Lakers, Payton Get Wolfed Down

The loss Tuesday night, another big one, was the Lakers’ 10th, their fifth in six games, their seventh in 10, and the floor was Gary Payton’s.

“I didn’t sign up for this ... ,” he said coldly. “This is bull

Take it any way you like, he said.

“I’m talking about everything,” he said.

The Minnesota Timberwolves defeated the Lakers, 106-90, at Target Center. Shaquille O’Neal and Karl Malone sat out. Payton and Kobe Bryant played, and the Lakers slipped further, with another game tonight in Denver, still a late-night flight away.

“We still gotta play,” Payton said.

Kevin Garnett, Latrell Sprewell and Sam Cassell combined for 82 points, 49 in the Timberwolves’ 62-point first half. The Lakers did not defend with a purpose until the fourth quarter, when a lineup of Luke Walton, Brian Cook, Derek Fisher, Kareem Rush and Bryon Russell played frantic defense and took some comfort in cutting the deficit to ... 10.

Bryant scored 20 points and took 10 rebounds. Payton, in 30 minutes, 12 in the second half, scored 13 points. Cook, in the first extended minutes of his career, scored 16 points, as did Rush.

The Timberwolves made 54.4% of their shots, outrebounded the Lakers, and had a 23-point lead in the third quarter against the team that ran them out of the playoffs in six games last spring.

“Everything,” Payton went on. “We gotta do a lot of different stuff. We ain’t doin’ nothin’.”

The judgment in the locker room, first offered by Russell, was that the active 11 players among them must choose to play on, despite the absences of O’Neal and Malone. On the injured list, Malone must sit out at least three more games. No one has speculated on a possible return date for O’Neal, least of all O’Neal.

“We can wake up and play or wait for them to come back,” Russell said. “Me, I prefer we wake up and play.

“It’s like we aren’t playing with any effort out there, trying to outscore them without playing any defense.... That’s our problem, we gotta crawl into every game instead of just jumping out.”

The Lakers were behind by 15 points in the first quarter, 18 in the second. So, Payton played short minutes again, the kind of thing that’s rankled him in his first months as a Laker. When he said he didn’t “sign up” for this, he probably meant the spotty playing time, along with the uneven floor play around him, and the slow integration of his game with Bryant’s.

“I mean, let me ask you this: Can you pinpoint any one of them?” Payton said. “Tell me.”

The defense. The rebounding. The ball movement. The playing time.

“I guess everything needs to get better,” he said, softening then. “I can’t pinpoint anything. We’re losing basketball games. I think the guys are playing hard. ... There are a lot of guys who are really frustrated right now. Basically, just talk to them, get them back into a groove.”

While not without confidence, Payton could be chief among the frustrated. He is shooting better and he is finding teammates. But the Lakers are losing and he has been powerless to stop it.

“I’m not going to sit here and lie to you,” he said. “Yes, I am frustrated. But you know, I gotta be the elder statesman and try to get through it. I’m the one who can’t really let it get to me. We have to deal with it. Then we have to work out of it. We’re still 21-10.... We gotta hurry up and hope that Karl and Shaq can get back and make it a little bit better.”

For now, and in large part, it will be up to Payton and Bryant, a relationship Payton said will take more time.

“You gotta get the feeling,” he said. “It’s hard, but you gotta work with it. I’m trying to get the feeling of it and I’m going to get the feeling. Once we get the feeling we can work with each other, you can see he’s looking, passing, we’re finding each other. We’ve just gotta look a little harder. ... It’s me and him out there. I gotta be out there with him a little more and work with him. I think it’ll come. We can work with each other.”