Lakers have an awful lot of baggage

Phil Jackson warned the Lakers about this.

“Don’t pack yourself along with your bags,” he said before their game Friday night against the lightly regarded Charlotte Bobcats.

It was the final test in a six-game trip, a chance to have a highly successful venture away from Staples Center instead of just a pleasant time away from home, but it ended three overtimes later, and not the way the Lakers would have planned it.

They led by 14 in the first quarter and then it happened, a defensive collapse that included a 42-point second quarter for one of the league’s puniest offenses, a host of problems for the Lakers’ screen-and-roll coverage late in the game and a return to a fretting and fumbling Kwame Brown in the post.

Not surprisingly, the Lakers lost, all of the above listed as contributing factors in their 133-124 demise Friday against the Bobcats in front of 19,561, the largest crowd in the two-year history of Bobcats Arena.

Kobe Bryant scored 58 points on 22-for-45 shooting, the second-most shots he had ever taken, one shy of the 46 he took while scoring 81 points last season against Toronto. It was the third-most points he had ever scored, but it wasn’t nearly as memorable as victories over Toronto and Dallas (62 points) last season.

Bryant started off well enough, making 16 of his first 27 shots, but foundered from there as fatigue set in midway through the fourth quarter.

There were other issues, including those with Brown, who had three turnovers in the third overtime: He dropped a pass in the post from Bryant that could have been an easy two, was later hit with an offensive foul and then fumbled another pass down low, this one from Luke Walton.

“We’re going to feed him Butterfingers on the flight home just so he can feel the effects of it,” Jackson said. “There was certainly some disappointment in the ability, or non-ability, of Kwame to complete plays that we thought were big plays for us. His teammates are disappointed. He just has to accept the fact that the next time he gets that chance, he doesn’t [fumble].”

Brown didn’t want to hear much about his catch-and-release problems.

“It’s sad that you’ve got to say we won or lost that game over a fumble,” said Brown, who sustained a slightly sprained right wrist when he fell to the court in the first quarter. “The second pass wasn’t even catchable.”

Then he launched into a diatribe about the Lakers’ continuing screen-and-roll issues that were thrust onto the national stage when Dwyane Wade burned them for 40 points and 11 assists on Christmas Day. They continued Friday, with the less-established Raymond Felton finding Emeka Okafor for a slew of dunks and layups.

“If you look on tape, we’re the worst screen-roll defensive team in the league,” Brown said. “No way Emeka Okafor could get three layups at the rim. We don’t even rotate. The guy’s getting layups at the rim. It’s terrible.”

But Jackson pinned most of the blame on Brown.

“Smush [Parker] is getting knocked off his man with screens and we wanted Kwame to come out hard, and Okafor was getting short one-dribble dunk situations,” Jackson said. “I know Kwame got perplexed out there with the screen-roll and how to play it. He got concerned about some of the things that were happening to him. We tried to help him through that situation.”

Before the blame game was put away, Jackson found fault with the Lakers’ offense.

Bryant took the Lakers to a 30-16 lead, when it looked as though they would finish with a 4-2 record on their trip -- without Lamar Odom, no less. But he couldn’t keep up his pace and his teammates also erred by deferring too much to him, Jackson said.

“I was yelling at them to run their offense and get away from that,” Jackson said. “They just seemed to be going back to him all the time.”

The Lakers had chances in regulation. Bryant, with Gerald Wallace guarding him, pump-faked twice and was wide left on a 26-foot three-pointer as time expired.

Felton missed two shots in the final seconds of the first overtime and a 10-footer with 2.9 seconds left that could have sealed the second overtime.

Then came the third overtime, officially making it the Lakers’ longest game since a four-overtime loss to Cleveland in 1980.

Shortly thereafter came the end of their night, and their trip.

mike.bresnahan@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Hitting the big 5-0

Kobe Bryant scored at least 50 points Friday for the 14th time in his career. His top eight scoring games:

*--* Pts. Opponent Date 81 Toronto Jan. 22, 2006 62 Dallas Dec. 20, 2005 58 CHARLOTTE DEC. 29, 2006 (3OT) 56 Memphis Jan. 14, 2002 55 Washington March 28, 2003 53 Houston Dec. 15, 2006 (2OT) 52 Utah Nov. 30, 2006 52 Houston Feb. 18, 2003

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Los Angeles Times