Lakers Don’t Know Which End Is Down

The Lakers are in the middle of an identity crisis.

They are letting opponents score 110 points a game on 50% shooting for the series and giving up crucial offensive rebounds in crunch time, adopting the “if-you-can’t-stop-them-outscore-them” mentality.

Are they the Dallas Mavericks?

The coach is complaining about the officiating after his team missed a bunch of free throws and lost a home playoff game in overtime.

Are they the Sacramento Kings?

They’re trailing, 2-1, and are in danger of losing a first-round playoff series.

Are they ... the Minnesota Timberwolves?

You would think all they would have to do is look down at the “Lakers” on their chest, then take a glance at their championship banners hanging high in Staples Center and remember how they got there.

Apparently, it isn’t that simple. Not when they can’t even reach a consensus on which end of the court is the problem area.

“Defensively is where we really feel like we need to make certain adjustments as far as bringing our energy level up on a more consistent basis for 48 minutes,” Kobe Bryant said.

“We’re still thinking about offense,” Phil Jackson said. “We’re still talking about what kind of shots are leading us to shoot 40%, a situation where we’re creating more turnovers that are creating situations for them to score. So we’re still thinking offense. Really it starts on the offense, more or less.”

Although defense has always been a key element of Jackson’s championship teams, his philosophy with the Lakers has always been to set the defensive tone through the offense. Milk the shot clock, minimize the turnovers to cut down on the transition baskets going the other way, pound the ball inside to Shaquille O’Neal. Mentally drain them by forcing them to work and think on defense. Score with a high efficiency to force the opponent to take the ball out of the net, allowing the Laker defense to get in position while slowing down the game and avoiding shootouts.

But the Lakers aren’t the ones dictating this series anymore. The Timberwolves are with their full-court pressure.

“I think it’s taken them out of their offense,” Minnesota guard Troy Hudson said. “And when they do get in their offense, they get in it late in the clock. Guys are doing a great job of pressing up

“We’ve got to keep playing the way we’re playing. Don’t lay back. We’ve got to keep playing aggressively. That’s the only way we can beat this team.”

Believe it or not, the Lakers’ problems stem from the only game they won.

The Lakers wowed them in the first half, the way a band opening up the show with the No. 1 single does. The Timberwolves sat quietly in their locker room at halftime, stunned that their first home playoff opener had been such a dud.

“We were like, ‘Come on man, let’s compete,’ ” Kevin Garnett said. “In the second half, we started competing. I think we’ve been fueling off that ever since.”

The Timberwolves cut a 16-point lead down to four points in the third quarter thanks in part to their full-court press. Although the Lakers went on to a 19-point victory, Minnesota had a formula for success.

“We came back in the second game with a lot of confidence, because we knew what we could do,” Hudson said.

The Lakers haven’t found something that will work for them again and again. Jackson has experimented with some lineups you’d be surprised to see in January, let alone in the playoffs. One thing that will indicate whether Jackson is leaning toward defense or offense: will he give more minutes to the hot-shooting Derek Fisher or pesky defender Jannero Pargo?

The Lakers need to stop thinking as defending champions do and start acting as the No. 5 seed they are. In other words, they have to scrap and do the hard stuff.

“We’ve got to play defense,” Rick Fox said, echoing the sentiment of other players. “We have to make things a little more difficult for them. We had such an easy time executing our offense in Game 1, I think we felt we’d outscore this team in Game 2 and 3.”

They got into the Mavericks Mentality. It doesn’t win championships.

And the whining, Rick Adelman style attitude about officiating won’t win any new fans for Jackson. After Game 3, Jackson had the audacity to critique the officiating (Specifically, Jackson alluded to a foul called on Kobe Bryant with 24.3 seconds left in overtime).

The Lakers received so many breaks that I received calls from coast-to-coast, from Laker fans to journalists with no rooting interest, and they all said the officiating favored the Lakers.

The most odious calls:

* The foul on Wally Szczerbiak that allowed Bryant to make a four-point play with 17.7 seconds remaining.

* The sixth personal foul on Kevin Garnett for fighting through a Robert Horry screen that allowed the Lakers to play almost the entire overtime without Garnett on the court.

* The foul on Szczerbiak on a fast-break drive that sent Pargo to the line for two free throws that gave the Lakers the lead in overtime.

Even with all of that, the Lakers couldn’t win.

Now the Timberwolves are two games away from ending a string of six consecutive first-round exits and advancing to the conference semifinals for the first time. They even talked about how they believe they have what it takes to win a championship.

That’s supposed to be the Lakers’ mentality ... isn’t it?

They need to get back to defense, and keep putting the ball in the hands of O’Neal and Bryant. That’s the formula that has worked in the past. They can only hope it hasn’t reached its expiration date.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at: j.a.adande@latimes.com.