Experience Says the Answer Is at End of the Road

Well, I can’t say there’s no way the Lakers win Game 7 in Phoenix. Not after I spent all day Thursday saying there’s no way there will be a Game 7 in Phoenix.

If the Suns could overcome the daunting tasks of playing without starting guard Raja Bell and having Dick Bavetta officiate a game in which the NBA would benefit from the home team’s winning, then the Lakers have a chance to beat the overwhelming odds that favor home teams in Game 7.

A chance. Not a big chance, but a chance.

“It could happen,” Lamar Odom said. “Sports ... anything can happen.”

Start with the one thing the Lakers have in their favor: the best playoff road performer of this era.

“Whatever the game demands, Kobe’s going to rise to the occasion,” Phil Jackson said.

Combine that with the knowledge that the Lakers played well enough to win in two of the previous three games at US Airways Center, and there’s the wick and wax for the candle of hope burning in Laker Land.

Even though those are only two things going for them, it’s more than what’s going against them. But that one is a biggie: their inexperience.

As I looked around the Laker locker room before Game 6, I noticed that the nameplates of Kobe Bryant and Devean George stood out from the rest of their teammates.

“Bryant” and “George” are written in longer, narrower letters, in the font that was used when the Lakers first moved to Staples Center. This isn’t a critique of the interior design but an observation of how few of the players on this team have been through the playoff battles that defined the Lakers in the first half of the decade.

It’s the first playoff series for Smush Parker and Sasha Vujacic. It might as well be the first for Kwame Brown, who got the boot from the Washington Wizards midway through the opening round last year.

Want to know something the last seven visiting Game 7 winners had in common? Each team had advanced to at least the conference finals the previous year. Three teams were defending NBA champions. What location is to real estate, experience is to a Game 7.

It’s the Lakers’ biggest weakness, something Bryant and Jackson kept referring to Friday as they went over the mistakes of that devastating Game 6 loss.

One of the ways that experience shows is in consistency. The Lakers have not been able to sustain the patience on offense and the pressure on defense that allowed them to win three of the first four games in the series. And like an unhappy 3-year-old, they went back to clinging to their security blanket: Bryant.

Bryant’s taking 35 shots wasn’t the problem in Game 6, especially when he made 20 of them.

Bryant did try to give his teammates a crack at it. But Brown kept bobbling the ball and the Suns forced Luke Walton away from his preferred baseline spot, making him shoot in the middle of the clogged lane. The Lakers were slow and sloppy in getting into their offense, which kept Lamar Odom from setting up in the low post.

Oh, and Smush Parker didn’t want to shoot. Parker’s inaccuracy -- he’s three for 20 on three-pointers in the series -- and his growing reluctance to put up shots have reached the point that when Jackson was asked if he can continue to play Parker with this type of performance, Jackson said: “No. I can’t.”

Each of the other guys on the floor had his chance and didn’t deliver.

Besides, they were getting into that time of the game when what I call the Shoe Rule applies: If there’s a guy on the team who has his own signature shoe or has appeared in a shoe commercial, he gets to take the big shots. This is in effect for players such as Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Paul Pierce, Vince Carter, Allen Iverson, Baron Davis and Kevin Garnett.

Would you rather have anyone else on their teams with the ball in their hands in crunch time? Nope. No shoe commercial, no shot. (The most significant waiver of this rule: If you played on the 1994-95 Houston Rockets, you can shoot. Sam Cassell and Robert Horry, go right ahead.)

The challenge is to keep the game close enough for Sir Shoe (Bryant) to win it.

That will require some inner calm when an entire building is rooting against you. Jackson referred to that as “ambient surroundings,” which sounds more like a day spa than a hostile NBA arena.

The way to persevere, Jackson said, is “trust yourselves, trust your teammates.”

That includes Bryant, who can’t use the Return of Raja as an excuse to try to win the game by himself. But they must believe in themselves enough not to dump the ball to Bryant with the shot clock winding down, which happened several times Thursday night.

Bryant has won both Game 7s in which he played. In his first crack at it, against Portland in the 2000 Western Conference finals, he merely led the Lakers in every major statistical category.

He remembers “the emotion behind it.” “Every rebound, every loose ball, you go after everything full-bore,” he said, “even more so than usual.”

The great thing about playoff series, and Game 7s in particular, is they reveal the truth. We thought we knew the way this matchup was going, then it switched and switched again. After tonight, we will know.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read more by Adande go to latimes.com/adandeblog.