Lakers Have Praise for Team That Buried Them

This is the type of night that makes you want to go home and crawl in your bed. Except the Lakers didn’t have that option Friday. They boarded a bus and went to the airport, where a plane was waiting to take them to Chicago.

And so it goes on. It was as if life on the road, the four flights and six hotel nights and 3,500 miles, caught up to them Friday. And then the Minnesota Timberwolves ran away from them.

It’s pretty rare to see the Lakers scored on at will and taken out of their offense in the same game, but the Timberwolves did it to them to win, 120-102. And they did it, as they have for their entire seven-game winning streak, without injured starters Joe Smith and Terrell Brandon.

It was Day 7 on the road for the Lakers. It was Kobe Bryant coming down an open lane and instead of throwing the ball down over his head with a one-handed dunk, barely getting over the rim for a two-hand slam. It was Devean George missing a three-pointer that could have given the Lakers the lead for the first time all night--and the Lakers never getting such a good opportunity again.

It was shots and runs and comebacks coming up a little ... bit ... short.

“Every time you have a long road trip like this, it wears you down a little bit,” Bryant said. “You play through it. Then again, it’s encouraging to know that in the playoffs you don’t have to do this type of stuff.”

There was a sense that none of this mattered too much to the Lakers. They’ve been around enough to know these things happen, especially far from home. The only other team with a road record as good as the Lakers’ 10-5, San Antonio, lost to the increasingly dysfunctional 76ers in Philadelphia on Friday night.

Phil Jackson limited Thursday activities to a workout because he thought the group needed a break, and that might have hurt as well.

Still, they gave the Timberwolves love the way they rarely do for another team. They bracketed just about every comment they made with praise for the Timberwolves. You don’t hear Jackson go into the typical coaches’ “you-have-to-give-them-credit” routine, but he did Friday.

That’s because the Timberwolves made just about all of the opponents’ top marks for the season obsolete Friday night.

Wally Szczerbiak even got the better of his matchup with Bryant, dropping 34 points to Kobe’s 23 (on nine-for-27 shooting), and putting up a strong case for the locals who think he should make the all-star team.

“He’s just a better basketball player than I thought he was,” Bryant said. “Next time we play him, I can’t stray from him as much.”

All of this praise is because the Lakers still feel so confident.

But they’ll only go so far.

Shaquille O’Neal, who rarely gives a foe anything more than cursory praise, was asked if he was impressed.

“Nooooo,” O’Neal said. “Anybody can win one game.”

Some Minnesota radio guy tried to turn this into a Major Respect Issue, asking Kevin Garnett what he thought of O’Neal’s comment that he wasn’t impressed. Garnett gave it about all the attention it deserved.

“I don’t know where that came from,” he said. “Who cares? Next question.”

As Garnett said later, the Lakers shouldn’t be impressed by anybody. They’re the champions. He said he’d do the same thing if the Timberwolves ran things.

Garnett did what Shaq usually does. He controlled the middle on defense (including three blocked shots) and was their go-to guy on offense, producing 32 points.

This game meant so much more to the Timberwolves. This is a franchise that has never been past the first round of the playoffs but now looks ready to be heard from come May. He made sure Bryant heard him in the fourth quarter, when he blocked a frivolous dunk attempt by Bryant after a whistle had already blown the play dead, then he talked to him about it.

He’s trying to act like the big dog for his team, because as he said: “You can’t fight a pit bull with a chihuahua.”

The Timberwolves are starting to look like a miniature version of the Lakers. They rely on two stars, Garnett and Szczerbiak, who feuded in the past but now get along great. They even have one of Jackson’s favorite quotes, a passage by Rudyard Kipling that reads “For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack”, hanging in their locker room.

They took a little step Friday. The Lakers think in terms of journeys.

Bryant, interpreting O’Neal’s perceived slight of the Timberwolves, said: “What he means by that is, you win in the playoffs. Even though they played out of their minds and their fans were excited by this win--and they should be--the chips are on the line when the playoffs come along. But they played great. Our hats have to go off to them.”

Temporarily. O’Neal’s cap was on, backward, when he walked out. And Bryant was already looking ahead to the next time the Lakers come here, in February. In the NBA, sometimes it seems as if you’re always looking down the road.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at: j.a.adande@latimes.com