Jackson Unsure of What Spin Team Will Put on Losses

In the day-and-a-half after Ron Harper gave them a chance at 72 or 73 wins, the Lakers gave up 222 points, lost twice, got Coach Phil Jackson all upset and returned to the greater reality of reaching spring with optimum familiarity among themselves and their offense.

The Lakers have not fallen for a regular season since Jackson’s first in Los Angeles, when they surprised everyone -- Jackson included -- by winning 67 games. Since then, they’ve dabbled in strong starts (16-1 two seasons ago) and strong conclusions (8-0 three seasons ago), but have not sustained a six-month grind.

Generally, Jackson’s teams have been loaded with veterans who don’t hold up under the strain of five-game weeks and 18-game months. It’s too many trips down the floor and across the country for the old guys, too many shots to the head and neck for Shaquille O’Neal, and Jackson won’t often burn a guy for a win in February when he needs him in May.

That being said, and despite postgame explanations that bordered on dismissive, the locker room Saturday night at the Rose Garden housed more than a few downcast eyes. Those 222 points were one thing, to give up 50 of them on second-chance shots was another. The Portland Trail Blazers went into Saturday night averaging 88 points and scored 112.

While it was kind of him to give them a pass publicly, Jackson, according to locker-room witnesses, had a few pointed observations about the casual manner in which they ran the offense.

And while he says he won’t insist on the offense before the playoffs, neither, it seems, will Jackson allow consecutive losses in December without some effort to run it.

After all, these were not losses to NBA juggernauts. The Lakers had not lost at home to the Dallas Mavericks in 13 years and, in Portland, they found a team brain- and heart-weary from dealing with one crisis after another.

“Some nights it’s like that,” Jackson said with a sigh. “We have to swallow our pride and eat the loss.”

So, they blamed the referees one night and a few unlucky bounces the next and went into this week with flagging momentum. The Lakers don’t play again until Friday night against the Denver Nuggets at Staples Center.

The last time the Lakers lost two in a row -- by 19 points Nov. 7 in New Orleans and by 10 Nov. 10 in Memphis -- they won 13 of their next 14 games. Toward the end of that stretch, however, they’d lost their zeal for finishing overmatched foes. They couldn’t put away the Utah Jazz or New York Knicks, despite big early leads, and O’Neal admitted they’d gotten bored.

“We have no idea how we’re going to respond,” Jackson said. “We have no history with it. We’ll know Friday or Sunday this week.”

A few minutes later, in a locker room beginning to cool, Gary Payton nodded his head.

“We’re just going to take the next six days ... and stop the bleeding on Friday,” he said.

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In the meantime, the Lakers couldn’t have done more for the Trail Blazers if they’d dragged a psychiatrist’s couch to midcourt and revealed Rasheed Wallace’s inner child. Not that the outer child isn’t handful enough.

Ruben Patterson, always good for this sort of thing, watched the final seconds tick away and then mounted the scorer’s table, pointing joyfully at fans still not convinced this is a team worth rooting for.

It was a curious reaction from Patterson, who’d been torched for most of Kobe Bryant’s 16 fourth-quarter points, the reason the Lakers were able to take the game into the final seconds.

Later, Damon Stoudamire said, “This is all nice and everything. But can we come back Tuesday and play like this against Milwaukee? Can we do this Thursday against Phoenix?”