Lakers’ Trip Will Test Four-Bearance

The Lakers play the Chicago Bulls tonight, a game the NBA is kind enough to schedule twice a year, one dynasty versus the next, one dead and the other ... well, what exactly?

If there is a fourth consecutive championship in them, the Lakers have revived their belief in it by winning 16 of their last 19 games, 24 of their last 31. Some of those were hard-earned victories against playoff teams, provided by one gifted swingman and one thunderous center, then the occasional 23-footer, pure again from Robert Horry’s fingertips.

The corner they turned was on two wheels, unbalanced and heavy with home games and a fresh motivation, maybe what every four-title run requires. By this time in their last three regular seasons, each of which concluded with a June parade, the Lakers had glazed over, so weary were they of meaningless games.

They’ve hardly got time to bebored now, because a different kind of NBA awaits. The Sacramento Kings are deeper and the San Antonio Spurs are playing better and the Dallas Mavericks have won more often, all in a Western Conference with five weeks left to prepare itself, everyone playing to stay out of the Lakers’ way as long as possible.

The Lakers arrived here on a mid-afternoon charter to temperatures 20 degrees below freezing, to a wind that swept across Lake Michigan and straight through their furs. Starting tonight, they play their next six games as the visiting team, more road games in 10 days than they played in either January or February.

In a span of barely three weeks, they will play in places where the home team has lost only five times (Sacramento, San Antonio, Minnesota) or six (Detroit and Dallas) in three-quarters of a season. They will play six times without the benefit of rest the night before, six times having flown from late-night game to early-morning shoot-around, not their specialty.

“We had a lot of good things here at home,” center Shaquille O’Neal said on his way from Staples Center on Sunday night. “Now we have to get that killer instinct back on the road.”

They have climbed from eight games under .500 on Christmas Day to nine games over today, 11 weeks of hit-and-miss basketball, one eye on O’Neal’s toe and the other on Kobe Bryant’s knees.

And, finally, on the verge of the most trying part of their schedule, the Lakers are close to sound and nearing selfless, in the playoffs by 3 1/2 games, out of first-round home-court advantage by 4 1/2, again in everyone’s championship thoughts.

“I think we’re in position to do what we want to do,” Coach Phil Jackson said between pangs of back pain, caused by part of a kidney stone that refuses to go. “Now it’s a matter of when we play consecutive nights, couple sets of back-to-backs, against teams we obviously know.... There are some tough ones in there. We just have to play the game against Chicago and go on from there, build on it from there, build momentum on this road trip. We have six games on this trip. I think we can win a majority of these games, four or five of these games, where we don’t feel like we lose any ground.

“We could be in better health. I think in the next [13 games in 20 days], this is when it really counts. Everybody’s got to stay in good health and we have to stay real solid as a basketball club for us to continue forward in this drive toward the playoffs.”

Conceivably, they could move up to fourth in the conference. Portland is there now but leveling after having been surprisingly capable for two months. The Lakers play the Trail Blazers in their 80th game.

“Someone has to help us, obviously,” Jackson said. “We can’t do this on our own. If we ran through -- speculating -- if we ran through the first two games of this road trip, and we were capable of beating Minnesota, then we start to see the manifestation of that particular action. A lot of it has to do with us developing momentum and letting things fall where they will.”

Rolling now, the Lakers lifted their feet and found themselves being carried along by O’Neal, every general manager’s MVP in the regular season, every sportswriter’s in the playoffs.

In the eight games since he took three games off to rest his knee and toe, O’Neal has averaged 30.3 points, 12.1 rebounds and 2.5 blocks. He’s shot 60% from the floor and 65.3% from the free-throw line. Asked Sunday the difference between when he asks for the basketball and screams for it, he said, “I shouldn’t have to demand the ball. They should know where to bring the ball.”

Meanwhile, Bryant has averaged 31.9 points in the same period.

“We have to make sure we go into the playoffs feeling like we can get to that next gear,” Bryant said. “That’s the most important thing. We feel like we can compete ... with any team at any gear. But to win championships, you have to feel like we can elevate our game.”