Despite Loss, Triangle Looks Good

At certain points during Wednesday night’s exhibition debut, maybe when the tall bearded man let loose one of his ear-shattering whistles to get their attention or maybe when the triangle was humming particularly well, even Phil Jackson’s own players did a little double-take.

“You do look over there and say, ‘Yeah, he’s on our team now,”’ forward Glen Rice said of Jackson after the Lakers’ third team blew a 17-point advantage, leading to an 88-84 loss to the Washington Wizards before 14,211 at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo.

In Jackson’s first game appearance as the Lakers’ coach, with owner Jerry Buss in the audience, Jackson wrangled continuously with the referees and alternately grimaced and grinned his way through an NBA game for the first time since the Bulls’ 1997-98 championship.

Meanwhile, the Laker first team showcased both a relative comfort in the triangle offense and Shaquille O’Neal’s ability to score at will within it.

With his teammates zipping the ball to him at sharp angles, O’Neal scored 22 points on eight-for-11 shooting, grabbed 14 rebounds and blocked four shots in 29 minutes.

“I thought the gold team played well--they attacked it the way we asked them to attack, and they found Shaq,” Jackson said.

“They looked to where he was at, they made the defense move, we made our free throws in the second half and we were much better.”

O’Neal, after a 0-for-7 outing in the public scrimmage Sunday, made three of his five second-half free throws after a three-for-nine first half.

After a slow start, Kobe Bryant showed some creativity within the triangle and scored 18 points. And Derek Fisher found both O’Neal and Bryant for several flying lob dunks.

When the first teamers were pulled for good in the fourth quarter, and after backup center Benoit Benjamin gave the second unit a big scoring boost with nine points, they handed over a 77-60 lead.

“We’ve got a first unit that work it pretty well,” O’Neal said. “We’ve just got to keep making sharper passes, keep cutting. . . . I’m pretty comfortable.”

Though the Laker defense looked more intense--and though the players were communicating on defense much louder and more frequently than last season--Jackson said he wasn’t pleased.

“We’ve been focusing so much on offense, we really haven’t gotten to the defensive end,” Jackson said. “It takes so much energy just to get a team in sync offensively, it’s difficult to get the energy back on defense.”

Jackson played only one veteran--Robert Horry--alongside young players John Celestand, Stephen Howard, Devean George, Sam Jacobson and Andy Panko in the fourth, and they were outscored, 28-7.

“We gave them a little bit of a noose to hang themselves out there,” Jackson said of the young players, “and they did a fine job of doing it.”

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The Lakers suffered one potentially troublesome injury: Forward-center Travis Knight sprained his right ankle early in the second quarter, did not return to the game, and left the locker room wobbling badly on crutches and in obvious pain.

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Guard Ron Harper, a member of Jackson’s final three championship teams in Chicago, finally signed a two-year contract with the Lakers believed to be worth $4.2 million and immediately should help the adjustment to the new offense, Jackson said.

“He’ll kind of get guys comfortable out there on the floor,” Jackson said of the 6-foot-6 Harper. “It’s going to be a little bit of trouble for a while for them to find the right spaces to flow to. And he’ll have all that imprinted in his memory systems.”

Harper, 35, underwent arthroscopic knee surgery over the summer and has been rehabbing, but Jackson said he thinks Harper will be ready to step into the Lakers’ plans to often play two tall guards.

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Will the Lakers reschedule the game in Little Rock, Ark.? Jackson said he wasn’t sure, saying it could be reset for late this week or early next, assuming the Alltel Arena is structurally safe and the Lakers are practicing well.