It’s Lakers in Pout, er, Rout

You get the feeling Shaquille O’Neal would love to feel good about this, about the Lakers winning five in a row, the last three by margins of 32, 20 and 29 points.

You get the feeling he would love to smile and slap Kobe Bryant in the back of the head and slap Phil Jackson on the front of the head and saunter off to the bus, roll off to the next place and do the same thing to the next team.

But, you know, things bother him. They shouldn’t, of course. They just do.

And so, half an hour after the Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons, 121-92, Tuesday night at the Palace of Auburn Hills, where he scored 28 points in 25 minutes and Bryant scored 20 in 28, O’Neal sighed at a league that won’t let him be him.

He played barely 30 minutes on average in three games off the injured list, perhaps saving his feet months from now, but that didn’t interest him.

“It probably doesn’t matter,” O’Neal said from his familiar postgame pose, arms spread, head back, feet in a bucket of ice. “However, I’m still good enough to get 25 and 10 [points and rebounds] in this raggedy... league. I see now why they’re losing money.”

O’Neal’s beef, basically: two offensive fouls in the first quarter, one drawn by rookie Zeljko Rebraca. So, Zeljko stays in the game, and Shaq sits.

“Ten years ago, it was better,” he said. “It’s got nothing to do with the talent. It ain’t the East. Got nothing to do with the East.... They have to do that to even things up.”

O’Neal at first insisted the only way he can be stopped is if he flat misses.

“Well, two ways,” he said. “Cheat me or [beat] me. Other than that

If that didn’t suck the joy out of the win for them, Robert Horry’s view might. The Lakers shot 51.7%, everyone but Horry scored, and by the time they were halfway into the fourth quarter there were maybe 2,000 people in the arena. Bryant had a 360-degree dunk on a second-quarter breakaway, and the rout was 20 points in the second quarter, 30 in the third and 35 in the fourth.

The Pistons lost by 16 the night before, in Minneapolis. The Lakers were in Detroit, quite possibly in their beds, long before the Pistons were. In the postgame discussion of what made the victory, Horry suggested it had more to do with who made the loss.

“They just had a bad night,” Horry said. “They looked tired. It was them, tonight. They were terrible.”

There was that. But the Lakers can take the wind out of a town.

The Pistons sold out the arena they built in the middle of a pasture, and they dressed their fans in red, white or blue, depending on the section in which they sat. It was all very festive, right up until the time they were behind by 20 points in the second quarter.

Piston forward Ben Wallace had a starburst thing going for his hair, for the first nationally televised Piston game in two years. So enthralled was TBS, by early in the fourth quarter it went happily to the Memphis-Toronto game.

“I just feel we weren’t really there,” Detroit Coach Rick Carlisle said.

Nothing takes the air out of a team like Bryant, on the break, going airborne. Nothing kills the psyche of a team like O’Neal doing all of his usual stuff, while mixing in the eight-foot turnarounds and making his free throws.

The Lakers scored 39 points in the third quarter, their largest period of the season, and they had a season-high 99 points after three quarters. The bench scored 45 points, 11 in 13 minutes by Mitch Richmond. At the same time, the Pistons looked every bit the team that has turned a 14-6 start into 16-17.

“They couldn’t keep the game interesting,” Jackson said.

Bryant took off his sweatband halfway through the fourth quarter and sent a ballboy into the stands with it. The ballboy handed it to a young man wearing a Bryant jersey and a ratty pair of Kobe shoes and the kid nearly fell over with gratitude. He waved and Bryant winked.

A season ago, in the same arena, Bryant signed an autograph during the game for a fan who sat courtside.

Bryant said the 360 just came to him, that he never considered Jackson’s reaction had he missed, and that it merely proves that he is over the rib ailment that slowed him for more than two weeks.

“We only come here once a year,” he said. “People want to see that. Plus, I’m healthy. When I’m healthy, I don’t miss those, unless I’m fouled.”

A locker room away, O’Neal huffed.