Match Favors Kings

Amazing game, astonishing ending at Staples Center on Sunday. And, overall, quite a chess match. But I favor Sacramento in this series for checkmate.

This was a game where the ending transcended all of what happened in the beginning and middle. But consider this: the most unlikely scenario of the afternoon was not Robert Horry’s fortuitous winning shot, but Shaq O’Neal making six consecutive free throws down the stretch, each one as gut-wrenching as the one before.

And consider that the Lakers don’t even have a prayer with a last-second shot if Samaki Walker, of all people, doesn’t fling in a 34-foot three-pointer just before the half to cut Sacramento’s lead from 17 to 14 points. I hesitate to call it a jump shot. Let’s just say one man’s shot put is another man’s J.

The Lakers made a couple of adjustments that allowed them to finally turn the game against a very good team. Call it Phil Jackson’s moves in the chess game.

First, switching Kobe Bryant to Mike Bibby on defense played a huge role. Kobe is the Lakers’ best defensive player. He not only contained Bibby more, but disrupted him. And he was doing a lot of this with four, and then five fouls.

Kobe does so many things that are hard to see and understand. Bibby plays off picks--he may be the best in the game at this. And Kobe negated his effectiveness somewhat by jumping through and not getting caught under the picks. Kobe also keeps going even when he is caught in a pick. He also is anticipatory. He plays the pick even before it becomes a pick. He has the size and the speed and the game smarts for this, unlike almost anybody.

And then, Derek Fisher, who needs to hunker down on defense against Bibby when he plays him--maybe not play him so tight high and defend him in a more defined area--did a fine job, when Kobe switched to Bibby, of not letting Doug Christie, whom he had to switch to, post him up effectively.

Bibby is really becoming a handful for the Lakers. What he does now, better than anybody in basketball--it is almost Magic Johnson-esque--is make the pass that leads to the pass that gets the assist. Another big part of the chess game is how Sacramento plays Shaq. The Kings have a nice double-dip going on him. When he is going against Scot Pollard, Vlade Divac’s replacement, he is going to get bodied and blocked out and banged around. He also is going to have to chase more because Pollard runs him, and Shaq has to play 40-42 minutes for the Lakers to win. Then the chess game changes with Divac in. Now, Shaq faces a guy who just as likely will bang you as flop on his back at the first sign of light contact. He is a coy veteran who can dunk on you as well as pick, roll, draw, hand off and run outside and hit a perimeter shot.

It all adds to something important: Sacramento makes Shaq play every minute.

And then there was the fan called Laker Boy.

Late in the game, attention shifted to the big screen that hangs over the court. And there he was, in full Laker jersey, halfway up the first level in the east end, dancing and wiggling and showing moves you’d never see at any of the better L.A. nightclubs, mostly because they’d never let this guy into the better L.A. nightclubs. There was so much moving on this guy from the waist to the neck that it would have made Jell-O look stiff. Clearly, here was a guy who had never walked past the front door of any hamburger joint in the country.

I, of course, was personally disgusted.

But give him credit. He really got it going in Staples. He pretty much did what the Laker shooters couldn’t do all afternoon, until Horry’s game-winner. He brought the crowd to its feet.

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Rick Majerus, Utah basketball coach, will be The Times’ guest analyst on the Lakers for the rest of the playoffs. Majerus, the fourth-winningest active coach in major college basketball, will begin his 14th season at Utah this fall.