Laker Losses Are Tenfold

The Lakers, perhaps, had just gotten over the notion they were a lottery team without Shaquille O’Neal, and then they lost Tuesday night to the dreadful Miami Heat, and so their margin for error shrunk again.

That’s 10 losses before Thanksgiving with the capable Orlando Magic tonight. Though none of the Lakers dared predict the effect on extending their three consecutive championships to four, it doesn’t seem to be getting much easier, either, despite O’Neal’s well-spent first weekend.

“We don’t have any choice but to play through it,” Kobe Bryant said. “These are the cards we have been dealt. It will do us no good to worry about the end of the season. It is just important to build our rhythm, so when we get to that point we are playing the best basketball we can play.”

They were 97-85 losers at American Airlines Arena, before a crowd that included Anna Kournikova and half the Dolphins’ roster, though that appeared coincidental. O’Neal scored 15 points and had eight rebounds in 32 minutes, then slipped out of the locker room before reporters were let in. Bryant, limited by foul trouble to nine first-half minutes, scored 21 points, also in 32 minutes. Kicked in the right shin by teammate Mark Madsen, he limped from the floor with 46 seconds left, joining O’Neal on the bench as the Lakers (5-10) watched the time disappear.

The team committed 21 turnovers, a fact that undermined its advantages in shooting (49.3% to 46.3%) and rebounds (39-33).

“It looked to me like they were playing at a different speed,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said. “Recovery [on defense], loose balls, turnovers, it looked like we were behind the whole game.”

After the first quarter, they were. Behind on the floor, behind on the scoreboard, and now behind again on the sense they were gaining on their first three weeks, spent trying to scrape together enough game simply to compete.

The Lakers could afford the occasional poor game. They just couldn’t afford to lose it.

Considering O’Neal spent more time on the operating table than the practice floor over two months, perhaps their first nine losses were unavoidable. But not this.

The Heat had won once in nine games and twice in 12. It has yet to score 100 points, actually scoring in the 60s as often as it had in the 90s before Tuesday’s game. It had spent the first month of the season shooting poorly in front of small, disinterested crowds, without center Alonzo Mourning and therefore without a playoff chance.

“Maybe it’s a breakthrough for us,” Coach Pat Riley said.

Before a rare sellout, Miami generally kept O’Neal from the basket, got a combined 48 points from guards Eddie Jones, Travis Best and Mike James, and scored 20 points off Laker turnovers. Brian Grant did the job on O’Neal, who, still rusty from two months away and wearing a black sleeve on his right knee, missed 10 of 15 field-goal attempts.

“He didn’t have the bounce,” said Derek Fisher, who scored 20 points, “the type of energy he had the first two nights. I think we were all aware that at some point the adrenaline dies down. The conditioning is nowhere near where it needs to be.”

For the first time since O’Neal came off the injured list -- granted, only three games, but you wouldn’t think they’d become this jaded this fast -- the Lakers looked less than inspired.

O’Neal played 14 minutes in the first half before taking his first rebound -- on a missed free throw -- and had only two in his first 16 minutes.

Because of foul difficulties, Bryant played eight minutes in the first quarter and one in the second, and so the Lakers found themselves at halftime with a 50-41 deficit.

They drew within five points midway through the third quarter and seven early in the fourth, but could not hold onto the basketball long enough to frighten the Heat.

“We just couldn’t come up with the loose balls,” Jackson said. “We would tap it to one another, and the loose ball would end up in their hands. There were things that we did that were beyond logic. Twenty-one turnovers is inexcusable. We tried to do things tonight that were out of scope.”

Among the reasons O’Neal’s return was going to be splashy was the way the Laker schedule turned upon his arrival. They went from playing, among others, San Antonio (twice), Dallas, Portland (twice) and Boston, playoff teams all, into Chicago, Milwaukee, Miami and Memphis, among others, playoff teams none.

It was going to be easier.

It wasn’t.