Lakers Stuck in Middle

The differences are found now not in defeat, but in the breadth of it, by short or wide, Sunday night by a foot or so, the distance between Kobe Bryant’s fingers and the rim, and in the smirk that pulled at his face immediately afterward.

The Lakers lost for the fifth time in six games, by 93-89 to the Houston Rockets at Staples Center, where Bryant scored 46 points but missed the finger roll with 9.2 seconds left that would have given them the lead and, perhaps, a victory before two difficult midweek games in Texas.

Afterward, 20 minutes after a grinning Yao Ming left the arena, having scored a career-high 20 points on nine-of-nine shooting, Bryant found himself again in a subdued locker room. The Rockets had earned their win in three frantic minutes at the start of the fourth quarter, on a 13-4 run when the Lakers could defend themselves with neither Bryant, who was taking his only rest of the game, nor Shaquille O’Neal, whose toe is a game or two from being NBA-ready.

Bryant was on the bench, a towel over his legs, the mouthpiece that guarded his ravaged lip in his lap.

“I want to be in there,” Bryant said. “I want to be in there. It’s disappointing to have that happen. It’s upsetting to have that happen.”

In all, the Rocket run was 17-4 from the start of the fourth quarter, and 17-2 after Derek Fisher (season-high 17 points) made a jump shot to begin the quarter, which the Lakers began with a five-point lead. Four minutes later, they were behind by eight points, and staring hopefully at Bryant, who made 18 of 37 field-goal attempts despite four black stitches that peeked out from his top lip, still swollen after Friday night’s collision with Golden State’s Antawn Jamison.

Bryant’s 46 were his season’s high, two nights after his 45 against the Warriors, 10 nights after 41 in Boston. He had 16 points in the third quarter, and while Fisher did a solid job on defense against Houston’s Steve Francis, Bryant appeared to be lifting the Lakers again, almost by himself.

“It’s hard to beat a team with one guy,” Francis said of Bryant, “but he came close.”

It is a signature quality of the Shaq-less Lakers, the scoring runs and droughts that bring them into games and shoot them out of them. While Yao stood beneath the basket and caught passes and made layups, and while the Rockets scored 34 points in the final quarter, when they made 12 of 19 field-goal attempts, the Lakers were outshot again, and have lost seven of their first 10 games.

“Well,” Laker forward Rick Fox said, “we won’t easily forget what these first 10 games have felt like, that’s for sure. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do. There’s a lot of people we’ve already seen who we will meet again.

“But, hey, it’s a long season. With Shaquille back, we’ll make a better run.”

Yao, the 7-foot-5 rookie from China, stood up with 1:30 left in the first quarter, and the people at Staples perked up a little. Some looked up long enough to boo.

Yao was guarded not by O’Neal, a matchup desired by all but Phil Jackson, but by Slava Medvedenko.

“I feel sorry for the kid,” Jackson had said before the game. “I was hoping it wouldn’t be Shaq’s first game back, actually. I don’t know, [O’Neal] would break him in two. It wouldn’t be fair for the kid to go against Shaquille, such a dominant force, such a dynamic amount of energy.”

O’Neal, in the final days of recovery from off-season toe surgery, stayed in the locker room, and so Yao worked first against Medvedenko and then against Samaki Walker. Yao had eight points and two rebounds in his first five minutes. By halftime, in 11 minutes, he had a career-high 12 points, two on a baseline spin move that soldered Medvedenko to the floor, and four rebounds and two traveling violations.

He scored eight points in the fourth quarter, which helped bring the Rockets into the final minute, ahead by four points. Fisher made a three-pointer from the top to bring the Lakers to within 90-89 and, after a Rocket turnover, Bryant stood on the left wing, the ball in his hands.

He stuttered right, turned into the lane, and surged to the front of the rim, right arm extended, the basketball gliding from his fingertips. As the crowd gasped, the ball struck the heel of the rim and bounced away, and Bryant landed with his hands on his hips. With 8.2 seconds left, Cuttino Mobley made two free throws. Bryant then missed a three, and Mobley made one of two free throws, but the story was in the finger roll that rolled out.

“I tried to George Gervin it,” Bryant said with a puffy, rueful smile. “And the ice melted before the ball hit the rim.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

BRYANT LINE

Minutes...45

Field goals...18-37

Free throws...9-11

Points...46

Rebounds...6

YAO LINE

Minutes...23

Field goals...9-9

Free throws...2-2

Points...*20

Rebounds...6

* career high