They’ve Been Unable to Push It to the Limit

The Lakers are still at recess right now, playing however they’d like. Sooner or later the bell will ring and it will be time to get back to following orders, taking their assigned places.

They have pushed their record to 19-5 largely by freelancing, by taking advantage of Gary Payton’s ability to push the ball and Shaquille O’Neal’s dominance in the paint and Kobe Bryant’s free-wheeling ingenuity.

But when they’re not getting out on the break they’re a below-average team. Their record is 3-4 in games in which they do not score at least 10 fastbreak points.

In the fourth quarter of most regular-season games and throughout the playoffs, the tempo slows and fastbreak opportunities go dry. Execution of the half-court offense becomes crucial, and by failing to get points from their half-court sets the Lakers have been outscored in the last five fourth quarters.

The Lakers’ fourth-quarter breakdown Friday, when the Denver Nuggets erased a 14-point deficit, caused Coach Phil Jackson to emphasize the offensive basics in Saturday’s practice.

“Now it’s critical time,” Jackson said of the fourth quarter. “Don’t go back to your old habits. You’ve got new habits and a new offense to run. There’s some things here that make sense. Let’s get this accomplished.”

One difference in the offense is the way the Lakers get into it. That changes the arrangement of all the players; for example, Bryant is spending more time on the wing, as the initiator of the offense once they get the triangle set up.

“We’re pushing the ball a lot more,” Bryant said. “We’re going away from our two-guard-front offense, we just run our wings out, have Gary push the ball and we just build our system that way. From that standpoint, I’m in a different spot on the floor.”

Another noticeable difference from previous seasons is the poor spacing; players often wind up jumbled together in close proximity.

Part of the triangle’s effectiveness comes from everyone on the floor reading the defense the same way. But only five players on the active roster are well-versed in the triangle -- O’Neal, Bryant, Devean George, Derek Fisher and Horace Grant -- and that combination isn’t used together.

So players are coming up with their own ideas, and sometimes they don’t work.

“You can’t have a half a quarter, six minutes of a quarter go by in which guys are flopping around out there and just going to their spots and not having a real purposeful spot out there on the court,” Jackson said.

That’s why he is trying to find some type of cohesive unit, and he used Saturday as an opportunity to do the mundane things, “fact-check,” as he put it.

“It’s easy just to work on your moves and your shot and your individual game when you come to practice,” Jackson said. “Also a team has to work on how they operate as a unit out there on the floor so that you can be playmakers and you can execute to help the ballclub, rather than just your own individual moves. That was the emphasis we had today. A lot of people are still searching for how they can do that inside of the format that we use.”

Sights

The Lakers’ playing host to about 100 foster children from the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services. The kids played pop-a-shot with Karl Malone and Gary Payton, Skee-Ball with Kobe Bryant, Devean George and Kareem Rush, video games with Jannero Pargo and Brian Cook, foosball with Horace Grant, Jamal Sampson and Derek Fisher. Santa Claus got out of his seat to make way for Shaquille O’Neal.

Sounds

Payton presented his Christmas wish list when he and Malone took their turn sitting in O’Neal’s lap: “We want a championship and a car.”

Faces in the Crowd

Larry David, Andy Garcia, Rebecca De Mornay, Friday vs. Denver.

In a Word

“Some-burg.” Jackson’s attempt to recall which German city former New York Knick teammate Bill Bradley returned from on an overnight trip, then scored 40 points that night. Jackson told the story to illustrate how common it is for NBA players to perform despite extenuating circumstances, as Bryant did against Denver after spending the day in a Colorado courtroom.