He’s following up on the Lakers and Coach Phil Jackson

I’m worried about Phil Jackson, so I will be joining the Lakers for this five-game trip beginning Wednesday in San Antonio.

In the next week we will have free nights in Oklahoma City, New Orleans and Atlanta, but I’ll let Phil make the dinner arrangements.

That’s probably best, especially if he requires a high chair, like the one he sits in at courtside for every game, when he goes to a restaurant.

Anyway, there’s no question we need to talk, because it irritates him so, and I would imagine these days the Lakers are doing the same to you.

Some fans might go so far as to worry about the playoffs, or even discount the Lakers’ chances of winning another championship.

Maybe it’s because the Lakers have the talent to win 72 games, are sitting on 52 and six of those came with Kobe Bryant arranging it so he might get the last shot and be the hero — just like Phil said he used to do when he was playing in high school.

Is that what Kobe was trying to do Sunday, taking only one shot in the second half as Washington rallied?

Would Phil have put him back in the game had the Wizards made it really close?

How upset would Kobe have been if he wasn’t put back in with a chance to hit another game-winner?

Was he already upset about something, which might explain, as it has in the past, why he suddenly stopped shooting?

I wasn’t there, and watching video of the postgame interviews, I noticed the only one asking questions was John Ireland, who works for the Lakers’ radio station.

Ireland seemed to be very interested in Kobe’s second-quarter heroics, never mentioning the second-half disappearing act.

I’m sure he was just leaving that to someone who doesn’t work for a station praising the Lakers all the time. That also probably explains why it appeared no one asked the question.

Jackson was quoted in the newspaper saying, “…We just didn’t play with a full functioning group of guys. Kobe took one shot. Made his shot [and] that was it. So we weren’t going to come out there and play with the kind of intensity you have to play with.”

But what does that mean?

Was he criticizing Kobe for taking only one shot, making it and then not playing with the kind of intensity “you have to play with?”

Where was the follow-up question?

Believe me, I understand how upset Phil can get when asked a question he doesn’t like. I mentioned tacos a year ago and he bristled and huffed about how they weren’t important.

And yet you had Lakers fans standing in front of their $2,500 or so courtside seats, chanting “we want tacos,” and Utah scoring a basket to keep everyone in the place from getting a pair of 99-cent tacos.

How do you not ask the coach about such a letdown?

When I mentioned the tacos later, Jackson said, “I’ve never considered that even as an option. If I’m not mistaken, it’s when we score 120 points — we get tacos.”

I guess Phil and Jeanie do not discuss marketing strategy in their time together, everyone winning tacos when the Lakers keep the opposition from scoring 100 points and win.

I thought I set him straight last season, but after the game with Washington, as reported by Times’ Lakers blogger Mark Medina, Jackson said of fans, “They didn’t get their tacos tonight. That’s something that concerns us.”

Talk about everyone being off their game, including the head coach — the Lakers won, only 99-92, but Lakers fans got their tacos.

Shouldn’t Phil be concerned with the play of Derek Fisher? Let me write that down, that might be a good question to ask when we get together this week.

The Lakers won, all right, but beat Washington without much conviction, and then Phil told the media, “I think they just play at a level they can extend energy at the necessity point.”

Did anyone ask him if he had just woken up?

They pay this guy $12 million a year to notice something everyone else has known about this team since a loss to Dallas in the second game of the season at home?

The Lakers are on a winning streak, and yet it feels funky. As we’ve learned, this is a Lakers team that doesn’t always show up in the regular season — taking its lead from Jackson.

Remember the talk before the season began, Phil returning but maybe not to coach all 82 games, Kurt Rambis taking over the team on selected trips.

Mitch Kupchak quickly nixed that cakewalk.

But let’s face it, Phil is jaded, if not bored by the regular season. He’s the one who always says he has no interest in driving his team to 72 wins.

He said it’s all about the playoffs, and he knew before the season began, the Lakers were going to be in the playoffs.

There comes a time, though, and Phil does this every year, when he talks about putting a run together to end the season.

He said he expects the Lakers to go 5-0 on this trip because that’s what a championship team should expect.

And Page 2 will be there too, because it would be nice to see a team play like a championship one.

t.j.simers@latimes.com