A Revived Shaq Has Lakers’ Back

Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant stood beside a win again, together again, on Friday night at Staples Center.

O’Neal well enough to play, Bryant still with his shooter’s conscience, his scoring streak intact, they pushed the Lakers back toward the playoffs, back toward something that resembled routine again.

They beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 92-84, a common enough outcome in recent years, but the Lakers hardly do common anymore, what with O’Neal sitting and Bryant limping and the whole thing threatening to die at their feet.

So, they’ll take Bryant’s 40 points, his eighth consecutive game with at least that many, his 12th in a row of at least 35. They’ll take O’Neal’s 44 minutes on freshly soothed toe and knee, rested for three games, and his rush of activity at the end of a fourth quarter in which a 12-1 run won the game.

“A big win,” Bryant called it at a time when there are no insignificant ones, the Lakers having just now taken sole possession of the eighth and last playoff spot in the Western Conference with 28 games remaining, and moved four games over .500 for the first time this season.

They shot 42.9% and had 10 second-half turnovers and encouraged the Trail Blazers by scoring only 15 third-quarter points, none for the first 4 1/2 minutes. And, yet, they were encouraged that O’Neal found his free-throw touch (four for four in the final two minutes), and his life (a blocked shot and dunk in the last 1:09), and his nose for scoring (nine points in the fourth quarter).

“I’m all right,” said O’Neal, who wore a mouth guard for the first time since he was at LSU. “The true test is [how I feel] tomorrow. But I’ll just suck it up.”

He had 24 points and 12 rebounds. He made eight of 15 shots from the field and the line.

Of Bryant’s remarkable streaks, alive for more than three weeks, only Wilt Chamberlain scored 35 for a longer period, topping out at 33 games in the 1961-62 season. And only four streaks of at least 40 points have been longer, three by Chamberlain and one by Michael Jordan.

“I don’t know,” Bryant said. “I just bounce from game to game.”

O’Neal and Bryant combined to score 13 of the Lakers’ final 15 points against the Trail Blazers, who arrived having won 12 of 15 games and on the heels of the Pacific Division-leading Sacramento Kings. Bryant took 32 shots, the last with 10 seconds left, a 17-foot leaner from the left side. When it fell, he had his 40.

Now, of course, come the questions of Bryant’s streak and O’Neal’s health and how the two will coexist. Thirty-two shots are fine with Coach Phil Jackson when O’Neal is taking injections and happy to leave the offensive responsibility elsewhere, not so fine when a few are forced, as Bryant did early in Friday’s fourth quarter, earning 2 1/2 minutes on the bench.

“We’re just kind of watching,” Jackson said. “There were a few poor shots tonight. You have to know that’s going to happen when you’ve had a hot hand like he has. He’s going to have some of those that he thinks he can still make because he has that belief. But there were six or seven that were in that range that were questionable and we talked a little about that.”

O’Neal said so far, so good.

He returned as planned. This time, he hoped, for good. He has had his painkillers and his acupuncture. He has spent his time below the rim, on Kevin Willis’ heels, boxed out and a step out of his range.

His dunks had become finger rolls, his layups short jumpers, and everything felt three inches wrong. In 38 games he’d averaged 25.9 points and 10.6 rebounds, enough to keep himself sane but, he said, not satisfied.

Whether from the rust of a week off, or the continued momentum of all of his dragging body parts, O’Neal was again not quite right but rallied toward the end and was, again, a dominant player in the fourth quarter, and yet often deferred to Bryant.

“I feel he is doing it within the offense and we’re fine with that,” O’Neal said. “We have a lot of weapons.... Himself and myself, we’re the main two weapons. Right now he’s going and we don’t want to disrupt that.”

So the Lakers won’t, and the Trail Blazers couldn’t, particularly in the first half, when Bryant made 11 of 20 shots and scored 25 points.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The West

Top eight qualify for Western Conference playoffs. Division winners seeded 1, 2:

*--* W L GB 1. Dallas 43 12 -- 2. Sacramento 38 18 5 1/2 3. San Antonio 37 17 5 1/2 4. Portland 35 19 7 1/2 5. Minnesota 35 21 8 1/2 6. Utah 32 22 10 7. Phoenix 30 25 13 8. Lakers 29 25 13 1/2 9. Houston 28 26 1 10. Golden St 25 30 4 1/2

*--*

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