Lakers go with no flow

The tension and frustration ended with finality, the Lakers drifting into another early off-season as their star player strongly recommended changes.

The Lakers lost to the Phoenix Suns, 119-110, in Game 5 Wednesday at US Airways Center, falling to the Suns in five games instead of the seven it took a year ago in a manner much less palatable for the visiting team, which discarded its internal strife just long enough to win one game in the series before retreating back to form.

Afterward, Kobe Bryant continued to appeal to the future, applying pressure on the Lakers’ front office, and, in a roundabout way, owner Jerry Buss.

“Do something, and do it now,” Bryant said tersely. “Personally for me, it’s beyond frustration. Three years and still being at ground zero. This summer’s a big summer. We have to see what direction we want to take this organization. Make those steps and make them now.”

The Lakers had their motivational outlets in place for this series, be it by book (“07 Seconds or Less”), movie (“Hustle & Flow”) or incendiary quotes from Suns forward Amare Stoudemire (“I think we would take care of them pretty quick”).

None of it worked. The team with the league’s second-best record proved to be too much for the team with the third-worst record since mid-January.

Lamar Odom scored a playoff career-high 33 points Wednesday, but Bryant hit a cold streak, scoring 34 points on 13-for-33 shooting. The Lakers had only seven assists, tying their all-time playoff low, set in 1959 against St. Louis.

One statistic was as good as any to tell the story of the series: Steve Nash totaled 70 assists, two fewer than the Lakers.

Stoudemire had 27 points Wednesday, Shawn Marion had 26, and the Suns play San Antonio in the Western Conference semifinals, beginning with Game 1 Sunday in Phoenix.

Luke Walton had two points and six fouls for the Lakers. Kwame Brown had four points in 21 minutes.

With losses collecting at their feet since the weeks leading up to the All-Star break, the Lakers had a trying season.

The team’s 26-13 start blew past dim prognostications by basketball pundits, but awkward, uncomfortable events began to align toward the end of the early-season surge, as if the basketball gods had handed the Lakers too many favors too soon.

Brown became talk-radio fodder after getting busted for throwing a cake at a bystander outside a Hermosa Beach nightclub. Brian Cook deposited his warmup sweats in Coach Phil Jackson’s lap while checking into a game in Detroit. Vladimir Radmanovic lied to team officials about the circumstances of his shoulder injury, confessing a few days later he was injured while snowboarding during the All-Star break.

Then came Bryant’s headline-grabbing tussle with the NBA disciplinary office after two one-game suspensions and an upgraded flagrant foul.

From there, Jackson was saddled with the first six-game losing streak of his 16-year NBA coaching career, only to experience the first seven-game losing streak of his career a few weeks later.

More recently, Jackson’s election to the Basketball Hall of Fame was tempered three days later when guard Smush Parker publicly criticized his substituting strategy.

The Lakers: United for 39 games, divided by the end of the season.

Jackson and Bryant each expressed frustration in recent days, and Jackson took another look at a puzzling season once it had ended.

“Last year, I thought we showed the ability to come through a season and finish strong,” he said. “This year, due to injuries and some things that happened to us, we didn’t finish with the kind of cohesion I like as a basketball team. I told this team we’ll make changes. Every team has to as the season goes on, and the off-season creates that. But we hope to do that in the benefit of our club.”

The Suns led at the end of the first quarter, 32-23, and extended it to 64-52 at halftime on a running jump shot by Marion at the buzzer.

The Lakers pulled within 85-83 on Brown’s layup with 1:30 left in the third quarter, but they got no closer, a once-promising season slipping away for good.

“It’s too bad we started the season with ups instead of ending with them,” Odom said. “We got beat ... and it’s time to go home.”

Times staff writer Jason Reid contributed to this report.

mike.bresnahan@latimes.com

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Phoenix rising

Phoenix has eliminated the Lakers in four of the last five meetings between the two teams in the playoffs. How the Lakers have fared against the Suns in the playoffs since 1980:

2007 -- Lost, 4-1, first round

2006 -- Lost, 4-3, first round

2000 -- Won, 4-1, conf. semifinals

1993 -- Lost, 3-2, first round

1990 -- Lost, 4-1, conf. semifinals

1989 -- Won, 4-0, conference finals

1985 -- Won, 3-0, first round

1984 -- Won, 4-2, conference finals

1982 -- Won, 4-0, conf. semifinals

1980 -- Won, 4-1, conf. Semifinals

--

Source: NBA