Matchup Evens Up for O’Neal

Good luck, Rasho Nesterovic.

With the Lakers past Houston and 7-foot-5 Yao Ming, Shaquille O’Neal is back playing against players his own size, or height anyway, and the San Antonio Spurs are braced for trouble.

This has always been a tough matchup for O’Neal, who raised his game against everyone else in the playoffs. With David Robinson and Tim Duncan, the Spurs held O’Neal to 25.4 points a game and 50% shooting in four playoff meetings, below his 27.0 and 57% in the regular season.

Robinson has retired, replaced by Nesterovic, 7 feet and 255 pounds, who is in his third season in the league and signed as a free agent last summer. Before that, Nesterovic was the Minnesota center O’Neal squashed in last spring’s first round, when O’Neal averaged 29 points.

The Spurs were concerned with Nesterovic’s defense early in the season but have been pleased with his progress. His numbers have improved -- he averaged 8.8 points and 7.7 rebounds but 9.5 and 8.0 the last two months.

“You look at Rasho and he looks like a cupcake,” Spur Coach Gregg Popovich said. “He looks like you want to go slap him and say, ‘Hey, start working harder, will you? Knock somebody over....’

“He’s smart like David. His team defense is excellent. He gets right where we want him to be defensively and does all those other things -- scores a little bit, blocks shots a little bit, rebounds a little bit. Got good size, so he’s a good complement to Timmy.”

O’Neal will want to make mincemeat of Nesterovic, but after getting 35 points in this season’s first meeting, he got seven, 15 and 17 in the next three.

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In one game this season, Laker guard Gary Payton, the league’s most talkative player, went after Spur guard Manu Ginobili. Ginobili, an Argentine, speaks Italian and Spanish as well as English but had trouble making out what Payton was saying, although the tone was clear.

“I’m going to try and stay away [from Payton],” Ginobili said of Payton. “I’m not going to answer. Not that it’s going to affect my game, but it’s got nothing to do with what we have to do.”

How about replying in a language Payton doesn’t speak?

“It’s no fun,” Ginobili said, “because he can’t understand you so who’s going to laugh with me?”

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Despite Laker Coach Phil Jackson’s professed disdain for this “tourist trap,” Popovich said the Spurs will stay in Los Angeles between Games 3 and 4, since they’re only two days apart.

In the three days it took the league to announce a schedule, there was speculation they might play May 9 and then not until May 13, but it turned out to be May 9 and 11.

“We were going to come back if it was Sunday-Thursday because it’s just too long in a hotel,” Popovich said. “But now it’s Sunday-Tuesday, so it’d be ridiculous to come back.”