If Lakers Keep Losing Cool, Series Will Surely Follow

I know the Lakers are busy, what with exercising their choke signs and finger taunts while studying the miracle of the multi-use obscenity.

I know the Utah Jazz is showing up at the Forum today, and Karl Malone may even be with the team, and the home team must win the game or it will probably lose the second-round series.

I know this is not a good time to make an official request of the Lakers, but it’s never a good time, so I will just go ahead and ask.

Could you please grow up?

Could you please leave the referees alone?

Could you please shut up on the court?

And don’t shut up off the court, where last week’s team silence did more long-term damage than any midcourt tirade?

Could you, for once, use the officials instead of letting the officials use you?

Yes, a bad call cost you a possible victory in Game 2.

Agreed, Shaquille O’Neal is routinely hacked by hundreds who scamper away without penalty.

“In this society, there is a double standard,” O’Neal dramatically announced after Friday’s workout.

Your point?

Of course there is a double standard in the NBA this time of year, a subconscious notion that pays homage to guys with experience and etiquette.

Those sorts of things have a funny way of happening to human beings, which still include referees, last I looked.

No, O’Neal is not going to get the calls Karl Malone gets.

No, Nick Van Exel is not going to get the treatment of a John Stockton.

So there is a double standard in this job just like in every other job.

The Lakers’ fate rests on whether they can be mature enough to deal with it.

Just a guess, but one way is not to accuse the referees of betting on the game.

Tearing up a bathroom is probably not the best idea either.

Remember when O’Neal engaged a stall door in a fistfight after he felt opponents weren’t being cited for fouling him?

“It’s amazing how some guys can get away with anything on me,” he said at the time. “But if I look at them [referees] funny, they call a technical and want to throw me out.”

The date was Nov. 12.

Nearly six months later, he is still complaining and still worried about being thrown out.

This is progress?

That an ejection of O’Neal actually occurred in Game 3 on Thursday--even though the Lakers had already won the game--is unconscionable this time of year.

O’Neal’s rap fans know that he likes to be called Enrico Gates, after two of his heroes, Microsoft boss Bill Gates, and Pepsi boss Roger Enrico.

Surely he notices what they do when they are constantly attacked.

They don’t get mad. They get richer.

“It amazes me why players say anything about the referees, ever,” said Bill Walton, who didn’t yap much when he played, stunning to those who hear him now.

“A player’s relationship with a referee is critical to the game; it’s a very important psychological aspect,” Walton said. “Basically, you have 10 players out there trying to get the officials to see the game through their eyes.”

And how do the players go about doing that?

Champion whiners such as Stockton and Malone rip and run, rarely slowing to complain, using their mouth more than their hands.

They bend over at the foul line and rip the official as he is handing them the ball. They trash him out of the side of their mouth as they leave the floor.

And the Lakers?

“Well, you have this 7-foot-1, 300-pound guy running down the court shaking his head and waving his hands and . . . what are the referees supposed to do?” Walton said. “Remember, this is not a math test. This is art. This is creative. People react subjectively.”

And when the guy who brings the ball upcourt for the Lakers already has a history of knocking officials in the newspapers and onto scoring tables . . . what are referees supposed to do?

“The referees are fans like everybody else,” Walton said. “They read newspapers. They talk about players. They know who is doing what.”

So the Jazz will take the court today with possibly an extra man, just as it did on Thursday before Malone’s shooting betrayed his teammates.

Believe it.

“All the things I read in the newspaper about the referees, I said, this is a good situation for us,” Malone said Friday. “But we let it slip away.”

It’s not fair, but it’s not any less fair than anything else involving human relationships.

In fact, it’s simpler.

Shut up. Suck it up. After the refs have made an obvious mistake, and you have thrown the expected tantrum, don’t pile on. Let it go. The referees will remember.

“I just tell them to leave them [referees] alone . . . but it doesn’t matter what I say,” Coach Del Harris said in a rather disturbing admission. “I’m sure every coach in the NBA says the same thing.

“But it’s one thing to talk about it, and another to be on the floor with all that emotion on the line.”

During the regular season, the Lakers ranked 16th in the 29-team NBA with 67 technical fouls, barely half of the total of the leading New York Knicks.

But that was then, and this is the playoffs, a new world where the calls are tighter. Just like certain players.

“You can’t tell me I don’t get touched too,” O’Neal said. “It’s impossible to tell me I don’t and . . .”

I stopped that quote, not him. Enough, OK? Enough.