Wacky, in Technical Terms

Nothing in this state can be considered unusual anymore, not on a night Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger walked into Staples Center to watch the Dallas Mavericks win a game against the Lakers in Los Angeles.

Stock up on the water, blankets and batteries, because all signs point to the Big One rocking the state’s fault lines any day now.

The Mavericks not only won this game, they controlled the majority of it, beating the Lakers here for the first time since 1990.

This was a wacky night all around. Not only did you have Schwarzenegger in his role as governor, there was lead official Steve Javie as the Techinator, calling technical fouls on any Laker who looked at him, and Maverick Coach Don Nelson as the Kindergarten Cop, gently guiding a boy who wandered onto the court in the last minute back to the sidelines.

It took a mixed bag of mix-ups for the Mavericks to beat the Lakers, including a whistle-happy ref, a foul-plagued Shaquille O’Neal, a first half in which the best thing the Lakers had going for them was Kareem Rush, and not much offense at all from Kobe Bryant.

Gary Payton got tossed in the first quarter, but Dallas guard Michael Finley sat out with a toe injury, so we’ll call that a wash.

The only thing normal about this night was Dirk Nowitzki hitting jumpers and O’Neal missing free throws.

Everything else came from the X Files.

The Mavericks got tough. Antoine Walker did what no Maverick center has ever attempted and stood up to O’Neal.

The Mavericks played smart. When Don Nelson mixed and matched his way into a lineup that forced O’Neal to guard Walker, Walker dribbled by O’Neal, shot a three-pointer over him and passed inside to Tony Delk to exploit the absence of O’Neal in the middle.

But first there was the bizarre first-quarter sequence when Javie started calling technical fouls like Billy Crystal in “Forget Paris.”

Tech on Devean George for getting into it with Walker. A tech on Gary Payton for jawing at Javie as he dribbled the ball up court five seconds later. After Payton turned and underhanded the ball to the other basket past Javie, Javie gave him another technical, which meant an automatic ejection. He T’d up Karl Malone a minute later.

Javie even called O’Neal for stepping over the line early, the rule Mark Cuban is always imploring the league to enforce.

The Mavericks started off in a zone defense, and the sight of the Mavericks playing any defense at all threw the Lakers off their game. They shot 36% in the first quarter.

By the time they devised a way to get the ball inside to O’Neal in the second half, the Lakers were behind, the Mavericks were content to foul him and the Lakers.

The talk leading up to this game was better than the event itself. That has often been the case when it comes to this series, which the Lakers have dominated.

It all started when Malone, in a Dec. 4 game, caught Dallas’ Steve Nash with an elbow when Nash tried to swipe a rebound away from him.

After the game, Laker Coach Phil Jackson told Malone to expect the Mavericks to make a big issue out of his elbow.

“Because I know the Dallas Mavericks and the way they react,” Jackson said a couple of days later. “Well, Cuban I should say, not the Dallas Mavericks. But he is the Mavericks, basically. We just know how they react and they’re going to react like that.”

Cuban e-mailed a litany of Malone’s elbowing offenses to every reporter that inquired and the league suspended Malone for the Lakers’ next game.

Cuban said the league was simply enforcing its rules, although he told Fox Sports Net that the Lakers “don’t think the rules apply to them.”

Jackson and Cuban have a funny little back-and-forth thing going. They would love nothing more than to ignore each other’s existence, but they’re both too high-profile for that too happen.

They caught each other’s eyes when Jackson took the court before last week’s game at Dallas, absolutely unable to avoid each other at that moment, and Jackson simply smirked.

“I don’t pay attention to what he’s saying, so I don’t know what he’s saying until you guys report it,” Jackson said before Friday’s game.

The funny thing is, it doesn’t take much at all for the combatants to put their differences aside.

Jackson implied that he could coach for an owner like Cuban (he heard the pay’s pretty good). And Malone said he could play for Cuban, despite all the recent rhetoric.

“I don’t take that stuff to heart,” Malone said.

Last week, Cuban diminished any comments among himself, the Lakers and counterpart Jerry Buss by saying, “That’s part of the fun. You’ve got to have fun in the rivalry.”

Looking at how far Dallas has come since Cuban used the financial windfall he received from selling Broadcast.com to buy the Mavericks four years ago, Jackson said: “I think Mark is really good for the game, as long as he’s doing it in the right mind-set.”

Jackson said his personal beef with Cuban goes back to comments the Mavericks’ owner made about the Lakers’ lack of spending in the 2000 off-season, leading up to his second year as Laker coach.

“When he got into our business, when it was really no business of his own at the time, that’s the only one that really offended me,” Jackson said. “A team has to take care of what it has to do.

“Financial constraints in today’s game are very different. Not everybody won the jackpot and got a billion dollars.”

Jackson got in another zinger. But Cuban’s squad, for once, got in the last word.