In Throes of Losing, O’Neal Is Best Answer

The Lakers are supposed to return to the practice floor this morning, to get back at it, to heal and prepare and analyze after a perfectly miserable week.

They have a couple of days to themselves, then play Wednesday night at Phoenix and Friday night at Sacramento, as pivotal as any two games in January can be, followed by a Saturday night game against Utah at Staples Center.

Their all-world, all-mood center apparently isn’t talking again, their superstar swingman has a bum knee or doesn’t, depending on who is describing it, and their otherworldly coach isn’t sure anyone’s getting him anymore.

Where it has left them is four games under .500, having dashed Robert Horry’s guarantee of reaching statistical mediocrity by the end of January, and drifting closer to the bottom of the Pacific Division.

Their new problems (indifference on defense) are merging with their old ones (Shaquille O’Neal’s free throws) and they have 40 games to get to the playoffs, mend themselves and make one of the great second-half runs in history. Or, not.

The outcome is not likely to alter General Manager Mitch Kupchak’s summer. If the Lakers fail, he must rebuild in places around O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, in the form of athletic bodies in the front and back courts, and hope O’Neal’s days of September surgeries are over. If they succeed ultimately, it will have been by a thread, and the Lakers will require the same new parts.

Meantime, they’ll lean for the next three months on O’Neal, hope he regains his appetite for defense and free-throw touch and take to heart last week’s pledge to put forth his springtime intensity in winter.

The question, however, is if he is physically capable of bringing his A-game at B and C times of year, 40 minutes a game, four nights a week.

“I don’t think 40,” Coach Phil Jackson said before Friday’s loss to New Jersey. “We’re not talking about 40. But, 36, 38, somewhere in there, if we don’t have an overtime game. The back-to-backs are still going to be a little trouble. I think as a statement he feels he’s at midseason condition and improving as he goes along.”

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While Jackson’s confession that he feared he’d lost his touch with these Lakers was a jolt, there is no sense he’d leave the franchise early.

Under even the worst of circumstances, assistant Tex Winter said, “I think he would fulfill any agreement, any contract he might have.”

Jackson’s five-year, $30-million deal runs out after next season.