The Lakers' troubles won't matter in June

Sporting News, The, Feb 11, 2002 by Sean Deveney

We've come a long way since the post-championship glow of last June, but in some ways, we have not made a whole lot of progress.

Back then, after the Lakers dusted off Philadelphia to claim a second consecutive championship, L.A. team members spoke of approaching the next season differently, with the kind of focus that would keep the Lakers out of the sludge of internal problems that marred the bulk of the 2000-01 season. This was a grand pledge, considering just how thick that sludge got around this time last year. But a 16-1 start this season provided pretty convincing evidence that the Lakers were taking an interest in winning this season, and that they even could top the NBA-record 72 wins of the 1995-96 Bulls.

Here we are, though, far removed from that 16-1 start. More than halfway through the season, the Lakers are only a little better off than they were a year ago. That 16-1 jump was followed by a 16-11 stretch, during which the Lakers lost to the likes of the Bulls, Grizzlies, Warriors and Heat, all last-place teams. The possibility of 72 wins fizzled quickly, and now, as coach Phil Jackson points out, the Lakers have been playing like a .500 team.

A sign of trouble for the infant dynasty? Sure, but hardly big trouble, and for several reasons. The problems that are weighing down this edition of the Lakers are not as troubling as last year's set of superstar shenanigans, where Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant seemed unable to coexist. There have been no O'Neal-Bryant loggerheads this season--in fact, both have played at an MVP level.

The problems this season are more difficult to identify but much less imposing. Sometimes, the Lakers don't rebound. Sometimes, they don't defend as well as they are capable. Sometimes, they make bad late-game decisions. Just about all the time, the supporting cast around Bryant and O'Neal has trouble shooting.

The last aspect of the Lakers' struggles is the most glaring, especially because it figures prominently in how opponents approach them. The game plan for facing the Lakers has not changed much in the last three years. You have to keep the tempo high offensively, preventing O'Neal from settling into the middle of the paint on defense. You must run pick-and-rolls as much as possible--again, to draw O'Neal out of the paint and to allow for penetration.

You have to pick up your defense at three-quarters court, to stretch the floor and disrupt the triangle offense as much as possible. Most important, you can't let one of the Lakers' role players beat you. But this is where the Lakers have been worst off. The role players have not been of much use thus far. New acquisitions Lindsey Hunter and Mitch Richmond were shooting 38.1 and 39.9 percent, respectively, entering last weekend. Rick Fox was at 40.6 percent. Derek Fisher was at 41.1, and Robert Horry was at 36.9.

It should not come as much of a surprise that all of this subpar play does not bother the Lakers very much, not after what the team endured last season. In addition to the Kobe-vs.-Shaq drama on offense, the Lakers were lax defensively for most of last season. That has not been a problem this season. The team has played well defensively, allowing only 92.4 points per game and shooting a league-best 42.1 percent. When April and May come around, that will be most significant. Last week, Jackson told reporters, "We are a .500-playing team right now, but this isn't unusual. I'm not in a situation where we're anything but fine and OK. If I had a group of guys that were moping around and were depressed about basketball, that'd be a different thing."

In the long run, there are teams that can challenge the Lakers but none that can match their postseason experience and none that could keep up with them over seven games. The Timberwolves never have gotten past the first round. The Kings and Mavericks made breakthroughs last season, but in both cases, the breakthrough merely was reaching the second round. Sacramento and Dallas are probably a couple of years from a title run. The last two Eastern teams to face the Lakers in The Finals, the Pacers and Sixers, have undergone significant changes. The last non-Lakers team to win a championship, the Spurs, has only four members of its title squad still on the roster.

The Lakers' struggles often are attributed to nonchalance and boredom, and that might have something to do with it. Certainly, this team is not as obsessed with winning as the record-holding Bulls once were, though it is potentially as dominant. But make no mistake, no matter how poorly the Lakers played in December and January, no team has a better sense of itself and what it takes to play in June than the Lakers.

O'Neal pointed out last week that he would be better able to judge this group in March or April, and with good reason. In the last two seasons, it was around that time that the Lakers galvanized themselves in time for title runs. Two years ago, the Lakers finished with 14 wins in their last 17 games. Last year, the team won eight in a row to close the regular season.