Lakers Can’t Crash Party at Shaq’s Pad

If it isn’t already obvious that Shaquille O’Neal has taken over his new city, it becomes so the moment a visitor arrives at American Airlines Arena, where a five-story banner on the front facade shows a smiling O’Neal under the inscription, “Daddy’s Home.”

The Lakers didn’t do much to dispute its validity, losing a third consecutive road game and falling further back in the playoff chase after a 102-89 loss to the Miami Heat in front of 20,272 on Thursday.

Kobe Bryant had 26 points on eight-for-23 shooting, Chucky Atkins had 23 points and Lamar Odom had 11 points, none in the second half.

Heat guard Dwyane Wade had 27 points and O’Neal had 25 points, four fewer points in 61 fewer minutes than the combined totals of the three players the Lakers acquired for him.

Bryant, after scoring 21 points in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s victory over the Charlotte Bobcats, has made three of 29 shots in the second half of the last three games, all losses. He has a combined six points in the fourth quarters of those games.

Bryant said the severely sprained right ankle that kept him out of 14 games has been aggravated, but he downplayed its effect on him in the late stages of games. He said he simply needed to get better position in the post and adjust to an increase in double teams occurring further out on the perimeter.

But as Bryant goes, so go the Lakers.

“Somebody’s got to step up in that case,” Coach Frank Hamblen said. “I don’t know who.”

O’Neal’s presence seemed to be everywhere in the arena, even in a storage closet in the Laker locker room, where an O’Neal poster was plastered on the wall and a T-shirt hung from a hook with the slogan “Heat: Now Diesel Powered.” The closet door just happened to be open as the Lakers went in and out for pregame warm-ups.

Closer to tip-off, there was something new in the third halfcourt meeting between Bryant and O’Neal as ex-teammates.

When the teams met in December, O’Neal and Bryant had a brief half-hearted hug before the game. At last month’s All-Star game, they ignored each other.

Thursday, there was a whiff and a miss.

Bryant and O’Neal nodded in each other’s direction and O’Neal stuck out his fist a second or two later, but Bryant didn’t see it. As O’Neal withdraw the offer, Bryant noticed it at the last second and tapped at the space O’Neal’s fist had occupied.

Since the Lakers became O’Neal’s former team last July, O’Neal and Bryant have only had one conversation, that at the All-Star game -- “Just, ‘What’s up?’ ” Bryant said Thursday -- but Bryant said the media was off base in analyzing their relationship.

“I think you guys worry about it more so than we do,” he said. “We connected, or whatever [before the game]. It ain’t no big deal to us. To you guys, we’re supposed to have a rift. But he and I, we know what’s up.”

O’Neal, other than calling the Lakers a so-so team, was relatively quiet afterward.

“My guys did a beautiful job of not letting anything enter into the locker room that’s going to break their focus,” O’Neal said. “Dwyane had a phenomenal game and we played good team ball. That’s what it’s about.”

Adding more pressure to a rapidly decelerating playoff push, minority team owner Magic Johnson reiterated comments that the Lakers have an impossible road to a playoff spot “unless they run off 10 or 15 in a row.”

“I don’t agree with that,” Bryant said. “I think we can make it. I think we’re at our best when the odds are completely against us. In this case, it seems to be.”

The Lakers let Heat guard Keyon Dooling score a season-high 17 points in the same way they allowed the New York Knicks’ Tim Thomas and Charlotte’s Emeka Okafor to blister them with season-bests in recent weeks.

“Every night we pick out somebody to give either their career- or season-high,” Hamblen said. “We have a very generous organization.”

The Lakers trailed after the third quarter, 69-67, but Bryant missed five of six shots in the fourth, his only make coming on a three-point attempt with 1:38 left to play. Miami, on its way to its 11th win in row, led before that shot, 97-81.

At 32-32, the Lakers trail Denver by 1 1/2 games for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference.