They Need to Go With the Flow, Not Wait for Star Burst

A night like this was coming, sooner rather than later, an inevitable combination of new faces and old legs.

And once the Lakers went into double overtime against the San Antonio Spurs as Thursday night turned into Friday morning, once the Lakers checked into their New Orleans hotel at 4 a.m., a final score such as “Hornets 114, Lakers 95” became as predictable as an old “Three’s Company” episode.

Their first loss of the season after a 5-0 start exposed an underlying theme that was present for the previous four games: Although the Lakers were winning games, they weren’t controlling them.

At least the Lakers went the smart and polite route, refusing to lay all of the blame for this clunker on their fatigue. They pinpointed the proper targets: a good Hornet team and their own lack of execution on offense and communication on defense.

Even before the Hornets dropped a buck-fourteen on the Lakers, their opponents had the sixth-highest scoring average in the league. But what didn’t show up on the stat page were those stretches in every game when the Lakers would get serious, when Gary Payton would cock his head and get up in an opponent’s grill, Shaquille O’Neal would shut down the paint and the Quad Squad would take control. Relying on six to 12 great minutes of ball had worked well enough to win their first five games, but as Bryon Russell said, “Some games you can get away with it, some games you can’t.”

When you’re playing on minimal sleep a day after the heavy hitters logged 48 to 58 minutes of playing time, chances are you can’t. In the past the Lakers have relied on Kobe Bryant’s energy to push them through sluggish times, but in his current weakened state he can’t be responsible for that department.

It also doesn’t help when you’re playing a good team led by Baron Davis, who’s playing as well as any guard in the league; he had 23 points, 12 assists and four steals Friday night. The Hornets made 57% of their field-goal attempts and 52% of their three-pointers.

“They were just cutting us up,” Bryant said. “They were using pick-and-rolls, shoving the ball down our throats, running off of makes, running off of misses. We just couldn’t quite get a handle on them.”

The Hornets used perimeter screen-and-rolls to get open three-pointers, they exploited the Lakers’ poor rotation to get open three-pointers and they also managed to outscore the Lakers in the paint, 38-36.

“We’ve had really poor defense two nights in a row,” Coach Phil Jackson said. “You can’t hide the fact that that’s real porous defense.

“It’s a breakdown in the perimeter. It’s recognition, first of all. That’s what we’ve been trying to get, recognition, understand what our principles are.”

That means they also have to get back to a fundamental understanding of their offensive philosophy. When Jackson and Co. arrived in 1999, they wanted to use the triangle offense to dictate the game. They had the most dominant low-post presence in the game, a center who could wear down the opposition. They also didn’t have as many weapons as some of their opponents, so they figured they would slow the pace of the game by working all the way through their offense, thus keeping the ball out of the other team’s hands. They have the firepower now, but they still don’t want to get into shootouts every night.

“We’re similar to a football team,” said Derek Fisher, who happens to be a Dallas Cowboy fan. “It’s kind of like a field-position kind of thing for our team. If you’re not executing offensively, you’re not giving our defense a chance. That creates problems. That’s what’s happening to us right now. We’re not executing the offense very well.”

With newcomers Payton and Karl Malone, the offense isn’t always flowing smoothly. Payton’s solution so far has been to push the ball upcourt first, learn the triangle later. That worked for the Lakers when they could zip around and beat opponents on the fast break. On a night when the Lakers are feeling weary and opponents aren’t missing enough shots to create break opportunities, that exposes their lack of a half-court set.

To give you a sense of how long this could take, setting up the offense out of transition was one of the first things the Lakers worked on when full training camp opened Oct. 2.

Getting Bryant fully recovered from his knee surgery will be one step toward the Lakers’ becoming the dominant team they’re expected to be. Bryant is looking forward to everyone’s grasping the offense.

“Once you start clicking, you really conserve a lot of energy on the offensive end,” Bryant said. “Then you’re just cutting teams up out of your system. Once those things start clicking, the sharpness and everything, it’s so much easier.”

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com