Decision Doesn’t Sit Well

For the record, Gary Payton said, “Just say I’m fine. I’m good. I’m straight.”

Beyond that, he added as he stood in the afternoon sunshine after practice Thursday in El Segundo, “I ain’t got nothing to say.”

Then he regaled reporters -- their notebooks tucked in back pockets -- for about 15 minutes as equipment men heaved duffel bags into a small van. The Lakers were to head to Houston for Games 3 and 4 of their first-round playoff series against the Rockets, leading the best-of-seven series two games to none. But if anyone thought that would be enough to satisfy them all, well, they must be new to this whole Laker thing.

Payton allowed himself to be talked into the Lakers and Phil Jackson and the triangle offense and Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant last summer, when Karl Malone got excited and O’Neal and Magic Johnson called and even Jackson himself got off his Harley long enough to aid in the recruiting.

The playing-time issues began almost immediately, because although Payton figured he’d have to hand his basketball and points to Bryant and O’Neal, he also assumed he’d be on the court with them most of the time.

Jackson promised Payton he was saving him for the postseason, which seemed logical enough, and then came Game 2 on Monday. Payton played 30 minutes, none in the fourth quarter. Instead, Derek Fisher, whose shooting touch appears to have returned just in time to pull the playoff double-teams off O’Neal, played all 12 minutes.

Asked whether it was Payton’s sore back or Fisher’s play that guided his Game 2 choices, Jackson said, “They’re both to do with it. So, if you could have the luxury of resting him and Fish playing well on top of it, that made it an easy decision.”

For him at least.

“He’s doing all right. We’ll talk,” said Malone, who has shared some of Payton’s pains of integration into Laker culture. “But he’s doing all right. It’s tough. He didn’t play in the fourth quarter or whatever, but Fish was playing really well.

“I know it’s tough because you really want to be out there. But the thing about this team is, all the things we’ve been through all year, we’re going to handle this and everything else as well.”

Payton hasn’t seemed disposed to talk, a development along the lines of the Pacific Ocean falling out of the mood to ebb and flow, so Malone said, “We give him his space. I need mine, sometimes he needs his. We give each other space. That’s part of being around each other. You know, you can look at a teammate and [know] right now is not a good time. So, you give him his space accordingly.... He’ll be OK.”

In two postseason fourth quarters, Payton has played four minutes. The playoffs are here, the grander expectations with them, and Payton is averaging 8.5 points and 5.5 assists and, perhaps, hardly feels part of it.

Although Payton made it clear that nearly all of Thursday’s parking-lot dialogue was not for public consumption, it would not reveal too much to say that he had his arms crossed for much of it. He is, so far, as intent on maintaining his public composure as he is eager to play, to impose his game on the Laker postseason as O’Neal, Bryant and Malone already have.

He did not practice Wednesday or Thursday, Jackson said, because his lower back was again achy. Payton has been an important defensive figure against Rocket guards Steve Francis and Cuttino Mobley and, after all, that’s what made him the Lakers’ top free-agent priority early last summer.

But, then another fourth quarter went on without him, and the Lakers won easily, and Payton was, well, unmoved. Three days later, trying to drive a team past the young and capable Rockets, Jackson again found himself addressing the Payton Situation.

“I think he was affected by it, but that’s part of basketball and we have to deal with that,” Jackson said. “We’ve been through that before.”

Asked whether Payton was OK now, as Malone suggested, Jackson said, “Uh, yeah.”

Asked, then, if reaching a playing-time accord would be easier now, because they have a history of such conversations, Jackson said, “I’m not assured of that. I tried to let him know that I understand his desire to sit on a player or have an influence on a player, and that’s very important to us too. But I have to measure that up with his health, with the way the game’s going, with the health of the team and with the freshness we want to have in all the players.

“I think it’s hard for players to understand, especially for Gary, a premier player on the team, where they want every minute they can play on the court. We want him to play as many good minutes he can play on the court, but it’s a lot different than having to have him run the team or to make the team operate, which is what he had up in Seattle. But we’re comfortable with the fact that he’s going to be competitive and come out there and play hard.”