Flick the switch

Playoffs are months away, but Lakers should turn it on now

The Los Angeles Lakers' mind-bending 30-point comeback against the Dallas Mavericks last Friday at Staples Center revealed, in my humble opinion, more about the Mavs than it did about the Lakers. Dallas simply cannot rationalize the defeat. It means something. The Mavs have now lost 24 straight in Los Angeles against the Lakers, and that is what you call a mental block of overwhelming magnitude.

The Mavericks should consider changing their approach next time they visit the Lakers, which is not until April 8. Dallas has a couple of days off before that game, and perhaps the team should come in early, get a map of the stars, maybe check out Wilt Chamberlain's old pad, take a meeting or two in Hollywood, chill on the beach, something, anything, to make things different.

Having said that, I don't believe the Mavs are dead. They showed a lot of heart by coming back the next night and winning at Golden State in what could've been an easy game to tank. I love Dallas' team and the entertainment value it provides in a league that has grown increasingly stodgy. But to get to the Promised Land, the Mavs still have to prove they can beat the Lakers.

That is, if the Lakers are among the teams still standing in late May.

It is no longer ridiculous to talk in those terms. We're beyond the point where L.A.'s slothful start can be explained away as, Hey, it's early. It is early, but I don't think even the sometimes boastful purple-and-gold want to go into the playoffs as, say, the sixth seed. Or worse.

Consider:

Last season the eight Western Conference playoff contenders all finished well above .500. The worst of those clubs was Utah, at 44-38, and the Jazz's flawless execution gave top-seeded Sacramento a scare in the first round. Going into Tuesday night's game at Golden State, the Lakers needed to go 35-25 to reach 44 wins, by no means a sure thing given their penchant for taking off, oh, every fourth or fifth game. Last season's sixth seed, Portland, had 49 wins -- the Lakers would have to finish 40-20 to match that total -- and even my limited math skills tell me that is a .667 winning percentage.

Further, a quick look at the conference reveals a landscape as loaded with landmines as last year's. San Antonio, Utah, Minnesota and Portland are about as good as their 2001-02 versions. Sacramento, Dallas and Seattle are probably better. Among the non-playoff qualifiers, the Clippers are about the same, Phoenix is better, and Houston is far, far better, as long as Steve Francis stays healthy and Yao Ming stays upright.

But there are reasons to believe L.A. will eventually crawl its way back to the top. (More accurately, there are reasons to explain why the Lakers were playing so putridly before the back-to-back wins over Dallas and Utah.) The obvious one, of course, is the early-season absence of Shaquille O'Neal, who is just now playing himself into shape. If the Lakers ultimately prevail this season, Shaq's decision to delay his toe surgery until right before training camp will be hailed as a brilliant move that saved him energy during the season; if they fail, it will be pointed to as a major reason the team never got in sync.

But Shaq isn't the only Laker who has been MIA. The win over Dallas marked the first time all year that the defending champs had their top eight players available (Shaq, Kobe Bryant, Rick Fox, Derek Fisher, Robert Horry, Devean George, Samaki Walker and Brian Shaw). If you saw the Lakers early, you saw a lot of rookie Kareem Rush, Stanislav Medvedenko and Mark Madsen; the latter air-balled three of four free throws during a recent stretch. Look, these guys aren't bad players, but they are backups for a reason -- when five-minute cameos turn into 15-minute appearances, the Lakers are less effective.

Another factor in the Lakers' expected turnaround is that L.A.'s zone offense will improve. More and more teams are using more and more zone defense (Dallas, Seattle, Houston and Minnesota to name four), and it takes a while to figure out how to play against it. (Who do you think these guys are, Yugoslavia?) Tex Winter, a Lakers assistant and the inventor of the triangle offense, swears that it is even more effective against a zone than it is against a man-to-man and was designed to be so. I don't quite swallow that, but I do think that Phil Jackson, Winter and, more important, floor leader Bryant, will figure out how to make the offense work against what will continue to be a fairly steady diet of collapsing zones.

Finally, O'Neal, is getting ornery. He understands the math and is not likely to waltz through the non-marquee games in the dead of winter. (Bryant rarely waltzes.) Last week, Shaq castigated some of his teammates in a general sense, and he knows he has to step up since it was his decision to delay the surgery and miss much of November. Toe notwithstanding, he is in better shape now than he was at this time last season.

But it's a long haul. No defending champion, never mind no defending three-peater, has ever gotten off to such a terrible start. The Lakers' M.O. over the past few seasons has been cool detachment accompanied by a knack for turning it on when it counted. This season, the pressure is on early, and that's a lot tougher way to play.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum covers the NBA beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send a question to his NBA mailbag.

 

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