For an 8-13 Team, Win Is Worth Wait in Purple and Gold

So the lesson to be learned from this game is the same thing the Lakers have been saying all along.

Just wait. Do what Phil Jackson says and Robert Horry exemplifies and chill out.

Everything that has been wrong with the Lakers through the first 20 games of this season showed up for cameo appearances in the first three quarters of Friday night’s game against the Dallas Mavericks. It was so bad at halftime, when the Lakers trailed, 64-36, that two longtime season-ticket holders came by and basically wrote off the rest of the season and started making plans for what to do with their tickets and free time come springtime.

“Grim,” one said. “Bleeping grim.”

Then all of the moxie, magic and star power that led them to the last three NBA championships came back in the fourth -- and so did the Lakers.

They wiped away a Maverick lead that was 30 points early in the third quarter and 27 at the start of the fourth and somehow won, 105-103.

And after all that, their record stands at 8-13.

Conventional wisdom says you shouldn’t make too much of an NBA game played before the Christmas presents are unwrapped -- especially before the gifts are even bought.

But the way the Lakers came back -- even if they had lost -- bought them some more time to get things right. It adds a little more fuel to the notion that the Lakers have it in them to return to their championship ways, like those tales of lost dogs finding their way home across hundreds of miles.

“This gives us the confidence that we still got it,” Kobe Bryant said. “Other teams watching us tonight probably expected us to fold. But tonight we showed why we won three times in a row.”

“This shows what we have built here,” added Rick Fox. “We’re used to being thought of as the best team in the league and now we’re playing the team that has the best record, and it was important for us to show everything we stand for.”

There were other reasons to take this game seriously.

The Lakers had their full complement of players, the group they expected to take them to a fourth consecutive championship, for the first time this season.

Shaquille O’Neal has been back for two weeks.

They had every reason to be motivated as the Mavericks brought the NBA’s best record -- 17-1 -- into town.

Still, the Lakers’ own play had dragged expectations down so far that Jackson wasn’t even talking about victory beforehand.

“You have to look at it in the long term for a basketball team,” he said. “[Dallas] is a team that’s playing at a high level. Can we reach up and meet that level? In reality, I’m not saying I expect [the team] to right now jump up to that level. We haven’t been playing at that level. But we need to see improvement as a basketball team.”

They jumped, all right. A quantum leap up -- and back. Back to the Western Conference finals and Game 4. Back to all of the drama and emotion and memories that haven’t been seen at a Laker game since -- and rarely at any regular-season game.

Remember how badly the Sacramento Kings took apart the Lakers in the first half of that game? Dallas dismantled them even worse.

It wasn’t just that the Mavericks made a ridiculous 71% of their three-pointers in the first half (10 for 14) and scored 64 points. But holding an opponent to 36 points -- as Dallas did to the Lakers -- will give you a halftime lead in 99% of the games no matter how well you’re shooting.

Dallas stifled the Lakers with a zone defense that featured a floating player (usually Michael Finley) ready to help whenever Bryant tried to drive or the Lakers passed the ball to O’Neal.

Take away Shaq’s low-posting and Kobe’s slashing and what was left? The same thing we’ve been seeing: a bunch of guys who can’t hit open shots and can’t create shots of their own.

Finley’s shot was off, but Nick Van Exel was torching the Lakers.

The Lakers came back by utilizing that missing element of the first 20 games: defense. They fought through screens and helped each other out. Devean George even skied to block a dunk by 7-foot-6 Shawn Bradley, but was called for a foul.

Meanwhile, Bryant took over. He didn’t care how many Mavericks were in front of him or how tall they were, he was going to the hoop. He scored 21 of his 27 points in the fourth quarter, making all eight of his shots.

Yes, the Mavericks became the sixth team to score 100 points against the Lakers. But they scored only 15 in the fourth quarter, while the Lakers put up a double quatro: 44.

Hmmmmm. Four. All of a sudden, that number felt appropriate again when talking about the Lakers.

“They got the momentum and we gave it to them with some costly turnovers,” Dallas Coach Don Nelson said. “Being the world champs, they took advantage.”

Said Van Exel, who finished with 25 points: “We just choked, flat-out choked. They played like the world champions and we played scared. We got tentative and just choked.”

Now you have to wonder if there will be long-term ramifications. The Mavericks have lost 24 consecutive games to the Lakers in Southern California, from the Forum to Staples. And if a 27-point fourth-quarter lead isn’t enough to end the streak, they have to question if anything they’ve got will get it done.

Despite their great start, the Mavericks had been waiting for validation.

“They know it doesn’t mean anything,” owner Mark Cuban said before the game.

Cuban compared it to the initial public stock offering for his company Broadcom. Sure the stock price zoomed right away, but then it meant they had to live up to it.

Of course, he later sold his stake to Yahoo and pocketed $2.2 billion, so I’d say that turned out pretty well.

Good starts do matter, especially for teams that have never accomplished anything and need to discover something about themselves. The last two seasons, the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Nets turned great Novembers into trips to the NBA Finals. The confidence that builds never disappears -- deep inside teams know they’re capable of doing what they did early in the season, and they can get back to it.

For the last two seasons, the Lakers have drawn on memories of June heroics to get them through the tough times. This game was a classic, no matter what the month.

You couldn’t help but think of June. Maybe even next June.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at: [email protected]