ShareThisFirst the Los Angeles Lakers beat up the Toronto Raptors.
Then they beat themselves up, just a little anyway, to keep the edge.
"It wasn't a well-played second and fourth quarter for us," began coach Phil Jackson Sunday night, after his Lakers subdued the Raptors 112-99, taking the lead with four minutes left in the first quarter and never trailing again.
The Lakers shot 51 percent, won the rebounding battle, 54-36, held Toronto under 39 percent shooting, and never appeared in danger of losing.
But there were those turnovers -- 19 of them. Something to think about as the Lakers head off on a three-game trip, no doubt.
"We can't throw the ball all over the lot, lobbing it over the backboard," said Jackson when asked about road challenges, and slipping in a reference to a somewhat comical pass that reserve forward Trevor Ariza flipped in the general direction of 7-foot center Andrew Bynum in the second quarter.
Yeah, there was that.
And the Raptors actually got a few fast-break baskets and open jumpers over the course of the game, too. Pau Gasol remembered them well.
"There were stretches where we didn't get back on defense," said the veteran forward. "We gave them some jump shots from their comfort spots."
Uh-huh. But, really, anything truly serious wrong with this team?
When you're 14-1, it's hard to imagine you've got problems to work on. The Clippers, now they have issues.
The Lakers? They have one loss in the first five weeks of the season, and that defeat came a now-foggy eight games ago, so what's to worry?
In a way, some of their postgame critiques seem manufactured. It's as if flaws are artificially magnified, maybe to keep the team focused. Find some things to tweak to fill the to-do list at practice. Otherwise, why not spend off-days playing "horse" and working on pregame chest bumps and hand slaps?
The Lakers have, indeed, had some sluggish halves, some extended periods of poor play.
Even though their defense is hands-down (or is that hands-up?) better than it was last year, it's been penetrated at times by driving guards. They've occasionally abandoned low-post options and gone jump-shot happy.
Picky, picky.
The deep-down truth is that they have been able to climb their way out of nearly every hole, simply by stepping up their defensive pressure, forcing the pace, or even using that old standby -- letting Kobe Bryant do it.
Hey, when you're good you're good.
So in the end, it was business as usual. A win going away. The Lakers used four players off their bench -- Lamar Odom, Ariza, Jordan Farmar and Sasha Vujacic with starting center Bynum to blow Toronto off to Denver (next stop) with a 17-4 run in the fourth quarter.
All that was left was the hardest task of the night, locating the flaws.
"It's human nature to believe things are going to keep going right for you because it always has," said Jackson, when asked if it's hard to make a 14-1 team believe it has problems to solve. "The thought is that it becomes easy, when you really have to keep working hard."
So, once again, nice win ... and back to work, you slugs.
(Contact Gregg Patton at 951-368-9597 or gpatton@PE.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.
