Bad News/Good News Day

The Laker roster had become a moving target, so fluid that it was with some fanfare that Shaquille O’Neal returned to Staples Center on a January Wednesday night, having massaged his right calf for a dozen games.

Not long after, Rick Fox joined the season, eight months after surgery, and he was welcomed by a standing ovation, by the crowd and his teammates, who applauded his perseverance.

So, on a day when the club admitted Karl Malone might need another two months for his knee to heal, and as Kobe Bryant continued to discourage the pain rolling from his right shoulder, the Lakers actually made medical progress. They also defeated the Seattle SuperSonics, 96-82, midseason victories now holding greater value than in the past.

Gary Payton, who retook control of the offense in the absence of the three scorers, scored 24 points against the SuperSonics, for whom he played nearly 13 seasons. Bryant had 14 points. Horace Grant had 10 rebounds and eight points in 28 minutes.

More importantly, the Lakers held Ray Allen to 18 points, two after halftime, though he had 10 rebounds and 10 assists, his third career triple-double.

It appears the Lakers will play for postseason positioning largely without Malone and that they will do it through the most difficult portion of their season. The Lakers go out on the road for seven games after Friday’s game against the Minnesota Timberwolves, and they’ll play five home games in six weeks after that.

O’Neal, they assume, will regain his conditioning and the movement that allowed him to average 20 points and 11.6 rebounds before his calf injury. He was sluggish at times against the smallish, athletic SuperSonics, who took advantage of O’Neal’s rust by fouling him upon receipt of the ball. He had seven points and five rebounds in 18 minutes, evenly split between the first and third quarters.

“It wasn’t so bad,” O’Neal said, adding that he felt “a little bit” of pain.

“The true test,” he said, “is tomorrow, how I feel then.”

He played with a sleeve on his calf, and sometimes his game was free-throw line to free-throw line, occasionally two or three steps behind the play. But O’Neal’s issues appeared to be solvable by simply playing the games, and the Lakers have plenty of those coming, most of them separated by plane flights and bus trips.

“That was just fine for me, what he gave us out there,” Coach Phil Jackson said.

Bryant needed every bit of three days to recover from Saturday’s game in Utah, his first after sitting out six games because of the sprained shoulder. His legs looked good, but his shot was unreliable (six of 15 from the floor) and he again favored the shoulder as he had in Utah. Jackson played him 11 minutes in the second half, after Bryant admitted the shoulder had “gone dead” on him.

“I’m not really concerned,” Bryant said. “It is what it is. I can get out there and contribute and help our team. If it gets to the point I can’t contribute, I won’t be out there.”

Jackson said Bryant’s recovery time would be a concern, and admitted the injuries, near injuries, lingering injuries and recoveries and challenged him, and would continue to.

“It changes the flexibility you have as a coach,” he said. “You have to project what players can do.”

Slava Medvedenko started at power forward beside O’Neal. Fox entered in the second quarter and nearly flushed at the attention by the fans.

“It’s nice,” Fox said later. “It really is nice to be appreciated. It was nice they were happy to see me.”

And when the Lakers made the run that finished the SuperSonics, the floor was filled with Derek Fisher (11 points, career-high six steals), Grant, Luke Walton, Kareem Rush and Bryon Russell, the second unit.

When Fisher made a steal and finished with a fastbreak layup over 6-foot-11 Calvin Booth, drawing the foul and making the free throw, the Lakers had started the fourth quarter on a 15-4 run and led, 86-74. Jackson slowly fed some starters back into the game, Payton a few minutes before Bryant.

So much has changed in this season where it once seemed the Lakers would have talent to spare. They dug in on defense, holding the SuperSonics to their lowest point total in six weeks. They forced the SuperSonics into seven turnovers in the first eight minutes of the fourth quarter. And they played in all the corners of the game they’d avoided for weeks.