Lakers Break Camp With Shaq Upset Over an Early Snub

Nobody got seriously hurt, and, at the end, their 7-foot-1 centerpiece got agitated.

All in all, it wasn’t a terrible way for the Lakers to break camp at UC Santa Barbara and head back to Los Angeles on Tuesday, only nine days before the start of a tightly scheduled 50-game regular season.

Factoring in scrimmage and exhibition-game days, Coach Del Harris said he probably will have time to conduct only four more hard practices at L.A. Southwest College before their Feb. 5 opener against Houston at the Great Western Forum.

Looking at Monday night’s sloppy intrasquad scrimmage, the Lakers very badly need the practices.

But Shaquille O’Neal, without his trademark smile and with a bite in his voice, seemed very much in the mood for regular-season rumbling.

At breakfast, the Laker players passed around a USA Today sports page, which ranked the Lakers No. 4 in the Western Conference, behind San Antonio, Houston and Utah.

“I’ve got to let them know once again--Tim Duncan, you’re too light for me down there,” O’Neal said after the Lakers’ 10th and final camp workout Tuesday. “I’m tired of it. Now I’m getting upset. I’m starting to get like Mike Tyson.”

Why, O’Neal wondered, would anybody rank the Spurs, despite the presence of Duncan and David Robinson, over the Lakers, who won all four games against San Antonio last season?

“I just don’t understand what they’re looking at,” O’Neal said. “You know, they’re a pretty dominant big-man tandem, but ain’t none of them can do nothing with me.

“And I said it. You can tell them I said it. If they don’t like it, they can see me on the court or off the court. They can’t do nothing with me.”

O’Neal’s attitude probably was not lightened by missing about 20 minutes of the final workout while trainers worked on a pelvis muscle, which O’Neal said was sore.

But he returned to practice without any noticeable problems and said he was fine. Last season, O’Neal sat out the second game--and all of December--because of a strained abdominal muscle.

“I’m getting ready to play,” O’Neal said. “I’ll be there.”

Other players, meanwhile, said that preseason rankings aren’t the barometer of anything.

“Everybody had [the sports page] at breakfast, I had to see it,” Kobe Bryant said. “Everybody was talking about it.

“I don’t care. They can say whatever they want to say. All that matters is who wins at the end. They can say whatever the hell they want.”

The most important part, Bryant said, was to make sure everything that the coaches crammed into this camp is absorbed, even though there is so much less time to digest it.

“Some of the rookies, it was like we were throwing things at them,” Bryant said. “It was constant--new plays, new defenses, traps, this, that and the other, rotations. It was a lot.”

Said forward Rick Fox: “We didn’t solve anything in the first week. But we were able to get a good enough start to carry over once we got to L.A. . . .

“I think we competed. I think we went after each other. We showed that there was enough drive even with the layoff to get us going off to a good start, I think.”

That the Lakers suffered no major camp injuries--none of the predicted hamstring pulls or back spasms after such a long time away from basketball--proved something, Fox said.

Only Eddie Jones and Derek Fisher worked together through most of the lockout, but, Fox noted, that didn’t mean the other players weren’t staying in shape.

“I think Indiana may have been the team that was most publicized as working out together,” Fox said, “but I think for the most part we’re a young team that has remained in shape, decent enough shape to get into NBA playing shape in a short period of time.”