Laker Win Has Limited Means

This is what the Lakers have done to themselves, their victories accompanied by only threads of satisfaction, their season having piled promising moment upon dreary moment, with so little to show for the work and the angst and the subtle shifts in their game.

Shaquille O’Neal was quick and accurate and over the rim on Sunday night and he combined with Kobe Bryant for 67 points, and then O’Neal’s “eight [guys] who ain’t doing nothing” made a few shots.

So the Lakers defeated the Phoenix Suns, 109-97, at Staples Center, wrung the sweat from their jerseys, sent everybody home reasonably sure there’s some fight left in them, and then had almost no idea what it meant. Nor did they care.

They can’t.

They can watch O’Neal get better and get his 36 points and 16 rebounds and make 15 of 19 field-goal attempts. They can have Bryant make breathtaking plays and grind through a season in which he runs the offense, defends the best perimeter player, brings the ball through the ever-present press and scores. He had 31 points and 12 rebounds. They can hope the rest of the (guys) come along, and clap them on the back when Rick Fox makes three of four shots in the second half, and Robert Horry scores nine points off the bench, and Derek Fisher makes two -- two! -- three-pointers, as many as everybody had in 21 attempts the night before in Phoenix.

But in the end, when they poke diamond studs through holes in their ears and pull designer sweaters over their heads, they can’t promise anything, because there’s still so much to do, still so much out there.

“This team has to want to do it,” Fisher said. “We have guys in this locker room who want to do it.”

The Lakers won for the third time in four games. They beat a winning team for the first time in three weeks and for the fifth time all season. O’Neal and Bryant each scored at least 30 points for the third time, and they’ve won all three.

There are a lot of wins to go, a lot of effort to go, before they can crack another grin. For the moment, it means they are 14-20, better than the Clippers, even with the Golden State Warriors, and looking up at the rest of the Pacific Division. It means they’ll practice this morning and then play the Seattle SuperSonics on Tuesday night, and then hope they can crank up their energy again.

“We’ve done a good job of dealing with the emotion and the disappointment of what’s happened with us in the different stages of the season,” Fisher said.

In three years, Phil Jackson has lectured them about staying in the moment, about playing the play in front of them, the player in front of them, and that is all. He said it in the seasons when they won with ease and had nothing to look forward to but April and the playoffs, and he’s harped on it again now that they won’t have April or the playoffs if the trends of the first two months continue.

“It applies in both situations,” Brian Shaw said. “In years past when we’ve been in that position, we didn’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. In this situation, we can’t dwell on the mishaps of the past. We have an uphill climb.”

It’ll help them, of course, if O’Neal does his usual share of pulling. This was more of what they’d had in mind the night before -- Shaq dominating a handful of thin-shouldered centers, flying to the ball defensively and kicking the ball to his shooters. He had eight offensive rebounds. He blocked four shots. Sun Coach Frank Johnson had trouble keeping centers on the floor. And the Lakers won for only the second time on the tail end of a back-to-back series, having lost by 14 points in Phoenix on Saturday.

“He’s starting to get himself in good shape,” Jackson said of O’Neal. “We’re more comfortable with him on the floor.”

O’Neal left his eight (guys) who ain’t doing nothing to answer for him. But this clearly was O’Neal’s night, and the rest of the Lakers were driven by his energy, along with Bryant’s.

“Those two guys are going to get whatever they want,” Johnson said. “I mean, they are that good. It’s just when those others are chipping in, as they did tonight, it just makes it that much more dangerous.

“I don’t know what the [rest of the] league says, but I don’t want to play them. They have the two best players in the league. Everybody knows that.”

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Long Road Back

The team with the worst record to make the Western Conference playoffs last season finished 44-38. How Lakers need to finish season to reach that record:

*--* WINS LOSSES TO REACH 44 38 CURRENT 14 20 MUST GO 30 18 GAMES OUT OF PLAYOFF SPOT...4

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