Predicting Lakers’ Fate Purely a Guessing Game

Tonight at 7:30, ESPN and Fox Sports Net take a stab at a new programming concept: rarity television.

Yes, a Los Angeles area sports team is actually participating in a playoff game.

The Kings and the Ducks didn’t make the Stanley Cup playoffs.

UCLA and USC didn’t make the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

The Dodgers and the Angels didn’t make last year’s baseball playoffs.

The Clippers have a very strict regimen this time of year. Paint Easter eggs. File taxes. Miss playoffs.

Even USC’s football team, which shared the 2003 national championship, didn’t play a playoff game last season, because the NCAA doesn’t believe in playoffs for its top-tier football teams, which is why USC shared the 2003 national championship.

But tonight at Staples Center, there are the Lakers, playing host to the Houston Rockets in a first-round NBA playoff game.

The Lakers, L.A.’s last bastion of stability, consistency and reliability.

Give or take the last 82 games they have played.

As for what happens to the Lakers from here, it’s anybody’s guess. During a couple of conference calls this week, some of the top basketball experts from ABC/ESPN and TNT took theirs.

Doc Rivers: “I don’t think we know. I think that’s what makes it so interesting. We do know when they play well, when they play on all cylinders, they are pretty tough to beat. We also know if one guy struggles, they all struggle.”

Tom Tolbert: “The difference between the Lakers now and when they were winning championships is defensively, they were much better when they were winning championships. Watching the game against Golden State, they struggled defensively. Karl Malone is average, at best, defensively. Gary Payton is a good defender for a possession, when he needs to lock somebody down, but he can’t do it for 35 minutes a game

“I look at this team and I say, you know, it’s a tossup between them, Sacramento, San Antonio, and I would even [put] Minnesota in there if they had the [playoff] experience ...

“It’s going to be a struggle for them because they haven’t shown me the consistency all year long on the defensive end that would lead me to believe that they could dominate when it comes playoff time, no matter how much experience they have.”

Marv Albert: “[To find] the closest situation to the Lakers, you’d have to go back to the championship teams in Oakland with the A’s, or the Bronx Zoo days of the Yankees. In those cases, those teams seemed to thrive on adversity, they really loved the attention. With the Lakers, it just seems to come and go, there’s that undercurrent that will surface from time to time.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in the NBA. And of course there’s more media attention now, there’s more access, there’s more scrutiny. But I’ve never seen anything similar to this that has come out as I go back and think about other teams in the NBA, particularly successful teams.”

Kenny Smith: “I just moved out to L.A., and it’s kind of funny to me to hear everyone get nervous and excited when the Lakers go on these streaks, winning and losing, because if you’ve followed Shaq’s career, if you’ve followed the Lakers with Shaq, this is what they do. They go on 11-game win streaks. And they go on six- to seven-game losing streaks, or six to seven games where they don’t play well.

“They’re a very temperamental bunch ... If you look at the Spurs, they play at, what I say, a ‘Volume 8.’ Meaning they’re going to play at 8 every night. No matter what happens, they’re going to play there. And to beat them, you’ve got to go up. You’ve got to go to 10.

“The Lakers will play at 10 and turn right back around and play at 3. Very few great teams have done that. But Shaq teams and Laker teams have done this every single year. In the playoffs one year, I think they won like 14, 15 games in a row when they won the title. But if you look at what they’d done in the regular season, they hadn’t played well.”

Rivers: “I don’t know if anyone’s done it in L.A., but if they’ve kept a diary through this whole year, it’s going to be a best-seller next year. It’s a soap opera. It’s a great book.”

The next zany chapter begins tonight on ESPN and Fox Sports Net, with TNT and Fox sharing the insanity on Monday.

Also available for viewing this weekend:

TODAY

* WNBA Draft

(ESPN, 9 a.m.)

Non-event sports TV season has begun, with ESPN televising the WNBA draft one Saturday before bowing at the altar of the NFL draft the next. And kicking it off this week was the NFL Network, which devoted two hours to the announcement of the 2004 NFL schedule. Big news, that NFL schedule. “This just in: the Rams will play the 49ers! And sources close to Jerry Jones inform us ... the Cowboys will play on Thanksgiving!”

In the non-event big event of the day, Connecticut’s Diana Taurasi, Duke’s Alana Beard and Stanford’s Nicole Powell figure to go 1-2-3. In case you’d rather sleep in.

* Dodgers at San Francisco Giants

(Channel 13, 1 p.m.)

The Dodgers began this series alone in first place in the National League West. That’s bigger news than Barry Bonds’ 661st, any way you want to look at it.

SUNDAY

* Long Beach Grand Prix

(Spike TV, 4 p.m.)

The Long Beach Grand Prix at 30 -- delayed three hours on the West Coast and aired on Spike. Meanwhile in Stock Car Nation, the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts 500, held in Martinsville, Va., will be aired live on Fox at 10 a.m.

* Oakland Athletics at Angels

(ESPN, 5 p.m.)

ESPN interrupts its All-Barry All-The-Time coverage, ever briefly, to remind self: Other guys in California play baseball too.