Lakers’ Timing Is All Wrong

With a week of games to play, the Lakers seem destined to step into the NBA postseason less familiar with themselves than ever.

Having officially abandoned the middle ground of playing just well enough to win for the higher drama of unpredictability, they looked up from their lockers to Phil Jackson on Tuesday night and found no immediate answers.

“Glad that’s over with,” he told them after the Portland Trail Blazers had won by 11 points. He told them to take a day, that they needed it, adding, “I’ll see you Thursday.”

At the very moment they’d expected to find competence and community, the Lakers listed, lost consecutive home games for the first time in more than a year, fell from first in the Western Conference standings to third, and left themselves with four games to solve it all.

They are carried by Kobe Bryant one game and grounded by him the next. They await the absorption of Karl Malone and Gary Payton into their game and the nightly ferocity of Shaquille O’Neal.

Many are unhappy, to say the least, with Bryant’s impulsiveness on offense. Some wonder when Jackson will insist again on ball movement, or when Bryant will listen. Jackson summoned Bryant from the court Tuesday with three minutes left in the first quarter, prompting Bryant to snap at Jackson on the way off and, according to witnesses, bringing a similar, curt response from Jackson. Nobody likes an 18-point deficit.

In the meantime, the defense has suffered, they have committed 36 turnovers in two losses, and O’Neal is shooting about 40% from the free-throw line over the last two weeks.

Rather than how the Lakers lost two games, perhaps the question is how they won 11 in a row.

On Wednesday morning, Jackson and his coaching staff endured three quarters of Tuesday night’s loss, then stopped the tape. The final 12 minutes could wait a day.

Tex Winter had seen what he needed to, though.

“We played a desperate team last night,” he said. “That was apparent.”

Once, the Lakers were desperate. They feared the injuries that had ruined the middle of their season. They played through Bryant’s court schedule, played to O’Neal’s strengths, played around Payton and Malone, let them help where they could.

It was enough to win 11 consecutive games and 22 of 26. Now, for the Lakers to retake the top spot in the West, the Kings would have to lose three times in five games, which seems a lot to ask, even of the April-pliant Kings.

So, on a day when most players tended to their personal lives -- Malone attended his daughter’s 11th birthday party -- Laker coaches thought about covering pick-and-rolls and open jumpers and ultimately hoped the answers were in the fatigue of four games in six days. And that by Friday night against the Memphis Grizzlies and Sunday afternoon against the Kings, they’d all have their legs back.

“We’re not playing together well, offensively or defensively, at this point,” Winter said. “Most of the guys are playing hard. We’re just not very effective.

“Offensively, we have to space the floor better. We have to understand what we are looking for on the floor. Defenses are getting into the lane and we’re forcing things, forcing the ball into Shaq. Also, Kobe’s taking the ball into the lane on penetration and there’s just nothing there.”

In the last two games, Bryant has shot 12 free throws, two of them against the Trail Blazers.

“If Kobe’s going to take it into the lane and they’re not going to call fouls, then we’re really in trouble,” Winter said. “He didn’t get calls [Tuesday] night and continued to force the ball.”

Winter and Jackson would prefer the offense go inside then out, to O’Neal and back, but it hasn’t lately. Many of their 20 turnovers against the Trail Blazers were attempts to find O’Neal in a double team, or in O’Neal’s attempts to find open shooters.

Often in recent years, O’Neal has saved the Lakers from themselves. His rebounds. His ability to command two or three defenders. Now he wears a sleeve on his right knee to hold it against the tendinitis and, if he stuck around to talk after games, he’d probably call for better ball movement, as most of them do.

As it was, in two games against San Antonio’s Rasho Nesterovic and Portland’s Theo Ratliff, O’Neal averaged 17 points and 10.5 rebounds. He also had a combined 26 shots, or about half of Bryant’s.

“I don’t know what went on with him,” Jackson said Tuesday. “He threw it away. They got a layup. He tried a shot, moved the ball, couple things. He didn’t really seem to have something to go to tonight, specifically.”

Asked if that was because of Portland’s defense or O’Neal’s decisions, Jackson shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I’ll have to get with him on that.”