Lakers Take New Low Road

Now the losses are coming with plane rides attached, and cold weather and wake-up calls and sore ankles.

Now they are coming in arenas where their frantic comeback attempts don’t bring the crowd around, where the bus driver waits impatiently and the people standing along the rails aren’t so forgiving.

The Lakers played one capable half and lost to the Memphis Grizzlies, 88-82, on Wednesday night at the Pyramid, where in the end they established season lows for points, points in a half, field goals made and field-goal percentage (34.9). The loss was their eighth in a row on the road dating to Dec. 13, matching a Los Angeles franchise high, with another game in Dallas tonight.

And yet, amid three losses in four games, and seven in 11, Coach Phil Jackson was irritated less by the details than by the defeat itself. The Lakers -- these Lakers -- appear able to win without style or not at all, injuries having taken Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and Karl Malone from him, circumstance having taken Horace Grant. Jackson said he’d learn to live with scores more reflective of the New York Knicks of Pat Riley than anything Jackson would try -- for the moment.

“We don’t care about points,” he said. “We care about winning ballgames and it doesn’t matter if we win, 76-75. We don’t have the players ... that are going to score 105 points or so in a basketball game. We have to stay really close and not turn the basketball over and do the things that make us competitive in basketball games right now, and that is what we are trying to do.”

It remains to be seen if they even have the personnel for that. Gary Payton scored 24 points, and no one else had as many as 13. Devean George, Derek Fisher and Kareem Rush combined to make eight of 34 field-goal attempts.

In their 39th game, the Lakers started their ninth lineup. Last year, in 82 games, they started eight fives.

The preferred lineup of George, Malone, O’Neal, Bryant and Payton has started 20 games, and won 15 of them. Everything else is 10-9.

The difference in lineups against the Grizzlies was Brian Cook, Jackson’s first rookie starter since Mark Madsen going on three years ago. Cook played center, because O’Neal has a sore calf and Grant is in Georgia and Malone has a sprained knee and Jamal Sampson has a sprained ankle and Slava Medvedenko had to play power forward.

These are the new Lakers, waiting on a 20-year-old center, having Cook stand behind 6-11 Lorenzen Wright and Medvedenko crowd 7-foot Pau Gasol and everything getting thrown off from there, leading 46-40 at halftime and not coming close to sustaining it. The Grizzlies, winners of six in a row, led, 86-72, with 1:40 left in the game.

“We just gotta keep our heads up, just compete,” said Cook, who played heavy center minutes for the first time since he was at Lincoln High in Illinois. “It is what it is, know what I’m saying? Everybody’s a little banged-up.... It’s tough to lose. We gotta pay attention to the details. It’s tough, really. But, there’s a lot of people, me and Luke [Walton] and Jamal and Ime [Udoka], it’s a tough road. We gotta try and pick things up as we go along.”

All of which means they rolled into Dallas to play a team tonight that has won five in a row and averages 102.8 points, more at home. In his last three games, over five nights, Payton has played 40, 39 and 41 minutes. George has done almost nothing well for weeks, but Jackson plays him 30 minutes a night. Because the Lakers were in the game for most of 45 minutes Wednesday, Jackson didn’t play a starter fewer than 33 minutes, and some of the younger players looked as if they would have to touch their legs to be sure they were still there.

“They need to get their rest and to get mentally there,” Payton said.

O’Neal will be back, maybe next week. Bryant by Saturday, they hope. Malone, perhaps, in three weeks. Until then, until any of them are on the floor, the season trudges along, the games get more difficult, Jackson keeps handing them the basketball.

“But,” Walton said, “at the same time, it’s basketball. We all played our whole lives. It’s not the first time this has happened.... We need to get this next win. We need to take care of this one coming up.”

Then, he turned to go. The loss was barely done, and Jackson was herding them along, because another game was out there, whether they wanted it to be or not.

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Getting Away

Beginning with Wednesday night’s game at Memphis, the Lakers play 22 of 30 games on the road (H-Home; A-Away):

JANUARY

*--* Date Opponent H A 21 Memphis 22 Dallas 24 Utah 28 Seattle 30 Minnesota FEBRUARY 1 Toronto 2 Indiana 4 Cleveland 5 Philadelphia 8 Orlando 10 Miami 11 Houston 17 Portland 18 Golden State 20 Philadelphia 22 Phoenix 25 Denver 26 Sacramento 28 Washington 29 New Jersey MARCH 2 Atlanta 3 Houston 5 Seattle 7 New Jersey 8 Utah 10 Boston 12 Minnesota 13 Chicago 15 Orlando 17 Clippers

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