Lakers’ Gag Reflex Will Get Tested

If you think the Western Conference playoff picture is hard to figure out, try getting a handle on the Lakers.

They shift from week to week, game to game, quarter to quarter, looking like world beaters one moment, getting whipped around like eggbeaters the next.

And on a night when the Sacramento Kings were ready to hand over a share of the Pacific Division lead, the Lakers nearly missed it by falling on their faces.

Then they decided to play defense, made a point of getting the ball to their big man and look what happened: a 103-95 victory.

Amazing how that works, isn’t it?

“It’s easy,” Karl Malone said. “Play defense, pass the basketball and put pressure on the other team.”

And su-prise, su-prise: the Lakers are tied for first in the division, with Sunday’s mega-showdown looming in Sacramento.

At this point, it’s almost a battle to see which team will gag more down the stretch: the Lakers or Kings.

At the moment, advantage Lakers. At least they came back to win, while the Kings lost to the lottery-bound Phoenix Suns.

Memphis didn’t have Pau Gasol or Bonzi Wells, and it had the wrong side of the Jason Williams coin. Heads he goes for 24 points and 12 assists. He landed on tails and shot three for 16.

And the Lakers still trailed the Grizzlies by 19 points.

As Memphis Coach Hubie Brown would say, “I mean, you know, I mean, come on.”

Actually, he did say that last night.

The Grizzlies never have won a game in the Lakers’ building, be it Staples Center of the Forum. But they have to feel a little more confident about their chances after this game.

And the Lakers better not cordon off the parade route after they struggled to beat this Memphis team at home -- and before they have secured home-court advantage in any playoff round.

Perhaps it’s because they’re getting closer to the end, and the uncertain future is creating a marine aversion layer over the court. During the course of the season, four of the five starters have indicated they might not be back in Lakerland. Coach Phil Jackson doesn’t have a contract beyond this season.

Some players are struggling to fit in, others are desperate to assert themselves. And they never know which version of Kobe Bryant is going to show up: the shooter, the passer or the perfect blend that appeared right after the All-Star break.

All of the various locker-room agendas are showing up in the games, and now it’s just a collection of individuals out there. It’s one thing if they don’t want to run the triangle offense. They could at least get together and decide what offense they want to run. Some offense. Any offense.

The Lakers have become so undisciplined that they were at their most effective when they went into “And1 Mixtape” mode. First Bryant, facing a double-team near the foul line, fired the ball off the backboard and chased it down himself for a layup. The next time down the court, Gary Payton threw the ball off the glass to a trailing Bryant for a two-hand dunk.

The problem is, it’s not all alley-oops and crossovers in the playoffs, and the Lakers still don’t have a solid enough foundation. Lately, not even their winning streaks have been overly impressive.

“This team hasn’t consistently performed for a while,” Jackson said.

“So we were happy that we were able to accumulate a lot of wins and in the process gain some confidence in what we were doing. Now we just have to continually improve as a basketball team.”

Even though injuries forced the Lakers to hit Control-Alt-Delete and reboot their season, it’s far too late to be in gaining-confidence-and-improving mode. When is Malone going to get comfortable? At this point he’s still so surprised when gets a chance to shoot that his jumpers aren’t even coming close. It’s a lot different than the days in Utah when he could count on plays being run for him.

But in the third quarter of the Memphis game, when Bryant and the Lakers actively sought him, Malone made four of five shots, starting with layups, then easing into jumpers.

All of the Laker inconsistency has made Jackson inconsistent. One game he sits idle while the Portland Trail Blazers run off 20 unanswered points.

“I kind of let them wallow in their own mire there for two or three minutes,” Jackson explained later. (Wallow in their own mire? Is this a Doors concert?)

Friday night, he called a timeout 1 minute 19 seconds into the game, which must have been a personal record. He didn’t like the fact Mike Miller beat Rick Fox and dribbled all the way from the three-point line to the hoop without anyone coming over to help.

It wouldn’t be the last defensive breakdown for the Lakers. The only difference this night was that they didn’t get continually burned on the pick-and-roll.

This time the Grizzlies used screens away from the ball, with Miller curling off, taking passes from Williams and draining open jump shots.

But the Lakers held the Grizzlies to 35% shooting in the third, O’Neal got active in the paint (he finished with 28) and the Lakers had the lead going into the fourth.

And now they have control of the division lead in their hands, amazingly enough.

Why does it seem so likely they’ll bobble it away?

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.