Playing as if He’s Wearing Gloves

In one corner, a veteran despaired.

“I didn’t bring it,” Karl Malone said. “The game I played is unacceptable.”

In another corner, a veteran whined.

“We didn’t do a bad job on Tony Parker defensively, we just need to go back at him at the other end,” Gary Payton said. “But this is not an offense where we can do that.”

In one corner, a veteran shouldered the responsibility of the Lakers’ 88-78 loss to the San Antonio Spurs in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals.

“I did a terrible job on the defensive end.... Veterans don’t make the kind of mistakes I made on offense,” Karl Malone said. “This one’s on me.”

In another corner, a veteran passed the blame more deftly than he, with a whopping three assists, had passed the basketball.

“In Seattle, we made Tony Parker play defense too,” Gary Payton said. “Here, we don’t go back at him.”

They say that the true measure of a man can be found not in how he achieves success, but in how he handles failure.

In their first major playoff test Sunday, the Lakers’ two prize purchases failed miserably.

Afterward, one guy looked about a foot taller than the other guy.

Can we finally conclude that when the Lakers claimed to have found two championship answers last summer, they were only half right?

Malone played Sunday as if he never took his feet out of their daily ice bath, but with him, there’s hope.

He missed seven of 10 shots, but they were mostly the sort of mid-range jump shots he was making in the first round against Houston.

“Those are shots I have made before, and I’ll keep taking them, I’m not worried about that,” he said.

He was torched on defense by Tim Duncan, who missed only five times in 18 tries and scored 30 points, but historically, Malone shoves back.

“They were aggressive, and they pushed us around a little,” he said.

And about his three turnovers, including a couple of bad passes during the Spurs’ 21-6 fourth-quarter run?

“My teammates are looking at me, I need to set an example, something like that is contagious,” he said. “I can’t be making those plays. I will get better.”

With Malone, you believe it.

With Payton, you seriously wonder.

Most of the afternoon, he looked like one of those local “conventioneers” Phil Jackson is trying escape by bringing the team back to Los Angeles between Games 1 and 2.

Perpetually lost.

On offense, the Glove was an oven mitt, making only one of eight shots, throwing up one off-balance clanker at the start of the Spurs’ final push, then fumbling away a rebound at the finish.

On defense, the Glove was the kind with no fingers, and the only way anybody would have believed he had done a good job on Parker was if this had been Souvenir Blindfold Day.

Parker may have made fewer than half of his shots -- eight for 19, as Payton reminded everyone -- but far more deadly were his penetrations.

Every time he sped past Payton, something good happened for the Spurs, with nine assists and numerous other passes that turned heads and opened spaces.

For all his running around, Parker had only one turnover.

For all his denials, Payton had zero steals.

And then Payton blames it on the fact that he’s not handling the ball enough?

While the stark differences between Malone and Payton make for good locker-room drama, at this point, one wonders if it would have been better to see Malone show up last summer with someone else.

Say, Tyronn Lue.

Payton repeated Sunday that, if he had been allowed to use his height to post up Parker and draw fouls and wear him down, the defense wouldn’t matter so much.

“It’s a lot frustrating, it’s very frustrating,” Payton said. “I know I can go back at this kid.”

But what makes anyone think those shots would suddenly start falling against a guy who is still twice as quick?

“The shots I’m taking right now, they’re not rhythm shots,” Payton said.

In other words, Payton is still complaining that the triangle offense is, well, um, the triangle offense.

Nine months after he accepted nearly $5 million to play in it.

How dare Phil Jackson!

The next time Payton thinks about opening his mouth about the triangle, of course, he should stuff a trapezoid in it.

Better yet, he should just look across the room at Malone.

This is a time when champion Lakers, from Jerry West to Kobe Bryant, have locked away their egos and trusted in the team. For all the talk about the Lakers’ Big Two, they could not have won those three consecutive championships without the Other Five, from Robert Horry to Rick Fox to, yes, even Lue.

Sunday showed a different team, a thinner team, a more uncertain team.

You think Bryant shot too much and too wildly? Who else was willing to step up?

Bryant and O’Neal combined for 18 field goals Sunday, 10 more than the rest of the Lakers combined.

They took 40 shots, 11 more than the rest of the Lakers combined.

With the score tied, 69-69, Rasho Nesterovic was left wide open in front of the basket by a defense that did not rotate. The tie was broken.

After the Lakers pulled back to within two, they committed four turnovers in two minutes, all of them errors not only of commission, but confusion.

Bad pass by Derek Fisher. Bad pass by Bryant. Fumble by O’Neal. Shot-clock violation after a Bryant airball.

At times, it looked like last year’s playoff losses here, and at times, you had to wonder the same thing you did then.

If only they had Karl Malone and Gary Payton.

The first guy is expected to eventually show up for this series.

The second guy may have already skipped town for good.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.