Reign of Error

Near as the NBA can tell, the 1998-99 Chicago Bulls and the 1969-70 Boston Celtics are the only teams to fail to make the playoffs the year after winning a championship, out before the last flecks of confetti were gone.

Michael Jordan had retired from the Bulls. Bill Russell had similarly left the Celtics. The teams they left behind played as expected, and the rest of the league had its fun.

Now, the Lakers loved Mitch Richmond and all, but ...

“We have to believe in what we’ve accomplished,” Laker forward Samaki Walker said, “and not roll over and feel sorry for ourselves.”

Here they are again, the Lakers having come upon yet another opportunity to resume their roles as Lakers, and isn’t the regular season grand? Forty games remain, and the crossroads keep coming, starting tonight at Phoenix, into Friday night at Sacramento, and then into Saturday night against Utah.

Forty’s a lot. To revive an old stab at optimism by Phil Jackson, it means the 19-23 Lakers cannot possibly win any more than 59 games, no matter how quickly their fortunes turn. They also can’t lose any more than 63, so there’s that. The NBA season is more forgiving than a Beverly Hills Santa Claus.

Presumed a birthright for the three-time defending champion Lakers, playoff qualification is their only objective, buried as they are behind 10 teams in the Western Conference.

For three years, the regular season seemed endless. Suddenly, it seems, the Lakers could use a few more games. We’ll see in April.

“There really aren’t any more nights off,” Laker guard Derek Fisher said. “We’re not going to win 40 games in a row. But at the same time, we have to come out and understand that each game, basically, we feel like we have to win.”

The Lakers are 11th in the Western Conference, percentage points behind the Golden State Warriors. The Seattle Supersonics are a half-game ahead, the Houston Rockets, holding what would be the last playoff spot, are 4 1/2 games in front of the Lakers.

Out there, beneath the teams the Lakers probably cannot catch, are the Suns and the Jazz. While the Lakers have shown no great appetite for dragging teams down from behind, neither are those teams particularly formidable. The Suns have lost four of five games and six of eight. The Rockets had lost four in a row before winning in Memphis on Monday night. The Jazz had lost three consecutive games before winning at Sacramento on Tuesday.

Also, the Suns and Rockets have been pushed into playoff contention by rookies, Amare Stoudemire in Phoenix and Yao Ming in Houston, and both appear to be fatiguing as the All-Star break nears.

“Well, being [4 1/2] games out with 40 games remaining, it’s not an unattainable goal of ours to regain some of our form and make it to the playoffs,” forward Rick Fox said. “I don’t think in any way are we underestimating what we’re about to do.... The road has not been the greatest thing for this team all year.”

Often, the Lakers do not know if they are coming together or coming apart until the final score tells them, an affliction that complicates the process of self-assessment.

“I know there’s a deficiency in the energy standpoint,” Walker said.

Sometimes they are surprised, even when no one else is. As Tex Winter pointed out the other day, it has been a long time since anyone around here lost this much, and it’s taking some getting used to.

That would account for the blank looks come 10 o’clock many nights. Early in the season, they’d play slow and soft and wouldn’t know it until they watched the tape of it the next morning. Now, at least, identification is not the issue. They are 5-15 on the road, one of those victories at Staples Center against the Clippers, and have lost consecutive home games.

Generally, only Kobe Bryant insists the Lakers are playing well, even as the rest of the players bemoan their defensive indifference, or whatever is the recent malady, and Jackson lowers his grayed head because he can’t believe it keeps happening.

It is possible Bryant would have support in this, but Shaquille O’Neal rarely talks after losses anymore, leaving his public to conclude he’s quite unhappy or just plain bored.

Anything’s possible. As Winter said, “Things have a way of changing.”

The question is, is the change ahead of them, or has it passed them by?

“Life is lived between two levels -- boredom and anxiety,” Jackson said. “Right? So, no matter who you are, or where you’re at, in this win-loss game that we call basketball, you always have a valance attached to it, winning and losing, because you have a score at the outcome. It doesn’t always tell the tale, but it does tell us somewhat where we’re at. It’s just a roller-coaster ride. So, if losses continue to create anxiety, then you create tension, and the tension is good tension.

“We’ve had a number of little tension spots ... but we haven’t had that one tension spot that’s really stepped us into a place where we really move into the area where we’re undefeatable. That’s the kind of team we can become and we still see it in this ballclub. And so we have faith.

“And I tell the people of L.A.: Believe. We’re still a team that’s going to be [reckoned] with in this year.”