Lakers Forget to Finish : Pro basketball: Barros leads 76ers’ comeback from 16-point deficit in fourth quarter.

This was either a growing pain for a young team or a pay-back from the basketball gods, although there’s always this description:

The Lakers folded.

A night after winning at Boston on an improbable three-point shot at the buzzer that even hero Nick Van Exel acknowledges was luck, they faced a Philadelphia team Saturday that had lost 10 of its previous 11, then jumped on those 76ers for a 16-point lead with 9:51 left. The Lakers could have ridden the wave all the way in, but went with Plan B instead and wiped out, losing in overtime, 117-113, before 14,235 at the Spectrum.

The subplot was that the 76ers reigned on Eddie Jones’ homecoming parade. The Laker rookie shooting guard from Temple got a big ovation during pregame introductions, then upped that to huge cheers and chants of “Eddie! Eddie!” while scoring 12 of his 18 points in the third quarter. He was efficient in that stretch (consecutive three-pointers) and he was spectacular (a slam dunk in the face of 7-foot-6 Shawn Bradley).

But he was not Dana Barros. Dana Barros was barely Dana Barros.

The 76er point guard had been impressive of late, having increased his scoring average to a team-best 19.3 points on 51% shooting coming in. But this was something else. This was a career-high 41 points, while going seven of 11 on three-pointers and 14 of 23 overall, and eight assists in 48 minutes.

The Lakers got 31 points and 11 rebounds from Cedric Ceballos and 13 points and 10 rebounds in another good bench contribution from Sam Bowie, this time going 37 minutes as starter Vlade Divac took his turn in the doghouse. But they had no answer for Barros.

“He was feeling it,” said Van Exel, who has been there several times himself.

The Lakers were feeling it too, but for all the wrong reasons. They had the crowd on their side, largely because of Jones and also because this town has grown to root for anybody except Bradley, and a 94-78 lead after Bowie’s jumper from the top of the key. What they did not have, however, was anybody to tell Barros the game was over.

He made a three-pointer from the right side, then, after a 76er miss, came back the next possession for another, this time from the left side. The lead was down to 10, and even though Van Exel answered with a three-pointer to make it a 13-point game with 8:12 to go, the Lakers knew then something was terribly wrong.

“I don’t know if we gave up,” said Van Exel, who had 18 points and nine assists. “If we would have quit, we never would have gotten it to overtime. But the stretch when it was 94-78 and they hit those two threes, that’s what killed us. They got the momentum, and we never got it back.”

At 105-105 with 56 seconds remaining, courtesy of Barros’ three-pointer, the 76ers also had a new game. When B.J. Tyler intercepted Ceballos’ entry pass a few feet from the baseline and put it in for a layup, there was a change atop the leader board.

The Lakers managed to hang on to force overtime, getting that at 110-110 on Van Exel’s runner down the left side with 9.4 seconds left.

In the five-minute extra period, the Lakers got three free throws from Ceballos, but nothing more. The 76ers got baskets by Clarence Weatherspoon and Tim Perry for a 114-111 cushion with 1:54 to go, but more than that they got effort. That was typified by Perry, who used his three-inch height advantage over Jones for an offensive rebound to keep a possession alive and seconds later tapped Weatherspoon’s missed jumper to Barros to sustain it longer still.

That led to Barros getting fouled and making one of two from the line for a 115-113 lead with 10 seconds remaining. The Lakers’ final try for the final comeback of the night ended when Ceballos got into the lane, only to have his shot go off the side of the rim.

“Any time you lose an overtime game, those are painful losses,” Coach Del Harris said. “But you’ve got to give Philadelphia credit for hanging in there in a game we had won.”

Finally, the Lakers were done, after going 53 minutes. That is, if they hadn’t actually clocked out after 38.