Bruise It or Lose It

Whether the villain was Latrell Sprewell for crumpling Derek Fisher or Fisher’s teammates for not telling him what was coming would remain unsettled Monday, a day of rest and flexing for a Laker team that believed it had been bullied the night before in Minnesota.

So, as they prepared for tonight’s Game 3 of the Western Conference finals at Staples Center, the Lakers said they expected better basketball from themselves and more of the same from the Minnesota Timberwolves, whose persistence and jump shooting beat the Lakers on Sunday night and tied the series, 1-1.

Fisher awoke Monday morning with his left eye swollen. While it didn’t hurt much and he confessed Sprewell’s open-floor pick probably was not intended to injure, everybody was generally unhappy and the series is only two games old, when usually it takes three or four games before somebody really gets his feelings hurt.

The Timberwolves and Lakers have come to know each other in the last year, the Lakers eliminating the Timberwolves in the first round last season, the Timberwolves now playing their city’s biggest NBA games since they were Lakers.

As a result, they traded seven technical fouls in the final 8 1/2 minutes of Game 2. Laker Coach Phil Jackson dismissed some of the calls as the officials’ heavy-handed attempts to maintain control, but he declared the series had changed amid the hard fouls and posing.

“Minnesota kind of upped the ante,” Jackson said. “They came out and played a physical game, were physical, and were good at it. There’s now some things that are personal in this rivalry.”

Fisher, the only one left puffy by any of it, said, “I would definitely say that’s an accurate statement.”

The thing about series that go bad, the big guys get mad and the little guys end up on the floor securing body parts.

So, Karl Malone threw his shoulder and Shaquille O’Neal swung his arms, Mark Madsen went Mad Dog and Ervin Johnson fought desperately, and Darrick Martin did the caterpillar and Fisher waxed the floor with his cheek.

“That’s more to our favor, playing like that,” O’Neal said. “That’s something we’re used to and a style we like to play.... They want to play football, we’ll play football.”

The Lakers believe they are to answer the Timberwolves’ aggressiveness, about the same script they followed in the first round against the Houston Rockets, during which Jeff Van Gundy scoffed and called Rick Fox “the patron saint” of rough play, among other observations.

If there is something to be settled, it seems Malone will be in the middle of it. He was fined $7,500 Monday for taking up for Fisher and would not apologize for the act or the sentiment. In fact, he only regretted that the Lakers had let it get that far, calling Sprewell’s blindside pick “uncalled for.”

“Maybe we let our guards down,” Malone said.

The willful Lakers of five consecutive postseason wins, two of them in loud, abusive settings, had softened by early Sunday night. By the end of Game 2, they played beneath a lilting song of “Aiiir-ball!” as fans celebrated O’Neal’s grazing the bottom of the net with a third-quarter free throw, a full foot short.

By their own postgame analyses, the Lakers had underestimated the fight in the Timberwolves. Jackson wondered if they weren’t startled by the Timberwolves’ from-the-tip resolve. Fisher said, “We kind of played uphill the rest of the game,” and now they’ll play not to do so for the rest of the series.

To everyone’s surprise, apparently, the Timberwolves came to work on Sunday night and brought their MVP, along with their attitude. On defense, the Lakers guessed wrong much of the time, stopping neither Kevin Garnett nor much of his supporting cast, and on offense they never did find O’Neal.

Not only did the Timberwolves survive Martin, Martin outscored Gary Payton, Malone and O’Neal. He had six assists and no turnovers. He got Malone ejected by being obliterated on a pick, probably not part of the plan, but when you’re hot, you’re hot.

“We’re just going to have to play more aggressively,” Jackson said. “Minnesota knocked us down and we have to do the same thing.”

By Monday morning, O’Neal had his sense of humor back, holding a news conference with a life-sized Luke Walton cutout at his side and continuing a period in which he playfully tweaked his general manager.

“I had a sub-par game,” he said. “I had a Mitch Kupchak-ish type of game. I don’t really want to play like that anymore. I’ll be looking to come back to Shaq “ tonight.

He noted the typically amiable Fisher spent the day with a scowl on his face, not to mention the mouse above the eye.

“I think I play excellent when I’m angry, and I’m angry,” O’Neal said.

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Deja Vu?

So far, this season’s series is similar to last season’s, when the Lakers won in six games after a split in Minneapolis:

*--* 2003 Margin 2004 Game 1 L 117-98 19 9 L 97-88 Game 2 M 119-91 28 18 M 89-71

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