Lakers Not Shaken or Spurred

On a decidedly football Saturday in Texas, when the most stubborn NBA fan had more invested in the basketball game in Chicago than the one here, and NBC barely glanced over at them, the Lakers did what they can do.

Once more without Shaquille O’Neal, who served the last game of his three-game suspension, the Lakers rode their system into San Antonio, stuck pretty closely to Tim Duncan, watched David Robinson’s career wither a little more, and beat the Spurs, 98-81, at the Alamodome.

The Western Conference behemoths, accounting for the last three NBA titles, played for the first time since last spring, when the Lakers swept the best-of-seven conference finals by an average of 22.3 points.

“Certain things we do against this team just work,” Laker forward Rick Fox said. “And it’s up to them to figure out something different. Until they do, we’re going to keep doing it.”

Kobe Bryant scored 28 points, but this was not about Bryant dragging along the Shaq-less Lakers behind him. The Laker bench scored 39 points, beginning with Slava Medvedenko’s 12 in 14 minutes, and the Lakers ran a six-point lead to eight with Bryant on the bench for the first six minutes of the fourth quarter. Bryant returned and immediately made two critical shots--a three-point basket from the top and a five-foot floater--that pretty much finished the Spurs.

At the same time, Robert Horry did the hard work on Duncan, who scored two points in the fourth quarter and four points--on two-of-eight shooting--in the second half. Robinson, guarded mainly by Mark Madsen, scored four points in 23 minutes, so the Spurs’ size advantage was lost in an interior of Madsen, Horry and Samaki Walker.

“As Dave gets older,” Fox said, “the twin-tower threat isn’t that much of a threat.”

In fact, it is barely more than a curiosity. Robinson did not play in the fourth quarter, the continuation of a recent trend in which Malik Rose has gotten those critical minutes. The Spurs signed the 36-year-old Robinson for $20 million over two seasons last summer.

“We need better performances out of some people,” Spur Coach Gregg Popovich said. “Whether Shaq is playing or not is irrelevant. You have to play for 48 minutes. A couple of people didn’t show up, but that’s not as important as the team only competing for two periods.”

Perhaps the best shooting team in the league, the Spurs missed 14 of 15 three-point attempts, shot 41.5% overall, and then were outrebounded by four. Robinson was one for eight from the field and Steve Smith was three for 10, statistics that would appear to round up the “didn’t-show-up” suspects.

At the end of an odd eight days in which they lost to the Chicago Bulls and the Miami Heat, both last-place teams, the Lakers scored 29 fourth-quarter points and finished with two wins in three games without O’Neal. In the first win, the 39-point victory against Memphis, Bryant scored 56 and everyone else held on.

This was different.

This was Derek Fisher with 11 points and five first-half rebounds. This was Madsen, straining for five rebounds and keeping the basketball alive countless other times. This was Fox bouncing into the back court on the skin of his knees and elbows, maintaining a possession that ended with an alley-oop, Fisher to Bryant. This was Mitch Richmond, gaining momentum with his shot, making three of four field goals in 10 minutes.

And, as the San Antonio crowd rose in the fourth quarter, when the game would be decided by one final push by someone, the Lakers took out on an 11-point run, to a 94-77 lead, finally on Madsen’s left-handed, seven-foot hook over Duncan.

The last time the Lakers were in the building, they left halfway to the sweep that put them into the NBA Finals against the Philadelphia 76ers. In that Game 2, Phil Jackson was ejected. He stayed around in this one, but seemed only mildly impressed.

“We had a fortunate day in a lot of ways,” he said. “A lot of bounces went our way.”

And so the Lakers have won five in a row against the Spurs in a series once dominated by San Antonio.

The only man who could know the difference, or be reasonably sure of it, stood near his Laker teammates and smiled and shook his head.

“This team expects to win, they’ve been here,” said Samaki Walker, the former Spur. “I guarantee you, there was a different aura before the game in these two locker rooms. I guarantee you.”

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Lakers of Moment

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