Piston Win Has an Air of Finality

Who said things have changed in Lakerland?

The last time the Laker bus pulled out of the Palace of Auburn Hills, the team had been run over in the NBA Finals, making official the end of a dynasty with a one-sided loss to the Detroit Pistons in Game 5.

The curtain closed, a new cast was assembled, and the results were about the same Thursday.

Confetti fell again from the ceiling after the Lakers were drubbed by the Detroit Pistons, 103-81, in front of 22,076 at the Palace.

Chauncey Billups was hitting three-point shots, Ben Wallace was beating everybody for rebounds, and it was hard not to reflect back to June, when the Lakers were able to take only one of five against the Pistons.

Only this time, the Palace had emptied well before the final seconds.

Lamar Odom had 17 points, Caron Butler had 12 and no other Laker had more than nine, making the scramble to the parking lot one of the more important moments of the second half.

There were problems from the start for the Lakers.

They tried their version of the triangle offense. Didn’t work.

They tried pick-and-rolls and were picked apart.

And, no real surprise, they faced a double-digit deficit for a fifth consecutive game after falling behind, 18-2, with the game barely four minutes old.

“One thing that we have to figure out as a team is, how are we going to start games?” Coach Frank Hamblen said. “Of the four games we’ve played on this trip, three of them have not started correctly. That is something as a team, a staff and an organization we have to figure out.”

The only Lakers from last season who played Thursday were Luke Walton, Brian Cook and Slava Medvedenko, but the animosity was still evident from Piston fans, who booed Kobe Bryant lustily every time the scoreboard showed him sitting on the Laker bench in a jacket and jeans. Bryant, out since Jan. 13 because of a severe ankle sprain, acknowledged one of the early boo sessions with a smile.

The Lakers fell to 6-8 in his absence.

Nothing worked with any consistency, not even a timeout tirade from Hamblen early in the second quarter.

“I didn’t come all the way out here to get embarrassed,” he yelled, looking from player to player. The Lakers trailed at the time, 34-14, then gave up the next six points.

Tayshaun Prince had 25 points, Rasheed Wallace had 23 and Billups had 15 points to go with a pointed observation when asked if the game reminded him of the Finals.

“It did because of the way the game went, with us being up so much,” he said.

Ben Wallace had 15 rebounds, eight on offense.

“I remember the last time we played them he was at a different speed than everybody and it seemed tonight that he got back to that mind-set,” Piston Coach Larry Brown said.

The Pistons handled the Lakers in rebounds, 55-39, and assists, 30-20. The Lakers made three of 16 three-point attempts.

The Lakers trailed, 69-42, after Prince converted an alley-oop dunk from Billups with 6:07 left in the third quarter.

The Lakers were playing their fourth game in five nights, and they have one game left -- Cleveland on Sunday -- before the end of a five-game trip that hasn’t gone as planned.

“You definitely understand why a loss like this happens,” Butler said. “I think that the one key was hustle. They were rested up and we were running low, they had the advantage and they took it.”

Since the Lakers departed Saturday, there has been a close loss to Houston, a loss to Atlanta in which they trailed by 29, an overtime victory against New Jersey and Thursday’s no-contest against the Pistons.

Hamblen said the Lakers were a team “fighting for its life to make the playoffs,” but confusion has led to a stagnant offense as the Lakers move from Rudy Tomjanovich’s three-point-oriented scheme to more triangle-type sets.

“We came out of the huddle, two guys are doing one thing, three guys are doing another,” Hamblen said. “You know they’re not there as a group.”