Achieving Owner’s Hopes Will Take Work

Jerry Buss has spoken, expressing confidence in a Laker playoff appearance this season.

His employees are listening.

“When the boss speaks, that’s the goal,” Kobe Bryant said. “It’s kind of like you’ve got to hit your mark. We as players, what we have to do is focus on the daily process, come to work every day and focus on our execution. I think those results will come, whether it’s making the playoffs, whether it’s exceeding everyone’s expectations, who knows?”

Phil Jackson, brought in to tidy up after last season’s 34-48 effort, feigned surprise.

“He said that?” Jackson said. “Wow, we hadn’t talked about that.”

Then, on a more serious note ...

“We hope we do,” Jackson said. “We have to be a pretty solid team. This is really a tough conference for us to jump up from where we were this last year to replace some teams and to move into that playoff group.

“We have to solidify defense, and that’s probably our No. 1 order. And we have to play offense with the idea that we’re going to get some points off our defense.”

Forward Kwame Brown, mentioned by Buss as a key to the season, didn’t disagree with his new boss’ postseason expectations.

“We have the talent,” Brown said. “We just have to come out and all that. Everybody’s questioning our depth, but if we can come out with the first unit and keep a presence throughout the whole game and don’t be in foul trouble, I think we’ll be a pretty good team.”

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After further review, it wasn’t an entirely seamless transition for Jackson and the Lakers.

Jackson said he didn’t think the Lakers had a chance at signing Yao Ming or Amare Stoudemire in two years, contrary to a belief in the Laker front office that led to relatively short two-year offers to free agents Antonio Daniels and Derek Anderson, neither of whom joined the team.

Yao and Stoudemire recently signed maximum-dollar contracts to stay with their teams.

“There were a couple of ideas that the club had that I disagreed with, and that’s gone by,” Jackson said. “Ideas that there would be players that would be centers in this league that may not want to sign long-term contracts with their ballclubs and then eventually be free agents in a couple years did put some restrictions on the direction we were going. But those are really good shots to take. I was in agreement with them, even though I didn’t believe those things would happen.”

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Jackson, coaching his first game at Staples Center since June 2004, stiff-armed sentimentality as he met with the media 90 minutes before tip-off of an exhibition Thursday against the Denver Nuggets.

“It’s nice to be back in this gray, dingy hallway,” he said outside the Laker locker room.

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The Lakers, fourth-worst in the league in points given up last season, were poor defensively in their 105-94 exhibition loss to the Nuggets. Denver had 89 points at the end of the third quarter. Bryant had 15 points on six-for-16 shooting, and Brown had 16 points on seven-for-eight shooting.... George Karl did not coach the Nuggets because he wanted assistant Scott Brooks to get experience. Brooks, a former standout guard at UC Irvine, will coach the first three regular-season games while Karl serves a suspension for attending a pre-draft workout in Milwaukee that was prohibited by league rules.