Whoever the GM Is, He’ll Have His Work Cut Out

Chucky Atkins deferred on the topic, instructing a reporter to ask Kobe Bryant because “he’s the GM of this team,” but other Lakers offered thoughts on what has gone wrong and how to fix it in the long run.

The Lakers, losers of eight consecutive games and fading fast in the Western Conference playoff picture, will face several off-season decisions, among them whether to keep most of the roster in place or undergo massive personnel shifts as they did last off-season.

The Lakers traded Shaquille O’Neal, Gary Payton and Rick Fox, and lost Derek Fisher to free agency and Karl Malone to retirement, carving a path to a current 15-man roster that has 10 new players.

Currently 10th in the Western Conference standings, the Lakers are looking at a draft pick probably toward the middle of the first round.

Beyond that, they can choose to pursue one or two players via trades or free agency, or they can start anew, aiming for a roster overhaul with a series of trades. Their activity in this summer’s free-agent market probably will be minimal: The Lakers have little salary-cap relief until after the 2006-07 season, when Brian Grant’s contract expires.

“Do you try to keep most of the guys and get a few different pieces or do you revamp again?” forward Devean George said. “I’m not sure if they’d want to do that all over again.”

George, one of only two Lakers left from the three-championship run that began in 2000, said team chemistry has been “real rough” because of the new faces and a midseason change of coaches and offensive philosophy.

George sat out the first 66 games of the season because of complications from off-season ankle surgery and acknowledged that cohesion was even worse on the court than it appeared to be from the bench.

“That’s been our strength in the past,” he said. “We all knew what everybody was capable of doing. We all knew each other’s flaws, and we’d cover for them. We all knew Rob [Horry] couldn’t slide, so I’d help [defensively]. Or that Kobe [Bryant] is going to shoot now. Or Kobe gets the ball, he looks to shoot it here. We knew all that. These [newer] guys didn’t.”

Forward Lamar Odom says the next step to improving, if familiarity is the key, is “getting together” more often during the off-season.

“We’ll have a long off-season, so we’ll have time,” he said. “We just didn’t reach our fullest potential as a team, point blank.”

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Odom practiced Saturday but was not cleared by medical staffers to play Sunday against Philadelphia. He has sat out four games since sustaining a slight tear and bruised rotator cuff in his left shoulder.... Odom said the Laker season has been a less painful experience than the United States’ failure to win a gold medal last summer in Athens. “It’s once in a lifetime,” he said of the Olympics. “I’ll get another shot at this.”