Pulled Out of Thin Air

After the Lakers had it all go wrong but the result, a process Phil Jackson would call “misery,” Shaquille O’Neal nearly took the basketball with him, off the floor, past the bench, through the tunnel, just away from the Houston Rockets.

Instead, he slammed it to the floor and shook his head, this more difficult than perhaps he believed it would be.

O’Neal’s rebound and dunk with 17.4 seconds left put the Lakers ahead, Jim Jackson’s open three-point miss just before the buzzer left them there, and the Lakers were 72-71 winners Saturday night at Staples Center in the first game of the best-of-seven first-round Western Conference series.

Game 2 is Monday night. Hide the women and children.

The still-enigmatic Lakers put Karl Malone, Rick Fox and the rest of their injured on the floor against the Rockets, and then it came down again to Kobe Bryant and O’Neal, Bryant’s shooting the airball on the final possession that O’Neal gathered and put back with a resounding dunk.

O’Neal was fouled and he missed the free throw -- after missing 27 of 38 to finish the regular season he missed 10 of 14 to start the postseason -- but they had a lead, and they defended it over one last possession, finally leaning hopefully as Jackson’s shot, from the left corner, hit the rim closest to him and bounced away, into O’Neal’s hands.

“I think I was definitely holding my breath,” Derek Fisher said.

In the matchup that drew much of the pregame attention, O’Neal had 20 points and 17 rebounds and Yao Ming had 10 points and 11 rebounds. Bryant, who played well but missed shots, scored 16 points. He was four for 19 from the field -- one for 11 in the fourth quarter -- and then left without addressing reporters, his boycott of the general media now six days old.

O’Neal called it “an ugly game,” but, like many of the Lakers, tried not to dwell on the circumstances that brought the final score.

“Now we know what they are going to do,” he said.

Rest, mostly. Half the Lakers’ 12-man roster was hurt or healing, and then Jackson believed O’Neal was fatigued in a second half that featured a nine-point third quarter -- not for O’Neal, for the team -- and 10-for-40 shooting.

“He didn’t seem like he could catch the ball and do things with it in the third quarter,” Jackson said.

Bryant was not alone in his erratic shooting. Malone, who said he “tweaked” his sprained right ankle in the first minutes of the game, was left open by Rocket Coach Jeff Van Gundy and was three for 14, and the Lakers shot 32.9% as a group. The 72 points matched their regular-season low and the 143 points was a franchise low for combined points in a playoff game.

“We’re not going to miss that many again,” said Gary Payton, who sat for a while because of a sore back but was on the floor for the final 3 1/2 minutes.

All of the Laker wounded played. Malone and Rick Fox started. But the Lakers, as a whole, looked like a team stiff with pain. Fisher, Kareem Rush and Devean George played. Rush made two three-pointers in the fourth quarter and Fisher made one, nine critical points in a 23-point quarter that didn’t end until Jim Jackson took a pass from Steve Francis and hit the rim.

“End of the game, pick and roll, Steve did a great job to penetrate,” Jim Jackson said. “That’s the play that I know Steve makes all the time, so I was ready. I knew that once he got to the hole, if he didn’t have a shot, he was going to look for me in the corner. Great look. When I let it go, I thought it was in.”

The game was played in the half-court, Eastern Conference style, 70-some-points-wins style, Van Gundy style. The Lakers scored two points in the first eight minutes of the second half, and might have been in trouble had the Rockets scored more than eight in the same span.

Van Gundy dared someone other than Bryant or O’Neal to shoot, even as the crowd chanted Bryant’s name, and Malone kept firing. He missed a lot, but took 11 rebounds -- five in the fourth quarter -- and grinded on defense.

“I am not going to stop taking them,” Malone said, “because they are right there.”

For six months, analyses of the Lakers were shaded by thoughts of spring. The Lakers were a team in transition. Their Big Four played only 39 games together, less than half a season; the ball moved too often or not at all, and the defense suffered in all of the offensive confusion.

So April 17 arrived and when everyone looked again, it turned out little had changed; they were still working out the details.

“The playoffs are a different story,” Payton insisted. “We have to go out and play. We have to go all out.... We played really well on defense. That is what made us win this basketball game.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

First Things First

How the Lakers have fared in the first round under Phil Jackson:

*--* SEASON GAME 1 FIRST ROUND RESULT 1999-2000 Defeated Won series, 3-2 Won NBA Championship vs. Sacramento, Indiana 117-107 2000-01 Defeated Won series, 3-0 Won NBA Championship vs. Portland, Philadelphia 106-93 2001-02 Defeated Won series, 3-0 Won NBA Championship vs. Portland, New Jersey 95-87 2002-03 Defeated Won series, 4-2 Eliminated by Spurs in Minnesota, Conference Finals 117-98 2003-04 Defeated Lead series, 1-0 Houston, 72-71

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