If the Defense Stays Poor, Forget About a Title Run

Now that the Lakers are back in Los Angeles, their real journey has to start.

It’s the voyage to playoff form, a realm they haven’t visited since early December.

They’re in the midst of a stretch of nine games at Staples Center in two weeks, as many home games as they’ve played in any single month this season.

But as much as they need to rack up the victories to secure an upper seed in the playoffs, they need to ramp up to postseason-ready play.

Lost in all of the dramatics from Monday night, when Kobe Bryant brought the Lakers back from a 15-point deficit in the fourth quarter against the Orlando Magic, was this little detail: The Lakers had a 15-point deficit in the fourth quarter against the lowly Magic.

That’s not the sign of a championship team in the making. Neither was Orlando’s 61-point first half. Or the fact that the Lakers’ two largest overall comeback victories this season, from 18 and 19 points down, came against the Magic.

That would be the same Magic battling for lottery ping-pong balls with the Chicago Bulls for the worst record in the NBA.

The Lakers’ 106-103 victory over the lottery-bound Clippers Wednesday night represented only a slight improvement.

The Lakers were a missed three-pointer by Keyon Dooling away from having to play overtime without Shaquille O’Neal, who fouled out.

“We had a meltdown mentally in the second half,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said.

They want to be the best team in the league? Right now they’re barely the best team in the city. They own a 2-1 record against the Clippers, with the two victories coming by a combined five points.

Offense isn’t the problem. The Lakers shot 55% and had balanced scoring all night, starting with a first quarter in which every starter made three field goals.

But their defense is abysmal. Four of the last five Laker opponents have scored above both their season averages and the league average of 93.2 points.

“We’ve got to determine what we’re going to do on the pick and roll,” Karl Malone said. “Because teams are going to do that to us. We have assignments that we’re supposed to do, and we just don’t do them. Teams are going to run pick and roll, because we haven’t proven consistently that we can stop that.”

That wasn’t the only problem Wednesday.

“Baseline,” Malone said. “Posting up. Big guys, we’ve got to communicate better to help our guards out.”

Gary Payton said the day before that communication was the problem, but with more practices they will get that down.

Payton said a lot Wednesday. Two and a half weeks after he stood in the locker room at Washington for a 7 1/2-minute breakdown of why he was unhappy with his role in the offense and his playing time, he held court at the Lakers’ practice facility, spending the same amount of time explaining why he was at peace with his place on the Lakers.

Sound conflicting? Payton can be that way, sometimes within the same sentence.

“I’m in a good mood every day ... every now and then,” Payton said.

The day after Bryant took almost every shot down the stretch, Payton said he just had to go with the flow.

“I’ve got to stay focused on what I can do other than stay in the offense, like getting rebounds, playing good defense, getting steals and trying to help other people on the basketball court,” Payton said. “That’s what I have to focus on. I can’t focus on just trying to get my offense right. I knew that was going to be a sacrifice anyway. What I’m trying to do is now, we’re focusing on trying to win a championship. So I’ve got to think about other things I can do for this basketball team instead of trying to score points in the offense. If I worry about that, it’s going to be a problem. But if i do other things and get other things happening, it’s going to be OK.”

He sounded as if it’s time to stop worrying about his own play and start thinking about the playoffs. That attitude needs to spread throughout the team.

Jackson is close to having his full roster in place. Right now the only missing element is Horace Grant, out for an undetermined time because of a problematic hip injury. He needs to start shrinking the rotation to playoff size, start leaning on the starters and forgoing the reserves. Now that he has all four future Hall of Famers available, it’s a mystery why he doesn’t keep at least two of them on the court at all times. He often sends only one into the action at the start of the second and fourth quarters. It nearly cost them against Orlando on Monday night.

We’ve seen what the reserves have to offer, and other than Kareem Rush and some occasional flashes from Luke Walton, it isn’t much.

At least the Lakers didn’t need a miraculous comeback this time. They were up by as many as 17 points and in this case the Lakers’ cushy lead for most of the night afforded them a little levity. In the third quarter O’Neal was fouled and fell to the floor dramatically. Bryant and Malone stood over him and laughed, waiting and doing nothing, implying that he’d have to get up by himself.

It’s the Lakers who need to get up off their backs and get going, starting with defense.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.