Jackson at a Loss After Latest One

Well, this should solve the boredom issues they’d been talking about.

At the end of 10 consecutive wins, the Lakers lost twice in 24 hours, and so strung along the hopes of the rest of the NBA for at least another month or so.

Fifteen minutes after the Portland Trail Blazers, fresh from their crisis of the week, finished off his Lakers, 112-108, Saturday night at the Rose Garden, Phil Jackson leaned against a cinder block wall, grinned thinly and said, “It’s about playing 82 games, fellas, not playing one in Portland on Dec. 13, or whenever it is.”

The sentiment might have gone unnoticed had Jackson not just finished airing out his players for, among other things, ignoring his pleas to run the offense they’ve been practicing since September, failing to box out on the defensive boards, and ignoring his in-game schemes.

While Jackson played it off publicly as one game gone wrong, his players were recovering from a postgame with an entirely different attitude, one in which Jackson did all of the talking, at some volume, and none of the listening. One of the Lakers compared Jackson’s locker-room manner to his rant in Detroit after a 10-point loss there.

At the end of two consecutive losses, having given up 110 points to the Dallas Mavericks in Los Angeles on Friday night and 51.1% field-goal shooting to the Trail Blazers, Jackson, on the verge of most of this week off, told them all it was time to change.

The Lakers are 18-5, having survived so far on the talent and guile of their four superstars. Survival being relative, of course, mere survival generally less impressive than 18 wins two weeks before Christmas. But the stakes rise as the season continues, and Jackson apparently has had enough of the edge-of-their-shorts game that was good enough for six weeks.

The Trail Blazers scored 29 second-chance points, many of them soaring on put-backs while Laker big men watched. They had 45 rebounds, many of those because of poor defensive rebounding position by the Lakers, whose triangle offense is designed to put them in those positions.

So, Trail Blazer forwards Rasheed Wallace and Zach Randolph scored 28 and 24 points, respectively, and Damon Stoudamire scored 25 points, including two right-place, right-time three-pointers off loose balls late in the fourth quarter.

In the second game of the back-to-back, Kobe Bryant led the Lakers with 35 points, two off his season high.

Twenty-four hours later, it was Bryant who had his legs and Shaquille O’Neal who for stretches appeared to lack his.

Bryant played back from a four-for-18 game against the Mavericks, from a period of two weeks in which his jump shot had deserted him. He slashed to the basket, scored 16 points in the fourth quarter and kept the Lakers in a game that had threatened to leave them behind.

“My legs are coming back,” he said. “My legs are feeling stronger. It’s good to see, especially on the back-to-back.... It’s very encouraging.”

Gary Payton, a day after his early ejection, had 14 points in 39 minutes. O’Neal had 22 points and 10 rebounds. Karl Malone, who had 14 points and nine rebounds, said he was disappointed that Jackson would call plays in the huddle, and then no one would run them, probably leading to Jackson’s postgame frustration.

“We don’t have any excuses,” Malone said. “That’s what this league is about sometimes, is excuses. They hit some shots down the stretch. We didn’t.”

To no one’s surprise, it was cold, gray and rainy on Saturday here, where the sun remains as elusive as self-government on the local pro basketball team.

And the Lakers and Trail Blazers arrived at the fourth quarter in a two-point game, the Lakers grinding through the second of back-to-back games, the Trail Blazers having been through one of their usual weeks, one strewn with public apologies.

The press release arrived Saturday evening, Wallace sort of sorry, the Trail Blazers hoping no one would notice ... again.

Bryant was booed in pregame introductions, but no worse than Wallace was. The arena was sold out and the Trail Blazers broke on top by four points four minutes into the fourth quarter on a Wesley Person three-pointer.

Two possessions later, Person, acquired in the Bonzi Wells dump with the Memphis Grizzlies, made another one and the Trail Blazer lead was five.