Rematch Not on Laker Radar Yet

The Lakers realize their upcoming six-game trip won’t be quick or easy -- “My wife reminds me about it every day,” Coach Frank Hamblen said -- but they haven’t looked far enough down the road at the fifth game on the trip.

The Lakers play the Miami Heat on March 17, a rematch of a Dec. 25 game the Heat won in overtime.

“We know that that’s toward the end of the trip,” Hamblen said. “We have a lot of games to play before that. It hasn’t been dealt with yet.”

Hamblen, an assistant the last time the teams played, was asked what it would be like to try to stop Shaquille O’Neal.

“It’s no fun playing against Shaq,” Hamblen said. “He’s one of those guys that makes guys better because of his presence in the post.”

The Lakers play at Dallas, Charlotte, Washington and Philadelphia before getting to Miami.

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If Mike Dunleavy’s angry diatribe after Monday night’s loss to the Memphis Grizzlies was directed at any one player or group of players in particular, the Clipper coach wasn’t about to let on Tuesday.

“I’m never going to tell you names or numbers,” he said.

And if defensive lapses by Corey Maggette triggered the coach’s ire, Maggette said he was unaware of it. After scoring 37 points, Maggette exited the locker room without meeting with reporters.

“I was just upset about the game,” Maggette said before Tuesday night’s game against the Lakers. “It wasn’t directed at me; it was directed to the team. Coach is not the type of person to single people out.

“That was a tough game, and a majority of time when you have a tough loss like that, most times people don’t want to talk to the press, so you just leave. You’re going to catch us eventually, like you just did.”

Dunleavy said the Clippers were positioned “to go places over the next couple years,” and suggested that anyone not shaping up would be shipped out.

“It’s tough, but we’re still hanging in there,” Maggette said. “Right now, this is an opportunity for us to continue to work hard and get better, preparing for next year. Unless we win 20 in a row, the playoffs are a longshot for us. I think the biggest thing now is just improve as a team and improve on our record from last year.

“We’ve got a bright future here. There’s a lot of guys here that can help us and help this program out.... It’s been tough for us [because of injuries], but we don’t want to make that excuse for our play. Regardless of who we had, we should have won a lot of these games.”

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Marko Jaric, sidelined since Feb. 11 because of a stress fracture in his right foot, said he hoped to return Sunday against the Chicago Bulls.... Hamblen said the last time he and former coach Rudy Tomjanovich tried to contact each other was last month when the Lakers were playing in Cleveland.