Better Days Are Ahead

DALLAS —  You know things are funky in Lakerland when the night begins with a question about Jamal Sampson’s injury and ends with a question about Brian Cook’s injury -- thus occupying the time normally spent discussing Shaquille O’Neal’s, Kobe Bryant’s and Karl Malone’s injuries -- and when their best stretch of basketball in a week came in a quarter in which they were outscored, 30-23.

Beware of taking anything from this game at face value. The Dallas Mavericks, winners by a 106-87 score, didn’t achieve much other than satisfying the basic requirements.

That No. 34 jersey hanging in O’Neal’s locker wasn’t an indication of anything, either. It turned out to be a mistake by the Dallas equipment managers, who washed all available Laker jerseys and hung them up without knowledge of their playing status.

O’Neal said he hoped to return for the Seattle game Wednesday at Staples Center.

At least he appeared ready to come off the mood list. He has jokingly gone through a routine the past couple of days in which he makes fun of the criticism he has taken recently, remarks that he is a bum, that he can’t play, that his nickname should be changed from “Diesel” to “Weasel.”

He walked around with a ring the size of a hood ornament on his left ring finger, a diamond-studded platinum piece with the Superman logo.

“I’m trying to get my powers back,” O’Neal said.

In other mood-list transactions, Devean George can resume walking with his head up after scoring 24 points, throwing down two dunks, getting to the free-throw line nine times and shoving Maverick center Shawn Bradley.

“I tried to get myself going, just trying to help the team, because I know I really haven’t been doing that the last few weeks,” George said.

Gary Payton is somewhere in the middle, trying not to get too frustrated, trying to keep his teammates involved and keep their spirits up, while relying on fellow veterans Derek Fisher and Bryon Russell to keep himself up.

“I guess we’ve just got to hang with it,” Payton said.

Phil Jackson is just trying to ride all of this out like Tom Hanks floating on the raft in “Cast Away.”

And he might as well be sunburned with a scraggly beard, because you’d hardly recognize this guy who keeps jumping off the bench to call timeouts at the slightest sign of trouble.

Jackson has been knocked off his perch, so much that he actually found himself feeling the pain of reporters’ daily lives.

When Jackson was asked how he is coping with these difficult days: “You work things out in your subconscious -- as you guys all know because you have your personal lives and your stress with your editors and you guys have deadlines to meet and these kinds of things that are taxing Schedules to meet and airplanes to catch and all those security checks you have to go through at the airport.”

This was the same Jackson who is notorious for making reporters wait outside the locker room long past the league-mandated 10-minute cooling off period after games. He’s the guy who earlier this season said, “I don’t know how you guys in the media can stand yourselves sometimes. I hate to even talk to you in one group ... as media.”

Now he actually sounded as if he were sympathetic to our lives.

“I am,” Jackson said.

Hmm, he could use a few more of these losing streaks.

I’m even starting to feel a little sorry for him now that all of these hyenas around the league are cackling that Jackson doesn’t look so great without all of these superstars.

We’re all in a big mess together now; he’s short on answers and we’re running out of questions to ask him about this injury-depleted team. That might explain why the first thing Jackson was asked in his pregame gathering was: “Can you give us a Jamal Sampson update?”

You’ll be happy to know that an X-ray on Sampson’s sprained right ankle was negative.

“I guess that’s good news for us,” Jackson said.

Yeah, guess you have to take it where you can find it.

It might have been better if Sampson actually felt well enough to play. Instead Jackson started Luke Walton at power forward.

The Lakers, almost predictably, fell behind by 17 in the first half.

They trailed by 13 at halftime when they went on a 19-6 run to tie the score on a Slava Medvedenko jump shot with eight minutes left in the third quarter.

“It felt good,” George said. “It’s like, ‘OK, we’re back. This is where it ends. We’re going to finish this game.’ But somehow we just lost focus again.”

They began to settle for jump shots and let the game turn into a shooting contest. Big mistake.

The Mavericks scored 24 of the next 28 points to close the quarter and secure the victory. The Lakers’ had nothing to show for their four minutes of hard effort.

“I told them that it was a good comeback, but it’s not enough,” Jackson said. “It’s a 48-minute game in the NBA.”

It’s an 82-game season too. And next up is Utah on Saturday night. Even though Horace Grant is expected to return after spending the week with his ailing father in Georgia, now the Lakers will be missing another big man because Cook sprained his right pinkie finger.

That means we’re basically back to where we started.

“Can you give us a Jamal Sampson update?”

*

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande go to latimes.com/Adande.