Third Time Not a Charm

And on their eighth try, the Lakers still couldn’t create a three-game winning streak.

The 36th game of the Laker season came and went, another loss after two consecutive victories, a pattern becoming all too familiar to Laker followers.

The Lakers weren’t as bad as in their loss to Utah in November, when they set three team records for offensive futility, but they fell nonetheless, 102-94, in front of 18,111 Monday at Staples Center.

The Lakers also didn’t fare well off the court: Kobe Bryant, who was reevaluated Monday, will be out a minimum of two more weeks, sitting out at least six more games because of a severely sprained ankle, Laker officials said Monday.

“We were hoping for better, but that’s the way it is in this league,” Coach Rudy Tomjanovich said.

As Bryant watched from the locker room, the Lakers failed to follow up two consecutive victories with a third for an eighth time this season.

Lamar Odom had 10 points on three-for-11 shooting. Caron Butler had 26 points and Chucky Atkins had 18, but they were not enough to avoid a seventh home loss, as many as the Lakers had all last season at home.

It wasn’t the strongest of ways for the Lakers to begin a stretch of nine consecutive games at Staples Center.

“That’s life in the big city,” Tomjanovich said. “It’s going to be a battle.”

Had the Lakers managed to win, it wouldn’t have been tantamount to an undefeated run through the Texas Triangle. What the Lakers had accrued was a home victory over Cleveland and a victory at Golden State, which also played without its leading scorer, Jason Richardson. On Monday, they faced a team that had lost 20 of 25 games without All-Star forward Andrei Kirilenko.

“We’ve got to bust that bubble, get over that two in a row, [a] Texas two-step or whatever it is,” Tomjanovich said beforehand.

It didn’t happen.

The Lakers made eight of 28 three-point attempts. Atkins, dubbed “Mr. Pressure” by Tomjanovich after Saturday’s victory at Golden State, missed all five of his shots from beyond the arc in the fourth quarter. The Lakers were outscored in the fourth quarter, 34-25.

“If we would have won four in a row, I would have been disappointed to lose this game,” Tomjanovich said. “We’ve got some tough teams coming up too.”

The Lakers set three team records in a 104-78 loss to the Jazz in November, shooting 29.4% that night with only seven assists and 20 made field goals.

The Jazz had Kirilenko that night, and the Lakers had Bryant. Kirilenko, wearing a bulky brace on his right knee, came out for pregame warmups but did not play.

Bryant isn’t even that far in his progress.

He was taken from the car in which he arrived -- he didn’t drive -- to the locker room via golf cart three hours before tipoff. From there, he underwent treatment in the trainers’ room before and after the game, keeping a close eye on his teammates in between.

“I’m happy that the CT scan today was negative,” Bryant said. “It scared me. I’ve never felt this much pain before. It worried me. But I’m relieved about the results.”

What he saw was a Laker team that had its chances but couldn’t convert them, instead allowing Jazz reserve guards Raja Bell and Raul Lopez to make three-pointers in the last 1:35 to keep enough of a cushion down the stretch.

Bell had 14 of his 16 points in the fourth quarter.

“Fourth quarter, where you’re not supposed to have breakdowns, that’s where we had breakdowns,” Odom said.

The Lakers missed their first nine three-point attempts but made six of their next 10 and trailed at halftime, 46-45.

Butler had 11 points in the third quarter, including a three-point play on an assist from center Chris Mihm with 1:29 left. “I thought we executed pretty well, got good shots, just didn’t knock down the big one,” Tomjanovich said.