He Can’t Keep His Nose Out of Lakers’ Problems

It was only a matter of time before I got to the Zen Disaster, instilling in Phil Jackson Page 2 techniques for motivation, Jackson talking to reporters recently about his team and saying, “They stink.”

Let’s be serious, there really can’t be any other explanation about how the Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons on Saturday night in Staples Center, the surprise now is why it took Jackson so long to embrace the Page 2 method of spurring our local heroes on to better results.

When I asked him about it before the game, he said he had just decided to get tougher with his players, and while he never mentioned our recent series of pregame chats designed to toughen him up, he said that he’s no longer interested in “protecting [his players] from their own insecurities” with the media.

“Fresh meat for Page 2,” I said, and if all it takes to get a big-time effort from the Lakers is to tell them they stink, I can hold off writing about hockey and horse racing for a while.

It’s not like it’s a secret that Smush Parker stinks. Sasha Vujacic might stink if he was still playing college basketball. Lamar Odom stinks sometimes, and that stinks. Kwame Brown stinks all the time. And just in case Devean George hasn’t been paying attention the last six years, I personally went to him before the game with the Pistons, and told him he stinks.

He disagreed, and I think that stinks.

“You take [my performance] as being inconsistent, I take it as basketball,” George said. “A lot of people measure whether you’re playing good or not based on how many shots you make.”

Even his explanations stink. I’ve maintained for some time now that a player with George’s potential should have nailed down a starting position -- giving the Lakers a consistent second- or third-scoring threat to go with Bryant.

Even more so this season, the one in which the Lakers have been desperate to find someone to ease the dependency on Bryant, George has managed only to entrench himself as an inconsistent sub.

“I’m not going to play how you think I should,” he said, and then he went out and played like I think he should, scoring a pair of baskets sandwiched around a steal in the fourth quarter to pull the Lakers away from the Pistons.

But you know what’s going to happen now. Everyone is going to praise the Lakers for beating Detroit, going overboard and probably gushing about the play of Odom & Co., and here we’ve got San Antonio coming to town Monday.

Someone has to keep telling our guys they stink, or they won’t have a chance.

All I can promise is that I’ll do my best.

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I PUT in a call to Tom Lasorda in his Tokyo hotel room to talk about the World Baseball Classic. Lasorda answered the phone and said, “Mushi mushi.”

The Internet says “mushi mushi” in Japanese means “insect, insect,” while “moshi moshi” is the customary telephone greeting in Japan.

Now I think I know why attendance was so disappointing in Japan for the first four games of the World Baseball Classic, drawing an average of 14,008 fans -- what with the guy hyping the tournament calling everyone there an insect.

It’s tough to match Lasorda’s work ethic or his gift of blarney, of course, and the former Dodger manager has been on a crusade to drum up interest in this 16-team international tournament, while being sabotaged daily with announcements of well-known players pulling out of the event.

“Let ‘em go,” Lasorda said. “They’re all concerned about themselves. I have no respect for those people.”

The natural assumption is that Lasorda is getting paid to travel all over the world to talk up the World Baseball Classic, and he is, he said -- $15,000, which he already has donated to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“I’m doing this because the commissioner asked me to do it; they even named me the ambassador for the Classic,” Lasorda said, “and I’d appreciate it if you would address me as Mr. Ambassador.”

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WHEN IT came time to select someone to throw out the first pitch to kick off the Classic in Japan, the call went to an old left-hander with an 0-4 career pitching mark in the major leagues -- Lasorda’s toss falling short and wide of home plate, bringing back memories of Darren Dreifort.

“Go ahead, make fun of a cripple,” said Lasorda, who is going to be inducted into the Canadian Hall of Fame and I had no idea he played hockey. “I fell in New York and my shoulder is killing me. You know I can throw better than that.”

From my experience, that’s what all Dodger pitchers tell me at one time or another, so we moved on to the Classic, which appears to be nothing more than glorified exhibition baseball -- games called if tied after 14 innings and pitchers limited to the number of pitches thrown.

“This is not exhibition play; this is the chance to represent your country at the highest degree,” Lasorda said.

“You were born in the greatest country in the world and you could show all Americans the goodness that is really in your heart writing nice things about the Classic. That would be a smash column.”

I told him to call Plaschke.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Ron Cooper:

“It will be interesting to see how often you bash Randy Harvey, your new boss, come April when he starts. My guess is zero, nada, none.”

Harvey went to the University of Texas, and what a coincidence, I’ve always liked the Longhorns.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.