This Was No Easy Cruising to a Win

It’s tough to tell which is the bigger calamity in Los Angeles: rain or consecutive Laker defeats.

The city suffered through the rare combination of both within a few days and, predictably, things went to pieces.

The Lakers played worse and worser (to borrow a word from Shaqster’s Dictionary) in defeats at New Orleans and Memphis on Friday and Monday. By Monday night, Shaquille O’Neal was unhappy because Kobe Bryant didn’t pass to him enough, and Gary Payton was unhappy because Phil Jackson didn’t play him enough.

Wednesday night, the challenge was for Payton and O’Neal to get a chance to play at all.

Heavy thunderstorms brought the nation’s second-largest city to its knees. The only thing more pathetic than Los Angeles when it rains is Washington when it snows. (But it’s not like the people in Washington have to do anything important like, say, run the country.)

Traffic came to a halt all over the city. Payton and O’Neal live near each other up off Mulholland Drive. It took them 2 1/2 hours to get downtown and they didn’t get to Staples Center until 30 minutes before the 7:30 tipoff.

“People don’t know how to drive around here,” Payton said.

For once, Phil Jackson couldn’t glare at his players who entered the locker room after the designated 6 p.m. arrival time. If he was going to fine them, he would have to fine 85% of the 18,997 fans for showing up late. (The traffic was so bad, it even took me 45 minutes to get from the L.A. Times building at 2nd and Spring streets to Staples Center at 11th and Figueroa.)

“I wasn’t worried about” Payton and O’Neal, Jackson said, amused by the typical L.A. overreaction to a little water. “I didn’t think the floods had hit. I know the apocalypse is around the corner, but maybe not tonight.”

Jackson didn’t punish O’Neal or Payton. Instead, he gave Payton his most extended run of the season, leaving him in for the entire first quarter and the first 3 1/2 minutes of the second. Jackson said this didn’t come from any conversation with Payton; he was just experimenting with different rotations. (Indeed, Jackson did leave a couple of his starters on the court with the reserves more often in this game than he has during the season.)

Payton played a season-low 27 minutes in Memphis, coming off a sprained ankle in Sunday’s practice.

Jackson “felt my leg was bothering me,” Payton said. “He didn’t want to take a chance. That’s the coach, he’s got to look out for me.”

Payton played 20 minutes in the first half alone Wednesday during the Lakers’ 94-79 victory over the Toronto Raptors.

“It seemed to help him a little bit,” Jackson said.

Payton had 16 points and six assists and was back to his old ways of pushing the tempo.

“It was a lot easier driving down the court than driving down the freeway,” Payton said.

So far this season, O’Neal had blamed one subpar game on excessive sleep and a bad practice on a lack of breakfast, so he might have been expected to have an off performance after sitting in his car for so long.

Instead, he came out as active as ever, with 23 points and 14 rebounds. He made nine of his 12 field goals, but a five-for-15 night from the line kept him from a huge scoring game. O’Neal sprang to life at the sight of Toronto backup center Mengke Bateer, who moved about as slowly as Wednesday’s traffic.

Bryant, meanwhile, seemed to be in a funky mood, kind of listless, drifting completely out of the offense at times. At the end of the first quarter, a time when the Lakers would usually give him the ball and clear out, Bryant was off in the corner while every Laker touched the ball, resulting in a dunk by O’Neal.

Bryant did try to involve his teammates when he had the ball. But if he’s going to pass to Malone and Payton, they’d better do something with it. Payton missed layups and Malone couldn’t handle the ball, and that’s why Bryant had no assists in the first half and only four for the game.

But Malone stands out in the Laker locker room in that he doesn’t carry his own agenda around with him like a briefcase. He has a nice sense of perspective, as you might expect from a man who has lived 40 years and played 1,442 NBA regular season games.

It’s still early, he was reminding reporters before the game.

Yes, but early can become late real quickly if you’re not careful. The Lakers are already a tenth of the way through the season. Patterns turn into trends, and trends become identities. The Lakers were quickly forging a reputation for defensive weakness and were one of only four teams in the league allowing more than 100 points per game.

If the Lakers wanted to change their ways, the Raptors were the team. Toronto came in as the lowest-scoring team in the league, averaging 76.3 points per game and had scored a total of 116 points in two of their three road losses.

The Lakers didn’t have much punch themselves in the first quarter, when they scored 22 points to Toronto’s 18.

The fans -- those who had arrived -- were lethargic and they never seemed to snap out of it.

All in all it was “kind of a flat game for a rainy day,” Jackson said.

But for a change, it was nice to have a normal night, without much drama.

After what this city and this team has been through over the last 2 1/2 weeks, we can all agree that rain is better than fire.

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