Rush Job Didn't Deliver Goods

By TIM KAWAKAMI

May 25, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

For all intents and cross-purposes, the Lakers’ year of Living impulsively ended Monday, with a solemn 12-word explanation:

“We were all rushed,” Jerry West said in a brief appearance. “When you rush into things, accidents occur, OK?”

Yes, that just about sums it up.

So goodbye 1999--at least the first part of it--and may the next milennium effort at building a championship team be a lot less frantic.

West, the team’s executive vice president, spent most of his public time Monday sketchily outlining his thoughts about the Laker future, emphasizing that no final decisions can or should be made in the heat of the playoff free fall:

* He hopes Shaquille O’Neal--a no-show at to the players’ final meeting for the second consecutive season--won’t exercise his opt-out clause and leave the Lakers this summer, and will tell O’Neal that he should stay.

“The one thing I will tell him personally--this is the place where he should end his career,” West said. “This is a place where I think he can really prosper.

“I think he feels an enormous amount of pressure personally to help this team win a championship, and when he can’t get it done, he probably feels like I do at times. A terrible frustration.

“But he’s a player that can bring us a championship, if we can get the right pieces around him.”

* Despite the uneven returns since Glen Rice’s acquisition and the potential lure of trading Rice for a power forward or a point guard, West said he wants to keep Rice around.

It is the Lakers’ right to exercise a $7-million option for next season if they don’t extend his contract.

* West said stated in his clearest terms yet that, though he has pondered quitting, he probably will remain as the Lakers’ top executive.

“I will tell you, I fully intend and I hope to complete my four years here,” West said, referring to a $14-million, four-year contract extension that starts next season.

* He isn’t sure if Coach Kurt Rambis got a fair shot this season, but he also isn’t sure if Rambis will be brought back.

If West was looking for a chorus of players to roar for Rambis’ return, he did not hear it, Monday, with O’Neal’s absence possibly the most profound gesture of all.

Rambis, for his part, said he looked forward to a full off-season as the Laker coach, for a real training camp, and for a season not interrupted by wild changes, peppered by controversy and concluded in sweeping defeat.

“Obviously, I wish I could’ve done more,” Rambis said. “I wish things could’ve turned out differently. ,” Monday. “But given the circumstances, and the cards that I was dealt, I thought I did a very good job, yes. . . .

“I’m going to learn from my mistakes, and I’m going to feel good about it because I know that I worked hard at it. That’s something I did as a player, that I worked hard. Win, lose or draw, play good or play bad, I knew I worked hard at it.”

* West is definitely sure that all those Great Western Forum fans who started booing Kobe Bryant in Game 4 will be roaring for him when Bryant eventually brings L.A. an NBA title.

* He thinks the Lakers’ second-round loss does not qualify as a reason to panic or reconstruct the franchise.

“We don’t have a terrible basketball team,” West said. “We have a talented basketball team here. And we’re competing against our past success. . . . We provide a good team for our fans every year.

“I think in a shortened season, we tried to push the envelope a little bit, we wanted to try to win a championship this year.

“We didn’t do it.”

Not for lack of talent, but for lack of chemistry, the Laker players said. Not because the roster needs tearing up, but because it needs time together.

This season, the Lakers rushed around, tried to fix problems on the move, and ran into a San Antonio team that was built to capitalize on opponents’ instability.

The Spurs have a superstar they can count on in the fourth quarter--Tim Duncan. The Lakers’ centerpiece, O’Neal, was held silent in the fourth.

The Spurs win on defense. The Lakers lose on defense.

The Spurs have a system. The Lakers have . . . what?

On Sunday, as the locker room emptied after the Spurs’ sweep, a Laker player turned to a reporter and quietly shrugged his shoulders.

“I guess it’s blame-time now,” the player said. “And the problem here is, nobody ever wants it. Nobody ever stands up. It’s never them. I’ve figured that one out.”

So who will get blamed? West on said Monday said quickly that if fingers are pointed at anyone, gets pointed at, it they should be pointed at him.

For much of the Laker locker room, the concern was that O’Neal, with the chance to bolt if he chooses, would be getting the one who received the bulk of the blame and would answer that by departing.

And if O’Neal leaves? Maybe it becomes Bryant’s team once and for all. Maybe that would be a fascinating thing to see from a player whose potential growth is still unlimited. Maybe that’s the giant hugest step into the unknown.

And maybe the Lakers are not ready to start thinking about that yet.

“You know what? I think a lot of people are blaming him for this,” Rice said of O’Neal. “And I don’t think it’s fair. I think we all are in this together.

“It was a team effort. And Shaq didn’t lose out there by himself.”

Said Derek Fisher, “I don’t think changing teams makes it better for him. He’ll always have that burden on his shoulders, being the hub and the guy that has to make the plays down the stretch and has to make the free throws and everybody talks about him being swept in the playoffs. . . .

“The bottom line for him is winning. He has enough money to never work again now. . . .

“He wants to be in a situation and an environment that puts him in the best position to win a championship. And he’s been here three years and really hasn’t gotten as close as he wanted to be.

“With him getting most of the blame, that can only get frustrating.”

But maybe O’Neal, too, will realize that not only will he have to take a pay cut to leave--he makes more than the maximum salary as dictated by the new labor agreement--but also that this season was not the one to base such a decision upon.

Prodded by the post-lock-out schedule, egged on by owner Jerry Buss’ eagerness to add another championship trophy, nudged by O’Neal’s hunger to silence critics, sparked by West’s own frantic mind-set, pushing forward strictly on impulse, the Lakers admitted on Monday that they never quite settled down.

Want a rebounder? Sign Dennis Rodman! Unhappy with the team’s start? Fire Del Harris! Sick of Eddie Jones? Get Glen Rice! Struggling against the Spurs? Force into Shaq! No? Get it to Bryant, then! No? Get it to Rice!

Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

“We definitely have the pieces,” Rice said. “The week and a half to two weeks that we played great basketball, was definitely an example of that.

“When we go out and play together, play smart, play hard for 48 minutes, cover one another’s back, we’re a dangerous team.”

As the players filed out, carrying gigantic stacks of shoes and exchanging cell-phone numbers, Robert Horry issued one last final uttered the epitaph to this frenetic wandering season:

“This team never really got a chance to know each other,” he said.

* STATUS REPORT: A player-by-player review of the Lakers. Page 5