Lakers Familiar in One Regard

The Lakers have reacquainted themselves with conflict, a time-tested companion of a franchise that often has prospered despite it.

Only this time, there’s not a championship trying to be won.

This isn’t Shaquille O’Neal vs. Kobe Bryant, or Bryant vs. Phil Jackson, or Jerry West vs. his health, or even Magic Johnson vs. Paul Westhead, where trophies and titles and victory parades were always at stake.

The latest turmoil to spill out has more to do with the bottoming out of a franchise, where a seemingly futile pursuit of a playoff spot has led a career assistant coach to call out a former contender that has lost seven games in a row.

Time was when Bryant and O’Neal pecked at each other, and Jackson and Bryant went back and forth, and West made himself sick with anticipation over the never-ending Laker saga, but the Lakers still managed to win three consecutive championships.

Decades earlier, there were tensions between Johnson and Westhead, who was ultimately replaced by a former Laker TV color commentator named Pat Riley. The Lakers went on to win four championships under him.

Now the Lakers are on the verge of missing the playoffs for only the fifth time since the franchise began play in Minneapolis in 1947.

The assertion Thursday by Frank Hamblen, who was handed the keys to the team after Rudy Tomjanovich abruptly returned them in February, that the Lakers quit in the second half of their 117-96 loss to the Denver Nuggets was met with irritation in a locker room that didn’t want to hear such things, whether they bordered on truth.

Hamblen backed up his thoughts by referring to a specific play, an uncontested layup attempt missed by Caron Butler after a steal early in the third quarter. The other four Lakers on the court -- Bryant, Chucky Atkins, Jumaine Jones and Chris Mihm -- did not even get to half-court to trail the play, Hamblen noted.

Hamblen, who has increased his criticism of the team, and Bryant in particular, during the free-fall, would not have found many takers Thursday on his take.

Atkins proclaimed he had not given up and angrily shared his thoughts with reporters. Bryant also disagreed, acknowledging the Lakers had “hung our heads a little bit” but maintaining they had “played pretty hard.”

They were outscored in the second half of Thursday’s game, 63-47, and fell 5 1/2 games behind the eighth-place Nuggets, who played without two starters.

Laker followers who have stopped glancing at the standings would now find the Lakers in 10th in the Western Conference, barely ahead of the Clippers, who lost out in the Bryant derby last summer but saved more than $100 million on a six-year investment and are only a half-game behind the Lakers.

Even before Hamblen’s comments, there have been fits of frustration that began with a blowout loss more than two weeks ago against the Philadelphia 76ers, in which Bryant and veteran forward Brian Grant kicked chairs in disgust in the locker room.

Bitterness became a more public matter Thursday.

Grant, who has been on six playoff teams in 10 seasons before this, was surprised by Hamblen’s assessment.

“He’s the one that calls it,” Grant said. “He’s the leader. If he saw it that way, that’s how he saw it. I’m not going to sit here and say we quit because I was out there, I was a part of it, trying to run, trying to do the right things.”

The Lakers can blame any area of their game. Their defense is giving up 99.9 points a game. The triangle offense can no longer even be called a stopgap solution: They had three assists in the first half against the Nuggets.

“Bad offense, bad defense,” Atkins said. “Our spacing is so bad, we’re shooting jump shots to other teams’ layups, uncontested layups at that. That equals a losing formula.”

Even opposing coaches are weighing in.

“I just see a lot of pain in the Lakers -- their body language, their demeanor, their relations, their ability to relate,” Denver Nugget Coach George Karl said. “They have a lot of pain in their game. It’s a great tradition and [General Manager] Mitch Kupchak’s a good friend. I don’t think I feel sorry for them, but I don’t like pain. There’s basketball pain in their actions.”