It’d Be Cool if They Started Acting Like Contenders

This wasn’t so much a playoff preview as it was a warmup for the red carpet at Sunday’s Oscars.

John Travolta, Eddie Murphy, Kristen Davis, Danny DeVito and Mike Garrett (???) joined Laker courtside regulars Jack Nicholson and Denzel Washington.

Somehow, the Lakers and the Sacramento Kings managed to squeeze in a basketball game between takes of the movie “Be Cool.”

The shooting for the sequel to “Get Shorty” meant there were five movie cameras around Staples Center in addition to the 10 cameras TNT used to broadcast the game.

Lakers-Kings, Take 2. And ... action.

The movie footage consisted of Travolta and Uma Thurman’s walking down an aisle, past the dashing young sports columnist at the press table, around the court and meeting up with Steve Tyler behind the scorer’s table.

And the final shot on the “Kiss Me” cam before the fourth quarter featured Anna Nicole Smith planting a big one on DeVito, leaving lipstick all over his mouth.

On the court, Kobe Bryant was auditioning for the starring role in “My Left Hand” (the sequel to “My Left Foot”) by going lefty for seemingly half of his shots.

Sacramento’s Peja Stojakovic once again was doing his best impression of the sharpshooting Legolas in “The Lord of the Rings.”

Finally, with 11 minutes left in the fourth quarter, the movie crew packed up the cameras and left.

It was time to get down to business. For all of the drama that has coursed through this Laker season, there have been few memorable moments on the court.

Of the Lakers’ 36 victories before Thursday, only seven stand out as noteworthy accomplishments: opening night against Dallas, Nov. 4 at Milwaukee, a stretch of four consecutive victories against San Antonio, Indiana, at San Antonio and at Dallas (on back-to-back nights) and Wednesday night’s comeback in Denver.

Of course that last one comes with an asterisk, because the Lakers benefited from a bad call by the officials, who erroneously ruled that the shot clock had expired on a shot by Denver’s Andre Miller that grazed the rim. They settled on a jump ball, which the Lakers won to set up Kareem Rush’s three-point basket for the victory.

On Thursday NBA vice president of operations Stu Jackson said the officials got the initial call wrong. It was an unusual -- and, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, unprecedented -- move by the league. It was almost as if the NBA could hear the grumbling about the deck’s being stacked in favor of the Lakers and wanted to cool off the Internet chat rooms before they got hot.

And then who should show up as part of Wednesday night’s crew but Steve Javie -- The Javinator -- still a villain in these parts for tossing Gary Payton in the first quarter of the Lakers’ loss to Dallas on Dec. 12.

Of course, all of this came a day after Phil Jackson accused the NBA of giving the Kings a break by starting the clock on Chris Webber’s eight-game suspension without knowing for sure whether his surgically repaired knee was ready to play.

Gamesmanship, gamesmanship. That’s always the case when these squads get together.

Even when both sides acknowledge that their meetings this season haven’t been true tests because of injured players, they still try to play mind games and distort the facts.

“The last game they played, they missed a couple of guys,” Vlade Divac said. “Today we’re missing three guys.”

The Lakers were without more than “a couple of guys” during the Kings’ 103-83 victory at Arco Arena on Jan. 16. Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Karl Malone and Rick Fox -- four-fifths of Jackson’s preferred starting lineup -- were injured. And Horace Grant was with his ailing father in Georgia.

But Jackson sold the Kings short while previewing Thursday’s game when he said, “They’re without a couple of players that are key players to them in [Brad] Miller and [Bobby] Jackson.”

Uh, remember Webber?

The Kings do, even though they have done fine without him, racking up the best record in the Western Conference. Miller has been great in his play, Stojakovic has elevated his game and Bobby Jackson often plays like the team’s MVP.

The Kings had virtually no inside game, but it didn’t matter with Mike Bibby and Stojakovic dropping three-pointers from all over the court.

At the other end, O’Neal continued a little run of games in which he hasn’t overpowered the middle. The Lakers were sloppy with the ball, negating some of the good effort they got from players such as Devean George and Brian Cook.

Still, the Lakers had one last possession down by two points in the final 10 seconds, but Jackson disdained a timeout and let his players improvise. Bryant went for the Hollywood ending and pulled up for a three-pointer.

Bryant’s attempt to win the game came up short.

He looked at Javie, smiled and gave a theatrical wipe of the brow, as if to say, “That was a close one.”

Of course, the camera -- I believe it was TNT’s -- was right there to catch it.

*

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.