All Together Now: Lakers Become the Team to Beat

They’re still calculating, but it appears harmony and victory arrived at about the same time for the Lakers.

Shaquille O’Neal’s attention to rebounding perhaps beat them both, as did his periodic springtime devotion to Kobe Bryant, along with Bryant’s annual return to enough pages of the offense to keep O’Neal and Coach Phil Jackson reasonably pleased.

As a result, the Lakers awoke this morning with a three-games-to-one advantage in the Western Conference finals and tonight at Target Center will play to eliminate Kevin Garnett’s Minnesota Timberwolves.

The Lakers are 7-1 since losing the first two games of the conference semifinals, when Jackson reminded them that their time together was fleeting. He convinced enough of them that that was a bad thing.

“That’s what we talked about more than anything else when we were down 0-2, is that there’s nothing but today, right now,” Jackson said. “Especially for this team. We’re not talking about a dynasty of young players coming through and holding it together for the next four or five years and winning championships and that kind of stuff. We’re talking about playing this year and winning this year and letting the chips fall where they may. That’s basically what you have to do anyway.”

Love, then, or anxiety, becomes triangle execution and pick-and-roll defense.

“I think there’s some cohesiveness that has occurred that has allowed us to pick up some of the subtleties we’ve been preaching over the last five months and applied them because of necessity,” Jackson said. “I think their mood has changed, obviously, from one of reaction ... to being initiators.”

Much of the credit for it, Jackson said, “has come from the play of our big guys,” O’Neal and Bryant, which it always has, along with the blame.

So, outside of their collapse in Game 2 of this series -- 71 points, one swollen eye, a lot of promises to play with greater toughness -- the Lakers located what had eluded them and their four superstars. With playoff victories came a renewal of respect for each other’s fortitude.

O’Neal is again the most ferocious, least defendable player in the game. Bryant has again found teammates for open shots, and saved difficult ones for himself. Karl Malone has chopped relentlessly at Tim Duncan and Garnett over nearly a month, without regard to his own game. And Derek Fisher, at the sharp end of San Antonio and Minnesota double-teams, from the void created by men sent at O’Neal and Bryant, has made shots.

After starting with the disclaimer, “Five games is still a long way away from a ring. We know that,” Rick Fox said he has seen a change in the Lakers in recent weeks. They won, they trusted each other. Or the other way around.

“We’ve been able to get our head above a lot of the issues this year that have brought us down or pull us back down,” he said. “It seems right now we’re all just focused forward.... Once we got everybody’s attention focused directly on the basketball court, then what we have to do is to keep winning each game.”

The veteran Lakers have become almost amused by their flaws. They’ve lived these seasons before, where the synergy comes late, but in time. They generally don’t do seamless, opting instead for drama and intrigue and a few slow head shakes, and so they stood at hopelessly overmatched against the defending champion Spurs, only to apparently come upon something fresh within themselves.

“We just started -- once again -- a lot later than everybody thought we would,” Fox said. “That’s that whole turning-it-on capability. I don’t think we turned it on this year, I think we just found it very late. Hopefully it would be with enough time.”

They have run themselves into one of those Laker moments. They have won 12 consecutive close-out games, and have finished 11 consecutive series in their first opportunity at it. But they played poorly in Minnesota in Game 2, on a Sunday night when one rigorous effort might have convinced the Timberwolves the Lakers were too much.

The outcome -- an 89-71 Minnesota victory -- has the Lakers braced for more desperation from the Timberwolves and hoping for more out of themselves.

“I don’t think it’s going to be an easy task at all up in Minnesota,” Jackson said Friday afternoon, before they all boarded a flight. “It’s going to be very difficult and ... we’re going to have to be very precise.”

They have routinely closed series, Jackson said, because the alternative is risky.

“Hopefully,” he said, “our play keeps them on their heels and thinking about going home.”

Then, when in doubt, there is O’Neal, who has become frantic under the basket.

“He is the cornerstone on both ends of the floor for us,” Fox said. “When he plays with energy and intensity, regardless of whether he scores 30 points or 15 points, we win. It’s those things, defensively, his presence in the paint, just throwing his body around, coming down on the other end and gobbling up 13 or 14 defensive rebounds.

“I mean, 19 rebounds. How often do you see that during the regular season? Maybe 10 times. Not even that. Then you see it for 10 games [in the playoffs]. That’s what I think is misleading, because you don’t get that Shaquille for 82. But he’s able to bring you that when it matters the most.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Comeback Kids

Minnesota will try to become the eighth team to win a best-of-seven NBA playoff series after trailing three games to one. The list of seven teams that rallied from 3-1 deficits:

*--* Year Team Opponent Round 1968 Boston Philadelphia Eastern Division finals 1970 Lakers Phoenix Western Division semifinals 1979 Washington San Antonio Eastern Conference finals 1981 Boston Philadelphia Eastern Conference finals 1995 Houston Phoenix Western Conference semifinals 1997 Miami New York Eastern Conference semifinals 2003 Detroit Orlando First round

*--*