Lakers Triangulate a Victory Over Jazz

By MARK HEISLER

Nov. 3, 1999 12 AM PT

SALT LAKE CITY — All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this administration nor even, perhaps, in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

--John F. Kennedy’s

inaugural speech,

Jan. 20, 1961

No Mike, no Scottie, no (thank heaven) Dennis (yet).

Phil Jackson’s guys used to wreak havoc here, but that was before he switched teams and showed up in the Delta Center without Michael Jordan, the greatest player ever, Scottie Pippen, Mike’s faithful companion, and Dennis Rodman, the most hated man in the history of Utah.

Utah was hoping for a night of payback since Jackson’s new team was dizzy from trying to figure out how many sides a triangle has, but you know how it is with kids. You say they can’t. They say they can.

Thus the new Laker era got off to an unexpectedly good start. Make no mistake, these aren’t the Lakers you used to know.

“Because of the instability of this team right now, the injured list, we’re still in the process of getting to know the personality of this team,” Jackson was saying before the game.

“Coaches knowing the team’s personality and the individuals too--it’s going to be a while before we can see what we can drum up, what we really are made of, how we go down the stretch in games, how we get things accomplished under duress . . . “

Jackson’s last season was a little like this, with Pippen out for half a season, and demanding to be traded, and telling Chicago Bulls’ management to “go to hell” and the team stumbling to a .500 start.

Of course, that was the Bulls, who had won titles in five of their last seven seasons.

These are the Lakers.

“This season, we don’t have our roles down as a team yet,” Jackson was saying. “We do know that we’re going to get some points out of Shaq [O’Neal]. Glen [Rice] hasn’t really performed yet in the preseason, we’ve got to find a way for him to be successful out there for us to get to 90 points. A hundred points seems like a stretch for this team right now to score. We’ll have to try to control the run-outs, keep the scores down.”

It turned out that 91 did the trick, the Lakers having kept Utah’s score to 84, with old, creaky, supposedly-overmatched-and-due-for-replacement A.C. Green helping hold Karl Malone to 14 points.

Rice, for whom Jackson must have figured out something dandy, scored 28 points, or what seemed about as many as he’d totaled in the exhibition season.

These are the Lakers?

Well, for a while, anyway. This is a work in progress, with Kobe Bryant mending and Jackson shopping unabashedly for a power forward, just to start with.

In Lakerdom this season, the key dates are:

Dec. 15--Players signed before the season may now be traded. This doesn’t mean O’Neal and Bryant, but everybody else had better stay loose.

Dec. 25--Christmas. Jackson has reportedly been assured that if they need help, management will try to find some for him.

Feb. 24--Trading deadline.

But, given the circumstances (how about losses in the last four exhibitions against Western foes by margins of 12, 14, 22 and 16 points, respectively), it was OK.

The Lakers actually ran the triangle, moving a little after Shaq got the ball.

Shaq, now trimmed down from that 340 he weighed when camp started, looked great. Of course, he still missed his free throws at the end.

O’Neal even reversed the ball twice to Rice late in the game, and Rice made two big three-pointers.

“There are still a couple of those teams, no matter how we play, we still should beat ‘em, period,” O’Neal said, hopefully, before the game.

“But we got a couple of good teams, couple good veteran teams--against teams like that, we just got to do everything right. And if we do everything right, I like our chances.”

Tuesday, they did enough right. They may be a long way from the finished product, but, wherever they’re going, they’re on their way.