Time to Meet Better Half

Turns out, peace, harmony and cute nicknames mean nothing to their regular season.

The Lakers, twice-defending NBA champions, still can’t be bothered by the 82 exhibition games that drag them through the league’s unworthy, as they view the other 28. It would be arrogance, if they cared enough. Instead, it is indifference, raging. An Olympian apathy.

A year ago, when the organization burned and a talk-show host actually got Coach Phil Jackson to bite on the Shaq-or-Kobe question, among other frailties, the Lakers only needed to resolve the Shaq-and-Kobe conundrum to become great, consistently. Or so the theories went.

Now, they hug. One calls the other “Fire,” and the other answers to “Ice.” Two weeks ago, Shaquille O’Neal led a six-man Laker contingent through slate-roofed neighborhoods all the way into Ardmore, Pa., to watch Kobe Bryant have his high school number retired. Last January, they could have held the ceremony at O’Neal’s house and served Krispy Kremes afterward, and he wouldn’t have attended.

But that we knew.

The interesting part is that they decided to like each other, to play for each other, to never roll their eyes at the other, and still the regular season is a treacherous place. In a curiously inconsistent first half, the Lakers took their newfound chemistry, lived with it for a while, and then turned themselves into exactly the same team. Though capable of brilliance (see the Shaq-less victory in San Antonio), they are uninterested for days, even weeks, at a time.

So today they re-enter the regular season after five days off, against Michael Jordan and the Wizards, just the kind of team they would have lost to had Jordan not come along and transformed it into a playoff contender.

They still could fall, for they won’t have O’Neal. But if the Lakers and those who watch them learned nothing else from last season, it is that humiliation in February means nothing to them in May.

“Just playing the game together, getting better together, that’s all,” Bryant said. “It’s a process, is all.

“We’re more comfortable with where we are this year than we were last year. You know what I’m saying? We’re playing OK. We could be playing much better. And we will. But this is where we are right now and we can only go up.”

The other truth: If O’Neal is hale, happy and motivated, the Lakers can be 15-1 in the playoffs and make their final commute to Staples Center on the top decks of a few convertible buses.

If that is their course, then Dr. Robert Mohr will be this season’s Eddie Palubinskas, the odd little Aussie who cured O’Neal’s Knoblauchian free-throw syndrome, thereby returning O’Neal’s game to its previous, fearless tenor in time for the playoffs.

Mohr is the UCLA podiatrist whose duty is O’Neal’s arthritic big toe, sore for months, and the reason O’Neal is on the injured list for the second time in six weeks. On Mohr’s watch, the plan is to alter O’Neal’s shoe and its insert, then become progressively more aggressive, if necessary. Surgery is an option, though probably not until after the season.

The Lakers expect O’Neal to sit out at least a handful of games in the second half, which means more Bryant, who averaged 30.2 points and 25.0 shots in the nine games O’Neal missed before the break, and more “Superfriends.”

“Even though Shaq’s not 100% healthy and he’s not active enough, we can still use his strength and his ability for the best of this team in shorter minutes ... and get by on experience, on our moxie,” Jackson said. “We have to keep perspective of the overall season and what we’re going to be like in March, which is a grinding month for us. We’re going to have to be prepared to make it through a couple of real tough months and then get into the playoffs in the best order we can. If this helps him get through it, if this is one of the things that makes his toe not symptomatic then he has to get after it.”

Meanwhile, O’Neal’s off-and-on availability appears to have fouled Jackson’s feel for his rotation. The Lakers often play poorly when transitioning to or from O’Neal, in part because O’Neal’s absence makes them dependent on either the triangle offense or Bryant.

So they watch Bryant go and they jack three-point shots and they wonder when O’Neal will be back.

“Sometimes,” forward Rick Fox said, “we create our own challenges by the way we choose to approach a game.”

It is the attitude that produced six losses to last-place teams, the woeful Chicago Bulls twice. They lost four of the nine games they played without O’Neal, who served a three-game suspension for the punch that grazed Brad Miller’s left ear, and will play the next four without him as well.

Though they rank near the top of the league in most of the important offensive and defensive categories, the Lakers often don’t play like it, which makes Jackson cross his legs and grin thinly. Sometimes they wear on his legendary patience, and all he really demands is that they land in mid-April with O’Neal decently fit and pointed in the right direction.

Said Fox: “Shaq always sets the tone.”

Jackson reminded everyone on their way to the All-Star break that championships aren’t to be had in February. A few days before, however, Sacramento King center Vlade Divac warned, “If [the Lakers] don’t have the home-court advantage this year, they’re not going to win it.”

The Kings lead the Lakers in the Pacific Division by 21/2 games. They have only one fewer loss, however, and the coming months have belonged to the Lakers for two years running. Fox said that the first half often falls to the individuals, those early months being the time to score points, sell shoes and, as it turns out, tweak Jackson’s serenity.

“Right around the corner, before you blink an eye, we’ll be playing for the real marbles,” Fox said. “Then, the talk turns to who’s going to be playing for the trophy.”

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Lakers at Break

A look at where the Lakers were at the All-Star break under Phil Jackson:

1999-2000

Record...36-11

After break...31-4

Final...67-15

2000-01

Record...31-16

After break...25-10

Final...56-26

2001-02

Record...33-13