Lakers Ride Tides of March

Thing is, the Lakers don’t really do March, desperate Marches being so Del Harris and all.

But even they have felt the season change, from dreary to something a bit more urgent, if not entirely encompassing. Heck, they’d play along.

So, on a Friday night when the playoffs felt near and the Clippers were edgy, the Lakers pressed through their usual back-to-back lethargy and stepped into a flat-footed tie with the Sacramento Kings atop the Western Conference and Pacific Division.

They beat the game-again Clippers, 98-92, before a polite Laker crowd at Staples Center. Kobe Bryant scored 14 fourth-quarter points to lead the Lakers back from a deficit of 10 points with less than nine minutes left, and the Lakers scored 30 points to the Clippers’ 14 in the final 8:11.

“It had all the complexities of a Laker-Clipper game,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said, smiling, after the teams shared six technical fouls.

In a game Shaquille O’Neal was unable to start because of a bout with nausea and in which he lacked his usual touch around the basket, Bryant scored 33 points after his own poor offensive start. His jump shot began to fall halfway through the final period, a development that then allowed him to attack the Clipper interior. Bryant and Derek Fisher each hit a late, critical three-pointer and the Lakers made nine of 12 free throws down the stretch.

“Their best player beat us,” Clipper Coach Alvin Gentry said. “We can’t let that happen.

“I was just disappointed that we lost to Kobe at the end of the game, because obviously he’s going to take the big shots, especially if Shaq’s not in the game.”

O’Neal and Clipper center Michael Olowokandi were ejected with 19 seconds left, both receiving the second of double-technical fouls for shoving under the Laker basket. Earlier in the quarter, they received technicals for the same conduct on the Clipper end. On the way off, Olowokandi pointed toward the parking lot, becoming the second player in two nights to call out O’Neal, beginning with Golden State’s Danny Fortson.

Afterward, by one witness’s account, O’Neal was restrained from storming the Clipper locker room in search of Olowokandi. Twenty minutes after the game, O’Neal still sat near the players’ parking lot, awaiting Olowokandi, who never came.

“Beat it,” he said to a bystander. “You don’t need to see this.”

Asked about the sudden courage shown by opposing centers--Brad Miller, Fortson and Olowokandi, in particular--O’Neal said, “The refs let them do whatever they want, and then these bums think they can play.”

He said he did not know when it would end against Olowokandi, who made one of 10 shots for four points. Told Olowokandi had left, O’Neal sighed, stood up and walked off.

“I’ll see him, though,” he said.

The Laker theory was that Olowokandi was frustrated, shut down after playing so well since the All-Star game. Olowokandi said O’Neal, who had 16 points and 13 rebounds on a toe that burned again, simply couldn’t handle him.

“He needs to grow up. He needs to understand people are going to fight back,” the Clipper center said. “We were going back and forth, saying things. He was saying, ‘Watch the [elbows].’ He’s being catered to too much. He is big, he is strong. It’s only fair that other people match that strength.

“He said I was bullying him. He does the same thing to everybody else. He hits and then he wants to whine when he gets hit. We’re not going to back down. I really do hope we play them in the playoffs.”

These are contentious games, now that the Clippers aren’t resigned to losing.

The Lakers caught the Kings in the loss column for the second time in about a week, so there was that. They have won 11 of 13, and the schedule toughens in the final month, starting with two games against Dallas in three days and San Antonio on Wednesday. They end the week in Sacramento.

As Jackson saw it, the last of four regular-season games against the Clippers was critical only if the Lakers play themselves into being the top-seeded team in the Western Conference playoffs and the Clippers play past Utah for the eighth spot. And that is from where the Clipper edge came. The Jazz won in Detroit, so the Clippers stand 11/2 games behind Utah.

The Clippers had won four in a row and seven of eight, but missed a chance to beat a vulnerable team.

They turned a 64-54 deficit into a 78-68 lead with a 24-4 run, only for the Lakers to score the next 11 points for a 79-78 lead, setting up their surge in the final six minutes.