After three titles, Lakers still have plenty of incentive for another run.

By Tim Brown

Oct. 29, 2002 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

It seems odd only if you aren’t familiar with Phil Jackson and the Lakers: They won’t be favored to win the Pacific Division title, although nearly everyone outside of Sacramento expects them to win another NBA championship.

It is the way of the Lakers, regular-season survivors and postseason toughs, willing to sacrifice November and December for the good of May and June, and so center Shaquille O’Neal will start on the injured list and, for now, the chances of grave consequences are slim.

Having won three consecutive championships, the Lakers start over again tonight, without O’Neal -- or starting forward Rick Fox, for that matter -- for the near future, but with the championship season still five months off.

They’ll play for their fourth title in four years, figuring there could only be something daunting about it, because every time the Chicago Bulls won three, Michael Jordan retired. Yet, the Lakers arrive for the season after, sporting the same core players and the same stubborn, playground optimism, talking four, playing for four.

“There’s nothing else to do but that,” guard Kobe Bryant said. “We’re here, we might as well win it. It’s important for a couple reasons. One, to separate Phil from coaches of the past. Two, to do something that hasn’t been done since the Celtics. And three, just winning it for Chick [Hearn, who died in August].”

They’ll play eventually with O’Neal, but for now with Bryant, who turned 24 in August, and with the guys who call themselves “Superfriends,” who by habit cling to the offerings of the coach and defer to the first team All-NBA players.

The star system has worked the last three springs, even as Robert Horry made shots, and Derek Fisher drew fouls, and Fox buried himself in an offense that required five players, and Devean George began to grow up. Contrary to the beliefs in a certain Midwestern front office left behind by big-time basketball four years ago, players win championships, organizations schedule parades.

Driven, they’ve said, by the chance to separate themselves from every team to run off a few championships but the Boston Celtics going on four decades ago, the Lakers arrived at training camp generally thicker through the chest and shoulders than they’d ever been. Jackson, concerned about the accumulation of games and practices during their three-peat, actually cut back on the number of practices in camp, but ran his players harder.

“It’s an awesome thing we’re embarking on,” Jackson said. “It’s too [far off] to start talking about. We’re nine months away before it’s a reality. So, we just have to do what’s natural, and that’s take the first step toward it.”

He’s guessing, though. A coach of nine NBA champions since 1991, Jackson has never had a reasonable chance at four in a row. Jordan kept leaving, and his general manager, Jerry Krause, surrendered, and Jackson too, eventually left for Montana. Now he stands one title from overtaking Red Auerbach, who won nine in 10 years with the Celtics starting in 1957, and doing it in the name of Red Holzman, his friend and mentor. The Lakers get that too.

“Phil has done a lot for me,” O’Neal said. “It’d be nice to be on the team that puts him over the edge. However, I don’t think we should talk about that right now. For us, we have to set our goals, one mark at a time. I’m sure by March or April, I, we should be able to tell if we have what it takes to win it again. I don’t want to sit here and say we want to win 70 games or this or that. We’ll stick to our formula.”

Beyond the Celtics, the Minneapolis Lakers won three in a row in the early ‘50s and Jackson’s Bulls did it twice in the ‘90s. Then came these Lakers, talented and craving direction when Jackson signed for $6 million a season and an extra $2 million per championship. Jackson made the Lakers real again and himself rich, and now they hand out rings and raise banners at Staples Center around Halloween every year before getting down to the humdrum routine of the regular season.

Eight, which would match the best of the Celtics’ run of titles, are too many to fathom and seemingly impossible to replicate. O’Neal is 30 and on the days his feet hurt, ponders retirement. Many of the core players -- Horry, Fox, Brian Shaw -- are well into their 30s. As difficult as it is to rework a roster in the salary-cap era, it could be as much a strain to maintain established players and high-end rosters in the luxury-tax era.

But, four? Four could happen. Who knows, the challenge of it alone could make the Lakers a decent regular-season team, though O’Neal isn’t expected for at least half a month, and Fox on Monday was suspended for six games for initiating two fights against the Kings in their exhibition game last Friday.

“Hopefully,” Fisher said, “that [challenge] will allow us to keep things fresh and to keep a newer energy around ourselves.”

Then, starting again around April, assuming a smooth recovery for O’Neal, the Lakers will find themselves in their usual place, trying something totally unfamiliar, if not unreasonable.

“At some point, it’ll probably override any other reason we’ll have to give our best this season,” Fisher said. “I don’t think there’ll be anything more important than that. We have so many championship rings, so much championship experience. But, all of that stuff has been done before. So I think this year is going to be about separating ourselves from that.

“Other teams have done what we’ve done in the past: Winning one championship, winning two championships, winning three championships. The Bulls have done that. This year, it’s a chance to do something that hasn’t been done before in our eyes. We’re young enough that we can’t understand the magnitude of what the Celtics did in the ‘50s and ‘60s. So, for us, this is one of the biggest things in sports history.... Obviously, you guys will have plenty of opportunity to talk about why we don’t look excited, or why we look lackluster when we shouldn’t, but overall, when healthy, we’re able to sustain championship-caliber basketball.”

They’ll have the Kings to deal with, and although they will only admit it with a raise of an eyebrow, their three-peat nearly died on that floor in the pasture outside Sacramento last spring. As it turned out, Game 7 ended five minutes late and the Lakers went on. How far, exactly, they don’t know. But, four doesn’t seem out of the question.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Three and ...

When the Lakers won their third consecutive NBA championship last summer, it was the fifth time the feat had been accomplished in the league’s 56 seasons. The other teams that won three consecutive championships and how they did the season after winning third title in a row:

MINNEAPOLIS LAKERS

1951-52, ‘52-53, ‘53-54

* Next Season: Lost to Fort Wayne in division finals.

***

BOSTON CELTICS

1958-59, ‘59-60, ‘60-61

* Next Season: Defeated Lakers in NBA Finals, 4-3. Won championships next four seasons.

***

CHICAGO BULLS

1990-91, ‘91-92, ‘92-93

* Next Season: Without Michael Jordan, lost to N.Y. Knicks, 4-3, in conference semifinals.

***