canada, Shaw’s $120, with the exchange rate, was worth about $40 less.

Shaw laughed and said he’d accept the $80, “if your next paycheck comes in Canadian dollars.”

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Long Road Back

*--* The team with the worst record to make the Western Conference playoffs last season finished 44-38. How the Lakers need to finish the season to reach that record WINS LOSSES TO REACH 44 38 CURRENT 11 18 MUST GO 33 20 GAMES OUT OF PLAYOFF SPOT 4 1/2

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