Lakers Enjoy Night on Town

Despite the looks of things, the Clippers will have had their part in the Western Conference playoffs. That is, the Lakers maybe wouldn’t be in without them, or at least not quite so comfortably.

It’s something, you know, to build on.

In their road purples, the Lakers defeated the Clippers, 102-85, Monday night at Staples Center to sweep the four-game season series and maintain their hold on sixth place in the conference standings.

In the midst of six consecutive road games, one of them in their own gym, the Lakers pressed their inside advantage -- that would be Shaquille O’Neal -- against a Clipper lineup that lacked center Michael Olowokandi and power forward Elton Brand, both injured.

O’Neal scored a season-high 42 points, 16 in a pivotal third quarter in which the Lakers overcame the last of a 14-point deficit going back to the second quarter. He was 15 for 24 from the field and 12 for 15 from the line. Kobe Bryant, who said he “cruised” through the first half, scored 26 points, 15 in the second.

“We’re getting there,” Bryant said. “We’re making improvements.”

Afterward, O’Neal admitted he was gunning for 53 points, which would have given him 20,000 for his career.

“I was actually trying to get to that point tonight,” he said. “But, missed a couple chippies, missed a couple free throws. I’ll just have to get it against my favorite team.”

The Lakers play at Sacramento on Thursday night.

“I wanted to do it here, get it out of the way so I wouldn’t be thinking about it,” he said.

The Lakers have won 12 of 15 games, three in a row since losing to Chicago and Detroit on consecutive nights early last week. They resume a difficult stretch of games against the Kings at Arco Arena, then play Boston at home on Friday night and at San Antonio on Sunday. The Clippers, out of the playoff race for months, have lost, well, often. They are 21-46, in last place in the Pacific Division.

None of it came quite as effortlessly as it appeared at the end, when Laker fans stood and cheered the score if not the journey, for the moment forgetting a 12-point second quarter that was as miserable as any the Lakers had played this season.

“It’s poor entertainment,” Coach Phil Jackson said. “It’s poor professionalism for us to come with that level.”

After trailing by eight at halftime, however, the Lakers sighed and scored 67 points in the second, when they shot 61.5 % (24 for 39). They went relentlessly to O’Neal, who at one point in the third quarter glanced at Olowokandi on the bench and gawked at an outfit that he hated -- blue shirt, gray pants, black belt and, he swore, burgundy socks. He said the look was so terrible it actually drove him to play better.

“I looked over at Michael Olowokandi’s gear,” said the man who reintroduced blue-on-orange plaid to a generation of basketball fans, “and saw how horrible it was. I knew that a guy dressed like that, I don’t want a guy like that to beat me.”

He laughed.

“We just took them a little more seriously,” he said of the second half.

Some nights it is easy for him, and it becomes easy for the Lakers. O’Neal put behind him a week in which he was outplayed by a 20-year-old in Chicago, dogged Mike Bibby for being a Cub Scout among Boy Scouts and then revealed he’d softened after meeting the 20-year-old’s parents. And, yet, after the lethargy against the Bulls, O’Neal was back close to his usual game and the Lakers won two of the next three games on the trip, and then was light on his feet against the Clippers.

At halftime, he said, he told a few teammates to desert their “raggedy jump shots” and to get him the basketball.

He’s averaged 29 points in the last four games.

“It’s been working, keep doing it,” said O’Neal, the focus of the offense again after Bryant averaged more than 40 points per game in February. “Bring it to me. It’s about that time right now. We have 16 games left, so we have to start getting sharp, start picking it up, getting ready for the postseason.”

Good enough for Jackson.

“You saw him break out with the ball at the end of the game,” Jackson said, grinning. “I look for that kind of activity getting back on defense next.”