What a Difference a Day Makes for the Lakers

If the fates of four teams can come down to one shot in one second, then it should come as no surprise that one entire season can be encapsulated in one day with the Lakers.

That day was Wednesday.

But even if you saw the highlights of Kobe Bryant’s amazing three-point shots at the end of regulation and double-overtime that gave the Lakers a victory over the Portland Trail Blazers and the championship of the Pacific Division, you didn’t get the full story of the last crazy day of this wild season.

“It was a roller-coaster ride, to say the least,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said.

The first significant dip was ...

The Plane, the Plane

Sometime after midnight, the landing gear on the team’s charter airplane wouldn’t retract and the flight had to return to Los Angeles. Already concerned about the energy his team needed to eke out a five-point victory over the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday, Jackson decided to send the players home and try again in the morning. After more than three decades in the league as a player or coach, his philosophy is that it’s always better to sleep in your own bed than arrive somewhere at 3:30 a.m.

Of course, this meant the team could not hold a morning shoot-around to get ready for Wednesday’s game against Portland.

“Even the videotape machine on the airplane malfunctioned,” Jackson said.

League-al Issues

Prompted by Shaquille O’Neal’s one-game suspension for cursing on live television, Jackson has called the NBA hierarchy “petty” and “vindictive” during the course of the season. But the Lakers have usually received preferential treatment when it came to the playoff schedule, because their star power and high TV ratings made them a natural choice for the showcase broadcast network spot on Sundays.

Not this season. A couple of hours before the regular-season finale, word spread that the Lakers would begin the playoffs on Saturday. That meant one less day of preparation for a team that looked far from playoff-ready, having lost three of their previous five games.

Bryant

In the ongoing push and pull between Kobe Bryant’s desire to dominate and Jackson’s wish to see him incorporate his teammates, the coach made one last stand before the start of the playoffs.

“Intuitively, I have to trust the fact that he’s going to come back to that spot and know that the timing’s right,” Jackson said during his usual pregame meeting with reporters. “The season’s over, things have been accomplished, records have been stuck in the books, statistics are all jelled in, now let’s go ahead and play basketball as we’re supposed to play it.”

Comedy Central

There’s no music in the Laker locker room before games. That’s because Gary Payton provides all the necessary noise and entertainment, offering a running commentary on anything from the league’s point guards to the NFL, especially his beloved 49ers.

Wednesday, he was trying to keep a straight face while saying he would not play that night or next season. He mused about heading to Karl Malone’s ranch in Arkansas and donning a hunting cap. He said he wanted to do a movie with Denzel Washington, and he’d only ask to be paid a couple of million dollars, because “that could last me a whole year.”

O’Neal was reciting some of the best quotes by former Trail Blazer Rasheed “Both Teams Played Hard” Wallace. He tried out some karate moves on Payton, who looked at the perpetual adolescent and asked, “What is wrong with you?”

The Game

Jackson’s synopsis: “One injury after another in the course of the game, guys getting in foul trouble, Shaq-fouling-out situation, right up to [Ruben] Patterson missing two foul shots and giving us an opportunity to win a ballgame that looked like it was out of reach.”

Injuries

Laker players sat out 258 games because of injuries, the most serious and surprising to the previously indestructible Malone. A strained knee ligament landed him on the injured list for the first time in his 19-season NBA career and caused him to miss 39 games.

Wednesday, with 18.5 seconds remaining in the first half, he landed on Zach Randolph’s toe and twisted his right ankle. Malone immediately hopped off the court and toward the locker room.

Later, a Laker public relations staffer announced that Devean George had a strained left calf. It was hard to tell when George sustained the injury, partly because he played so invisibly throughout the game.

In the final seconds of overtime, Derek Fisher sustained a strained groin muscle when he was bumped by Bryant and fouled by Darius Miles.

Fisher and George were two of the three Lakers, Payton is the other, to play in every game this season. Guess they were due.

O’Neal and Jackson

The center and the coach have had their differences this season, and they exchanged words during a second-half timeout. When it was over, Jackson sat down and had a goofy grin, like the one Phil Mickelson wore on the back nine last Sunday at Augusta National.

Jackson wasn’t as willing to absolve O’Neal of his poor free-throw shooting (one for eight), or a mental breakdown when he allowed Portland’s Theo Ratliff to get behind him on an alley-oop inbounds play with 6.6 seconds left and the score tied in overtime. O’Neal shoved Ratliff before he could score. Fortunately for the Lakers, it wasn’t ruled a shooting foul and the Trail Blazers were not in the bonus.

Bryant, Again

There was no question about his intentions Wednesday. After a passive first half in Sacramento on Sunday that prompted speculation he was reacting to complaints about his shooting, he fired 29 shots against Golden State as the pendulum swung the other way. He had that burning desire to win Wednesday, and used his talents to make the two highlight three-pointers. He had done it before but never twice in one game and with such a degree of difficulty. Just a reminder of what he can do in pressure situations.

But Jackson felt compelled to remind everyone of some plays Bryant missed that jeopardized the team. This will be the story of the playoffs.

Champs?!

As if the Lakers didn’t have enough going on, they learned during their game that the Sacramento Cho-Kings had lost to the Golden State Warriors in Oakland, leaving an opening to the Pacific Division championship and the No. 2 seeding in the conference playoffs just days after they had taken the lead with a head-to-head victory.

This is a mixed blessing. Instead of playing the fraudulent Dallas Mavericks as the fourth-seeded team, they’ll play the Houston Rockets.

“Everybody knows it’s not an easy matchup for us anyway and changes the context of everything we prepared for,” Jackson said. “We’d been preparing for Dallas.”

Arriving back in L.A. at 2:30 a.m. Thursday, Jackson gave the players the rest of the day off to recuperate.

“We’d sure like to have another 24 hours at least to get the players healthy and get the players prepared,” he said.

Then again, we’ve seen how much can happen in 24 hours.

On Wednesday, the Lakers lost sleep, lost players and three times came within seconds of losing.

And after all that, they won the division title.

In a little more than a second, the time it took Bryant’s shot to travel its high parabola to the hoop, the playoff locales were decided for the Lakers, Kings and their two opponents.

As Laker assistant coach Frank Hamblen said on his way through the locker room, “Crazy, man.”

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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.