Shaq Puts Heat in a Miami Vise

Simple demolition doesn’t really suit the Lakers, who win sometimes based on their center’s nap cycle, their coach’s insistence on having things work out on their own and various other nuances of somnambulism, intrigue and frailty.

They lose sometimes because of those things as well, but generally not when Shaquille O’Neal gets out on the break and dribbles half the court and dunks and then hugs some kid standing along the baseline.

“I was kind of hoping it was Anna Kournikova,” O’Neal admitted.

A game from the end of their 12-day, see-the-country-and-its-airports trip, the Lakers defeated the Miami Heat, 98-83, Tuesday night at American Airlines Arena.

They trailed by 14 and shuffled around early and with seven minutes remaining were still in a game against an Eastern Conference patsy, then finished the Heat with a 20-6 run that brought them to the buzzer. In the final seven minutes, Derek Fisher scored eight points and so did O’Neal. His steal at the top of the key, deft dribble while being buzzed by guard Rafer Alston and finishing dunk gave the Lakers a 94-83 lead, sucked the hope from the building and brought the reserve Lakers to their feet.

“It was cool,” O’Neal said.

O’Neal had 25 points and 10 rebounds and Gary Payton had 17 points and six assists as the Lakers, without Kobe Bryant for the seventh consecutive game, won for the fourth time in six, all on the road. The unexpected production came from Fisher, who had 18 points and six assists in 27 minutes, and Devean George, who had 17 points and 11 rebounds.

After giving some thought to starting Luke Walton at power forward, Phil Jackson stuck with Slava Medvedenko. George opened the third quarter and made three three-point baskets in the second half.

Fisher lost his place in the backcourt in July, when the Lakers signed Payton, and George’s play had fallen off two months ago for no apparent reason. He was replaced in the starting five by Rick Fox last week but played 36 minutes against the Heat, to Fox’s 12.

“Our pride and pleasure ... was in Devean George,” Jackson said, “who’s been AWOL for three weeks to a month, if not more.”

As it was, the Lakers led by only one -- Dwyane Wade had 19 points and Lamar Odom 13 for the Heat -- with seven minutes remaining, and O’Neal still hadn’t made his impact.

He blamed the first three quarters on too much sleep. Really.

“I opened the curtains and that ... breeze just knocked me out,” he said. “That Miami breeze is sort of like [a drug].”

So he dozed off, almost until the bus driver laid on his horn, dragging himself out the front door. Several hours later, the Lakers had won again with strong play late in the fourth quarter, as they had before recently at Toronto, at Cleveland and at Orlando.

“That’s when we start waking up, I guess,” Payton said. “When Shaq wakes up, we wake up. He don’t wake up until the fourth quarter or until somebody talks to him.”

That would be Malik Allen, the Heat forward who, with about five minutes left in the third quarter, shared a technical foul with O’Neal. The details of the argument were vague, but O’Neal said Allen inspired him.

“He has to realize he’s too light in the [butt] to go up against the Diesel,” O’Neal said. “[Referee Steve] Javie and them let him do a lot of holding, so I guess he thought he was playing good.”

O’Neal’s points of motivation often have a splash of revisionism in them, like the night in Chicago he was outplayed by Eddy Curry, he said, because he’d met Curry’s parents beforehand and went easy on the kid. Turned out, he’d been introduced after the game.

But O’Neal cares little for the details. For a night, he had jump shooters at his disposal named Fisher and George, and the Lakers won on their way into Houston, where he’ll get Yao Ming and a lot of questions about Yao Ming.

While everyone awaits the dominant Lakers, that will be April, if at all. So they squeezed out another win in another foreign arena and moved one flight closer to home and, for most of them, four days off.