Lakers Can Lose Three

The Lakers have yet to win three consecutive games, a well-chronicled theme in a season of inconsistency, but they had also not lost three consecutive games, as their coach was fond of pointing out whenever the pessimistic questions came.

Then came Friday, bringing with it a host of problems and pitfalls for the Lakers, who lost to the severely undermanned New Jersey Nets and put together their first three-game streak of the season, the type that doesn’t lead to postgame smiles in the locker room.

The Nets suited up only eight players, but one of them was Vince Carter, who had 30 points and helped create the most unpleasant loss of the Laker season to date, 109-103, in front of 18,997 at Staples Center.

Caron Butler had a season-high 31 points, Chucky Atkins had 22, and Lamar Odom had 16 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists, close to a triple-double.

But the Lakers were left with a less-enticing triple of sorts as the losses start to collect without Kobe Bryant. Seattle was the better team Tuesday, the Clippers said they were the better team and backed it up Wednesday, and the Nets, despite coming in with a 16-26 record, had the better side of the scoreboard Friday.

On the day the Lakers hit the halfway point of their season, a sobering distinction, perhaps only temporary, surfaced after their loss: At 22-19, they are now ninth in the Western Conference, half a game behind the Memphis Grizzlies and the Houston Rockets for the final playoff spot.

There was little defense in allowing the league’s second-worst shooting team to make 43 of 81 shots, a solid 51.3%.

“We lost the game because we are not committing ourselves to team defense,” Odom said. “You cannot let a team that is struggling score 109 points.”

The Nets and Lakers met less than three years ago in the NBA Finals, but Friday, they were simply trying to make ends meet.

The Nets, near the end of a five-game trip, suited up only eight players because of injuries, getting 15 points and 11 assists from Jason Kidd, while the Lakers continued to plod through life without Bryant.

The Lakers are now 3-4 in games Bryant has missed, having erased what started out as an intriguing 3-1 record without the league’s second-leading scorer.

“How are we not going to miss a guy who is one of the best players in the league?” Coach Rudy Tomjanovich said.

The Lakers weren’t particularly efficient in anything. Of their starters, only Chris Mihm (six for 12) made half his shots. There were only 22 assists, seven fewer than the Nets, and 18 turnovers, twice as many as the Nets.

The biggest crowd buzz of the night came not on a three-pointer by Atkins or a dunk by Butler, but on Carter’s spinning finger roll that provided a 77-75 Net lead with 1:20 left in the third quarter. The play was deemed good enough to be shown twice on the scoreboard before the fourth quarter.

If karma makes appearances in final quarters, there were indicators of a Net victory. A few minutes into the fourth quarter, Jacque Vaughn’s shot from the corner hit the back of the rim, bounced up, hit the top of the backboard and fell back through the rim for a three-pointer.

From there, the Nets continued to hit from near and far, overturning a 93-92 deficit with a quick 8-0 run.

“It’s bad,” Tomjanovich said. “We tried zone. We tried different things.”

The Lakers managed to fix their rebounding problems, taking 23 offensive rebounds to only four for the Nets, but there were few highlights beyond that.

“It hurts,” Tomjanovich said. “We were pounding the boards. We missed a lot of layups, man. We missed a lot of layups.”

The Lakers trailed at halftime, 48-44, in part because they made only 16 of 47 shots, an effort that even had the ever-optimistic Tomjanovich shaking his head as the teams left the court.