Latest Loss Is a Trail of Two Cities

The Lakers, or whatever might be left of them, chose another city for another bad night, continuing to connect the dots across the country on a road trip going terribly awry.

With Lamar Odom and Chris Mihm watching in street clothes from the end of the bench, the Lakers were drubbed, 106-90, by the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets, who vaulted over them into seventh place in the Western Conference. The Lakers are a game ahead of Utah for eighth.

There were shades of last season, with the Lakers taking 35 three-pointers, one shy of the team record set Dec. 25, 2004 against Miami, and making 13. There were also shades of this season, the Lakers trailing all the way for a second consecutive game, failing to take a lead a day after letting Charlotte go wire-to-wire for the first time in the Bobcats’ two-year existence.

Kobe Bryant called for help beforehand, saying some of his teammates needed to “step in and step it up.” Only a few were willing to oblige Saturday at Ford Center.

Devean George had 21 points and Brian Cook had 13, but no other Laker had more than seven. Smush Parker had five points on two-for-eight shooting in 39 minutes. Kwame Brown had seven points in 32 minutes.

Bryant was harassed again by double-teams near midcourt and had 35 points on 13-for-26 shooting. He had five assists but seven turnovers as the Lakers fell to 1-4 on a seven-game trip, their longest of the season.

Bryant used a few profane words when asked about the team’s mood.

“I’m giving you all the curse words,” he said, before selecting more printable ones. “Crabby. Not good.”

As they did in Indiana and again in Charlotte, the Lakers missed numerous open shots.

A typical sequence, seen over and over in the last few days: Bryant, trapped just inside the midcourt stripe or double-teamed above the three-point line, gives up the ball to Teammate A or Teammate B for an open shot. Teammate A or Teammate B misses.

“We had some looks and we took them, the majority of which didn’t fall,” Bryant said.

The Lakers, who started Cook and Sasha Vujacic in the absence of Mihm and Odom, looked like the three-for-all team of last season, making eight of 17 three-point attempts in the first half, a respectable number of makes but an uncomfortable number of takes in Phil Jackson’s mind.

Then came the second half, during which they made only five of 18 from behind the arc.

“We shot them well enough the first half, but you know that’s not going to last forever,” Jackson said.

There was a list of errors, a host of other concerns.

The Lakers were slapped with a technical foul for six players on the court when Andrew Bynum failed to leave after Brown checked in for him.

The Hornets, known more for their slippery-quick backcourt, outscored the Lakers in the paint, 50-18.

Bryant had a rare three offensive fouls -- “silly calls, just silly,” he said -- and was hit with a technical for arguing one of them.

Mihm, who has a sprained right shoulder, and Odom, who has torn cartilage in his rib cage, might not be back in time for Tuesday’s game in Dallas.

Parker also was nicked up, taking a charge from Chris Paul and needing six stitches on the inside of his lip after getting rapped in the mouth by the Hornet guard’s head.

And on and on and on ...

Not that it mattered to the crowd, which exhibited the kind of energy more typically found at a highly charged college game. Fans stood until the first Hornet basket was made (that took all of 23 seconds), stayed until the game’s final seconds, and in between offered rousing cheers for Oklahoma quarterback Rhett Bomar and former Sooner football coach Barry Switzer.

The Lakers were left with little to do but amble onto the charter jet and head one more state south, where the Mavericks and their 11-game winning streak await them.

“We don’t have much of a choice,” Bryant said. “We’ve got to get our you-know-what together and get ready to play against Dallas.”