Denial Is Key to Laker Defense

The Lakers moved into damage-control mode Monday, with Chucky Atkins insisting he harbored no ill will toward Kobe Bryant, and Bryant insisting Atkins’ critical comments were a non-issue, and Coach Frank Hamblen musing that a little controversy hasn’t always been such a bad thing for the franchise.

As the Lakers hovered in 10th place in the Western Conference, three losses from a team-record 11th consecutive defeat, there were attempts to repair the fractures of a splintering season a day after Atkins created one of the deepest fissures yet.

Atkins, who critically referred to Bryant as the team’s general manager on Sunday, blamed the media for distorting his words and said Bryant was a friend, denying the thrust of a conversation before Sunday’s game against the Philadelphia 76ers that began with one reporter in front of Atkins’ locker and grew loud enough to draw the attention of others.

“They wrote the wrong thing and they know what’s up,” Atkins said. “Instead of the beat writers around here saying what they really want to say and write what they really think, they want to use myself and Caron Butler and Lamar Odom to be a scapegoat for what they want to say about Kobe Bryant.

“Guys have been taking shots at Kobe Bryant all year. He hasn’t broken, and he ain’t going to be broken. My teammates, they know me. If I want to say something to them, I won’t go through the media and say it. I’ll go to them as a man. I don’t hold my tongue to anybody.”

Atkins’ tirade, vulgar at times, came a day after he responded to a reporter’s question about what moves he would make during the off-season to improve the Lakers.

“I ain’t the GM of this team,” Atkins said Sunday. “Kobe’s the GM of this team. Ask Kobe. You’ve been watching this [stuff] all year. You’ve been watching it, and I’ve been playing in it.”

Atkins has become gradually more irritated because Bryant has privately criticized him for faulty defense and because of the number of shots Bryant takes in the course of a game, team sources said.

Bryant and Atkins talked briefly before Monday’s practice, as the Lakers gathered to try to halt the second-longest losing streak in the franchise’s 58-year history.

“We really didn’t have to have much of a conversation,” Bryant said. “He was pretty adamant about his feelings about what had happened, and people kind of taking it out of context or whatever. We’re just letting it be. Everybody here, we all stick together. Maybe people are trying to divide us or pull us apart. We’re not going to let that happen.”

When told that Atkins made the remarks and sounded sincere about them, Bryant said it was “something you’ve got to take up with him.”

“If you guys are here to try to create something or stir something up or come to me and try to get some type of reaction from me, you’re not going to get any,” he said. “We’re all just sticking together and just coming ready to work tomorrow. We all just want to play basketball.

“We had a great practice today. Everybody played hard, everybody competed. We all encouraged one another, we got on one another, we had a great day of work.”

Bryant also touched briefly on the perception that he has acted as the team’s general manager.

“I don’t have to say anything on that issue,” he said. “I trust [owner] Jerry Buss and [General Manager] Mitch Kupchak. I trust their track record. They’ve put together great teams in the past. All I want to do is come here and play basketball and have a good time with my teammates. That’s all I want to do.”

Kupchak, who was in Indiana to scout a high-school all-star game, declined to comment.

As if on cue, as if the season hadn’t taken enough unexpected turns, Phil Jackson was upstairs at the team’s headquarters as the Lakers denied any lingering problems.

Jackson, who said this month it was “50-50” he’d come back and coach in the NBA, was having lunch with longtime girlfriend and Laker executive vice president Jeanie Buss, which he has done a number of times since returning late last month from a six-week vacation.

Downstairs, on the practice court at Laker headquarters, Jackson’s former assistant, Hamblen, acknowledged that the mounting losses had irked the players.

“Anything that’s said in the paper nowadays is probably out of frustration,” he said. “We’ve all got to hang in here together. Everybody’s frustrated.”

Later, as questions about controversy began to wind down, Hamblen smiled slightly.

“Even when we won championships, we’ve had situations like this,” he said. “Maybe it’s a good thing.”

*

TONIGHT

vs. New York, 7:30, FSN West

Site -- Staples Center.

Radio -- 570, 1330.

Records -- Lakers 32-37; Knicks 29-40.

Record vs. Knicks -- 0-1.

Update -- Tim Thomas had 35 points, almost 23 more than his average, in the Knicks’ 117-115 overtime victory over the Lakers this month. In the final seconds, Luke Walton passed up a short jump shot and fed Kobe Bryant, who fumbled the ball and a chance at a shot that probably would not have been allowed because of time expiring.