Lakers Found Their Game at Just the Right Moment

The Lakers finally have something going here. Momentum. Achievement.

I’m not a physics major, but I know you can’t create something out of nothing. Every championship team has to show its merit at some point during the regular season.

At last, the Lakers have done it. Thanks to their solid 117-104 victory over the Sacramento Kings on Thursday, the Lakers have a six-game winning streak, a convincing ‘W’ against a team that matters

No matter how much they might have believed otherwise, they couldn’t turn the ignition if there wasn’t an engine beneath the hood. Now that they’re rolling, it’s time to see if they can throw it in fourth gear. And no, not even a couple of flat tires can slow their roll.

A complex season has suddenly become very simple. If the Lakers want to grab the No. 4 seeding in the Western Conference, home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs and shout out to the rest of the league that the championship road runs through Los Angeles, their task is clear: “We just have to win our way out here,” Phil Jackson said.

The Lakers have been on a season-long quest for momentum and were running out of time to gain it. When asked recently if he thought the Lakers ever got a nice roll this year, Jackson pointed to back-to-back victories at Phoenix and Sacramento in January. That was the beginning of a seven-game winning streak that turned the talk-show questions from “Will the Lakers make the playoffs?” to “Will the Lakers win the championship?”

The whole thing was a bit of a mirage. The Lakers beat the Kings without Chris Webber (who was injured) and the Indiana Pacers without Ron Artest (who was suspended -- imagine that) in their only significant victories during that stretch.

And it was hard to put much stock in the five-game winning streak the Lakers took into Thursday’s game, because the only two “impressive” victories came against the fraudulent Dallas Mavericks.

Here’s why the Lakers hadn’t accomplished anything this season: they were 0-4 against the San Antonio Spurs, 0-2 against the Kings with Webber in the lineup.

They’ll need to go through one of those teams -- possibly both -- to get to the NBA Finals.

If they can play enough games like this one, it could happen. Shaquille O’Neal dominated inside. Kobe Bryant broke out of his mini-shooting slump and pumped in 34 points, with seven rebounds, six assists, four steals and zero turnovers.

The resurgent Derek Fisher had a shooting night reminiscent of the 2001 playoffs, making open three-pointers when Kobe and Shaq passed out of double-teams, making three-pointers with a man in his face and the shot clock running down, making five of seven three-pointers on the night.

Robert Horry hustled so much he appeared to pull a muscle.

The Lakers closed out on jump shooters, which is one reason the Kings made only one of 13 three-pointers.

“We’re starting to play with a passion,” Jackson said.

You had to figure Shaq would give the Kings 40 points and 20 rebounds Thursday because, you know, somebody in Sacramento messed with the ball he used to score his 20,000th point.

First the Lakers made the Kings wait through the latest additions to their lore Thursday when they honored new Hall of Famers James Worthy and Chick Hearn just before tipoff. Worthy escorted Hearn’s widow, Marge, to midcourt and they basked in a standing ovation.

(Beforehand, Marge Hearn said she would ask Jerry West and possibly Magic Johnson to give Chick’s presentation speech at the induction ceremony in September. Worthy will probably ask Dean Smith, his coach at North Carolina, as soon as Smith is finished recruiting Roy Williams for the current coaching vacancy.)

Once the game began, O’Neal was in full punishment mode, dunking and bumping his way to 19 points and eight rebounds by halftime. In the third quarter the Lakers used good defense to create easy transition baskets. That meant they got away from O’Neal but they went back inside to finish Sacramento off and O’Neal wound up with 32 points and 16 rebounds.

Apparently there was no lingering bitterness between him and Jackson after he missed Wednesday’s practice because he had two flat tires on his car (“I don’t have any spares,” O’Neal explained. “I’m sitting on 26 [-inch rims].”

The rivalry between these two teams remains heated, however, drawing technical fouls and trash-talk galore.

O’Neal was doing his thing, the suddenly valuable Laker bench was making contributions -- and the Kings had an answer for everything.

Webber’s badly sprained right ankle is recovering well enough to give him close to full mobility and elevation. Against the Lakers lately, Mike Bibby’s looking more like a troop leader than a scout. And Peja Stojakovic is one of the purest shooters in the league.

The Kings had a five-game winning streak of their own -- four of them on the road -- and had won 11 of 12. But Thursday was hardly their best game. The best passing team in the league clanged alley-oops off the rim and sailed cross-court passes out of bounds.

And they missed all of those jumpers

“They won, man,” Webber said. “You’ve got to give them credit. They’re the king of the hill. But the playoffs are coming. The playoffs are coming.”

And that’s usually when the Lakers are at their best.

“The playoffs are going to be a different season for us,” O’Neal said. “It’s going to be fun.”

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com