As Usual, Jackson Isn’t Lacking for Confidence

If it will be four, it will start today, the first game of their fourth postseason together, the day when Coach Phil Jackson often slides the previous championship ring on his finger, the day he writes the number on the grease board.

Today it is 16, the victories necessary for another NBA title, the Lakers carrying both the arrogance of three-time defending champions and the humility of a fifth-seeded team in the Western Conference into the best-of-seven series against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

They’ll open on the road at what should be a loud, proud Target Center, on the road for the first round for the first time since Jackson showed up, started winning titles, and turned Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant in the same direction.

The Lakers have said since October that this season would be about history, only one other team having won as many as four consecutive championships, the Boston Celtics going on four decades ago, at a time when the game and the rigors were different. So, it seems proper that the Lakers’ first step be in Minneapolis, a season after they recognized their roots with a ceremony that retired the names and the accomplishments of those sky-blue Lakers, 43 years after the franchise moved West.

The Timberwolves, driven by Kevin Garnett, have never won a playoff series. The Lakers have won 12 in a row. Jackson has won 24 in a row. The Timberwolves, who beat the Lakers twice in four games this season, are seeded higher. The Lakers are the favorites, even if they won’t recognize it.

“We’re now just saying we’re an underdog in this situation, and we’re a team to be reckoned with,” Jackson said. “We’re starting out from a difficult position and we have to play up to our caliber of play. There’s something we’ve culled and established in this league, and that’s that we are the champions if we survive this.”

Jackson stood Saturday afternoon in a gym empty but for him and a dozen or so reporters, his players having run off for a 1 p.m. flight. He’d catch up. They departed Los Angeles without O’Neal in his usual seat; their center -- in all ways -- having stayed behind to bleed every last moment with his newborn son, who arrived early Saturday morning, and wife Shaunie.

They do expect him on the court today, at the end of months of work that put them back into their game and back into the playoffs. The Lakers expect O’Neal to leave them again later in the week, when he’ll fly to South Carolina to bury his grandfather between games Games 2 and 3 or 3 and 4.

“I’m not concerned about him mentally,” Bryant said. “He’s a strong guy mentally. My concern is for him and his family.”

Bryant, who lost his grandfather nearly two years ago, offered, “He could use the game as his psychologist.”

In the weeks before the regular season concluded, O’Neal had played his best basketball. He was quick again through the lane, quick to the rim, and accurate with his short jumpers. He seemed ... happy.

“We’ll be focused and ready,” he had said. “I think we’re a good enough team to get one in somebody’s building -- maybe not two, but one. We’re getting it back now. We go through our little ritual before the playoffs. And once the playoffs start, guys will get that extra energy, that extra burst. My guys on my team know what it takes. We know how to fight and know what we want to get.”

The first 5 1/2 months were a terrible strain. Why wouldn’t the last two be the same?

Jackson asked more of them since January, perhaps, than he has from any of his previous title teams. As he did, as Bryant carried the offense in February, as O’Neal returned the favor in March and April, there were questions of playoff fatigue. Jackson’s unwavering perspective has been his foremost quality, and then the Lakers were shooting for four, and he was forced to abandon it at Christmas.

“We had to push ourselves,” Jackson said. “For me, personally, it was trying to squeeze a little bit harder than I wanted to at any point in the season. I usually don’t like to have to gear it up. But a couple times this year we had to really push guys and get them going and develop that lust and that thirst for winning. We just didn’t move well early in the season. We had to get them in a position where they could start to react and play. To do that, we had to squeeze them, as a coaching staff, harder than we wanted to at any time, unless it’s the playoffs.

“Now, we’ve done it. We’ve pushed ourselves into the position. What will that take from us in the playoffs?”

Their legs, possibly.

“We hope it doesn’t,” Jackson said, “because we anticipated it’s going to be a push anyway for us to make it through the playoffs, because we’re on the road all the way through.... except in the Finals.”