Package Arrives Minus Some Parts

It seemed like a bigger deal two months ago, back when the Lakers accepted the rings they’d won at the expense of the Sacramento Kings, when Shaquille O’Neal called them Queens, when Rick Fox and Doug Christie had it out in front of everybody and ABC all but fainted at its beginner’s luck.

Well, it is Christmas Day, just as promised, and the Kings will play the Lakers at Staples Center on national television.

They are still the Western Conference finalists, the Kings and Lakers, still the glamour teams, still Shaq and Kobe and Phil and all.

But, well, you know.

Eleven and 18. Sagging shoulders. Chins on chests. Twenty-five-point losses and overtime wins.

The finger-pointing, teammate-dogging, defense-dissin’, and, somewhere in there, three-time defending champion Lakers against the Kings, quiet, dignified and 22-8, just where they thought they’d be, atop the Pacific Division and rolling along toward the playoffs.

So, who are the Queens now?

“So what?” Shaquille O’Neal said Tuesday afternoon while teammates lugged paper bags lumpy with gifts away from the practice gym. “Right now, yes, they are one of the best teams in the West. Yeah, I did a lot of talking. I stand by what I say.... I said some things, but so what?”

He drove off in his Christmas-red Hummer. He said he’d spend today doing, “Nothing. Being a daddy. Then, come to work.” The Lakers have so much to do. If they started winning today, and did not lose, they wouldn’t be a .500 team until Jan. 10. To match the Kings’ 22 wins, they’d have to win every game until Jan. 20. Of course, by then, the Kings would be gone.

From here, the schedule gets airy and the travel lightens, leaving the Lakers with just their game to think about, their jump shots and their transition defense and their effort, and burning through the complacency Robert Horry talks about.

They passed concern a while back, landed hard at can-you-believe-this-stuff. They’ve tried more practices and team meetings and awkward stabs at leadership, and none of it changed the fact that this morning, the one thing that won’t be under any of their trees is a clear conscience. They’ve all had their moments of poor play or poor choice, so they arrive two months into their season, neither coming nor going.

“Treading water,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson called it this weekend, and so far allowing the undertow to carry them.

Every start has been a false one. The easy win against the Clippers in the third game of the season. O’Neal’s return in the 13th game. The 30-point comeback against Dallas in the 21st. And, nothing. They’re trying to win a fourth consecutive championship on three or four quarters a week. On the next guy’s defense. On somebody else’s hustle.

Along come the Kings, and the Lakers still have no answers.

“I look forward to the day my team gets on track,” O’Neal said. “I think it’s more mental than physical. If the guys think about it tonight, guys know what they have to do. They have to go out and do it.”

It was going to be the biggest regular-season game of the year. Huge audience. Laker girls in red velvet. Christie and Fox, together again. June 2, Game 7, overtime, Arco Arena, replayed, for an idea of who’s bolder and who’s slipped and can the Lakers be stopped.

And, yet, for the Lakers, it’s become so much bigger. While O’Neal said he didn’t doubt the Lakers’ ability to rise to the challenge of good teams, they are 4-13 against teams with winning records.

“Every game is crucial,” guard Kobe Bryant said, “for trying to get out of this hole. It doesn’t matter who we’re playing.”

The Kings might as well be the Clippers. Of course, for 20 years, they were. Now, they must suspect it is their time, given their experience of the last postseason -- taking the Lakers to seven games and then losing, in their opinion, on a series of referees’ calls that went against them -- and the clear vulnerability of the Lakers.

“Our focus has turned away from one game changing the momentum of the season,” Fox said. “Right now we need to win a lot of games. So, it’s going to take more than one game to turn it around.”

So, they’ll play the game, even if it’s not the one everyone expected.

“We have a lot more at stake than they do,” Horry said. “Hopefully, that’ll get us out of our funk.

“If this doesn’t spark us, then something’s wrong.”