Lakers Regain the Old Feeling

Remember them? The basketball team that doesn’t merely conquer, but pillages? The one that had the swagger?

“Confidence, borderline cocky,” Kobe Bryant said.

It was back Friday night.

“It was back a little bit,” Bryant said.

It was back enough. Avoiding their first four-game losing streak since April 1995, the Lakers eliminated their recent problems and the Houston Rockets at the same time, claiming a 119-102 victory before 17,505 at the Forum that included 52.3% shooting, a season-high 30 points by Rick Fox and a career-high 27 by Bryant.

“We needed this in a big way,” Fox said after the Rockets’ nine-game winning streak was ended. “Not so much because it was Houston or the three-game losing streak. But the way we started the season and the expectations.”

The expectations were that it would be like this more often. This, though, was the first time the Lakers were able to cruise through the fourth quarter since they won big at Boston the day before Thanksgiving, Bryant making sure it stayed that way by scoring all of his points in the final 14:29.

That came after Fox had done most of the work on his best offensive performance as a Laker. He finished 12 of 15 from the field and added seven rebounds.

The truest barometer of exactly how much of a struggle the previous few days had been for the Lakers came Thursday. They looked energetic and crisp . . . in practice. Talk about your baby steps to recovery.

“The word that comes to mind was that we were brighter yesterday in approach,” Coach Del Harris said. “I think the guys have been playing not to lose, just kind of protecting what they had, protecting their investment, whatever the analogy you want to use. Whereas before it looked like we were riverboat gamblers, hunters and aggressors and made the first move.”

By the time Friday night had come around, after their first three-game losing streak in nearly two years, others had assumed that role--the Lakers averaged only 17 points in the opening quarter against the Cavaliers, Trail Blazers and Warriors and shot a combined 28.3%. That included 25% (six of 24) in the most recent setback, Wednesday at Golden State, against a team that was last in the league in shooting defense.

So what happened against the Rockets offered even more encouragement than the practice. The Lakers, in a rematch with the team they had beat in double-overtime on the road, jumped to a 13-2 lead and finished the opening quarter with 23 points and 47.6%.

Of course, it took them a little less than five minutes to go from 11 points up to one down, but that was still promising by recent standards. Maybe because the funk was over. Maybe because the Rockets brought that nine-game streak to town, reversing Laker fortunes in that the same team that piled up 11 consecutive victories to start the season was now trying to play spoiler for the second consecutive home game.

“They should be, obviously, the target and the hunted,” Harris said before tipoff.

Kind of like the Cavaliers, winners of seven in a row when they came in Sunday, should have been?

“But at that point,” the coach said, “we had not identified the syndrome.”

Oh.

The Lakers had still not identified a way to slow Clyde Drexler, though. After scoring 35 points Nov. 14 in Houston, what became the seventh of the season-opening 11 victories for L.A., he had 16 in the first half Friday and all of his 21 by the end of the third quarter.

But the Lakers, with Fox making 10 of his first 12 shots for 24 points over the same span, had an 85-72 advantage heading into the final period. That became an 18-point cushion, 96-78, with 8:02 remaining.

That was the most encouraging sign of all.