A Remake Appears to Be Best Hope for These Lakers

If there’s a reason to believe the Lakers can win the championship this season, it lies in that three-month stretch three years ago when they were practically unbeatable.

The Lakers never seemed to get it together for much of the season in 2000-2001, the group’s first attempt to defend a championship. Things bottomed out in January, with a 6-6 record for the month and a tectonic shift that resulted in a huge reopening of the Kobe-Shaq rift. Oh, and Coach Phil Jackson suggested that Bryant sabotaged games in high school so Bryant could look heroic at the end.

Somehow they put all that aside, welcomed back Derek Fisher after a long recovery from foot surgery and Bryant from a stint on the injured list, ripped off eight consecutive victories to close the regular season, then won their first 11 playoff games and 15 of 16 overall in the postseason en route to another parade down Figueroa.

Bickering superstars, injured starters, uneven regular-season play

Can the Lakers turn their story from a serial into a remake?

“I think it’s possible,” Jackson said. “There were a lot of things that went into that season that gave us strength. Fish coming off an injury in March, Kobe coming off of being on the [injured list] in April, [Ron] Harper kind of solidifying the things there, the process. I think that’s a likely possibility. We’re going to have to have that rejuvenation at some point, where you can get that energy shot.”

No one’s coming to the rescue this time, though, not even Malone now that he’s back from the injured list.

The major difference between 2001 and now is that the 2001 team was basically the same group that won a championship a year earlier, with Harper serving as the facilitator for the triangle offense. This team is still integrating new parts, most notably Gary Payton and Karl Malone -- and that’s going about as smoothly as the AOL-Time Warner merger.

Payton and Malone still run a different offense from the rest, whether it’s Malone coming up high to set screens or Payton attacking with the dribble. With the Fantastic Four on the court there’s enough offensive firepower and basketball IQ for the Lakers to get away with playing by their instincts for stretches. At times it’s fun to watch.

But when things go bad the Lakers can’t settle down and use their set offense to generate good shots. Too many turnovers and forced shots.

“We’re similar to a football team,” Fisher said. “You have to solidify the flow of the game, get your running game going, then other things start to happen.”

If that’s the case, this game was like one of those Sundays when the St. Louis Rams don’t hand off to Marshall Faulk enough. O’Neal had zero shots in the first quarter and only three in the fourth, on a night when he had it going well enough to make 14 of 16 field goals and three of five free throws.

Of course, fewer touches means fewer smiles for O’Neal. Another hallmark of that 2001 team was that it got back to running the offense through O’Neal, even when Bryant came back. This time, Jackson is concerned about the other end of the court.

“It’s going to come from Shaq rebounding, defensively,” Jackson said before the game. “That’s where we get our strength as a basketball team is from his turn at the end of the season to a defensive, rebounding player.

Apparently it’s time for the spring bloom. O’Neal averaged nine rebounds over a recent six-game stretch lowlighted by a two-rebound afternoon in Washington on Feb. 28. But in the past eight games, he has averaged 15.6 rebounds, including a season-high 26 Sunday.

He also was the Big Rejecter, blocking seven shots.

But the Lakers aren’t accustomed to him being in that mode, and at times Sunday it showed. On a late fourth-quarter drive, Milwaukee’s Toni Kukoc got by Rick Fox. O’Neal came over to swat the shot with so much force he nearly injured a couple of courtside spectators. But Fox fouled Kukoc.

“Let him go,” O’Neal admonished Fox.

If Fox and his teammates can be confident O’Neal has their back, they will. O’Neal has often been a step late this season.

That wasn’t the case Sunday, when he came up with critical blocks and rebounds in crunch time. This was more like the old O’Neal, such a necessary element if we’re going to see anything like the old Lakers.

And what times those were.

“Oh man,” Fox said, when that run came up recently. “Let me tell you something. That feeling, I have never felt like that. We used to step on the court, it was like, there was no way we were going to lose.”

Bryant, sitting next to him, was reminiscent -- but realistic.

“That was a different time, different circumstances, different sequence of events, different altogether,” Bryant said. “I don’t know what this year is going to bring. It might be better. You never know.”

That’s the only thing we can be assured of with this group: you never know.

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