Work in Progress Is Still Working

The Lakers are going along in phases, kind of like the moon.

Sunday night’s 87-72 victory over the Golden State Warriors shed a little more light on them, showing that they wouldn’t fall completely flat in the second of back-to-back games, that Kobe Bryant’s knee can withstand fairly heavy minutes on consecutive nights and that they can play a little defense when called on.

Since their first day together in Hawaii they have been talking about defense.

“I’m more excited about the defense,” Karl Malone said in Honolulu. “If we can come together as a defensive unit, that could be fun.”

“I kind of have a vision,” Jackson said recently in Phoenix. “I kind of anticipate how they can play defensively. But we’ve got to make that statement in a ballgame.

“We think that this team can be a terrific defensive ballclub, given their knowledge of the game, their vision and their insight.”

That night they continued to get burned by the screen and roll, just like in the old days, and they let the Suns sink three-point shots at a 47% rate.

Against Golden State Sunday, the Lakers did a better job of staying in front of their men and rotating to the open shooter. The Lakers forced the Warriors into two shot-clock violations in the first four minutes of the game.

But the Lakers did not always finish the job.

The Lakers couldn’t grab the rebounds and loose balls, they kept allowing the Warriors two and three shots. The Warriors wound up with and 20 second-chance points, the only reason they managed to stay in the game.

With six players in double-digit scoring in each of the first two games, the Lakers already had answered the question of whether they could share the ball enough on offense to get everyone shots and keep everyone happy.

“Go back to this summer, ‘How are four guys going to share the basketball?’ ” Karl Malone said. “We said it then, we say it now: we’re professional. You got a 15-foot jump shot, and somebody’s got a layup, you give them the basketball. That’s how you do it.

“We still have work to do. We still can get better on the defensive end.”

Even though the Lakers had 12 steals and six blocked shots and the Warriors shot 37.2%, the Lakers knew better than to take this as a display of their prowess on defense. Without Nick Van Exel (injured) and Jason Richardson (suspended), the Warriors didn’t have many (better make that any) players who could cause much damage one on -one.

So where are the Lakers defensively? Depends on whom you ask.

Gary Payton is like an excitable stockbroker; he’s always bullish.

“We’re doing well,” Payton said. “We’re holding teams to the score that we’re holding them to and we’re playing defense. We’re switching, we’re helping, and Shaq is helping by blocking shots. It’s been really nice the way we’ve been playing defense.”

Devean George is a little less excitable.

“It’s getting there,” George said. “We need to talk a little more to each other and help each other a little more, but it’s getting there. Once we figure out what guys like to do ... Some guys like to gamble here and there, we have to learn what each other does.”

This is the fourth time (including the exhibition season) that the Quad Squad has been in full force. But it’s hard to get a full read on their impact because they aren’t logging extensive minutes together.

In the past, Jackson tried to avoid having both O’Neal and Bryant on the bench. Now, with four superstars at his disposal, he has gone long stretches without any of them on the floor. For example, the Lakers played the first four minutes of the second quarter with a lineup of George, Derek Fisher, Bryon Russell, Kareem Rush and Horace Grant.

Jackson said he didn’t have a real reason behind his substitution pattern, other than, “Because it’s time to sit [the Big Four] and rest them. When Kobe gets in better shape and some guys can play extended minutes [they will.] Right now I don’t feel I want to play anybody extended minutes at any particular time, where they play 14-16 minutes in a row, which Kobe has always been capable of.”

It must be comforting to know that even at less than 100%, Bryant is capable of stepping up to fulfill his role as The Man. The Lakers keep saying they have a variety of options, that they can pick their poison like a bunch of chemists.

Sunday it was Bryant with 21 points, sinking seven of 12 shots on a night Payton missed 10 of his 13.

But the conclusion of the first of the Lakers’ 19 sets of back-to-back games this season wasn’t definitive.

The victory came against a team that also played Saturday night, and it came at home.

(Although the crowd didn’t provide much of a boost for the Lakers. At times it was so quiet you could hear every heckler; Clifford Robinson of the Warriors even laughed at one of the better lines.)

Payton had one request for all the denizens of Lakerland after the team’s final exhibition game: “Let us get wins. I don’t give a ... how we get ‘em. We can get ‘em really ugly or we can get ‘em whatever. Just let us get ‘em.”

They have three in three games, and the moon still is far from full.