Lakers Now in a Position to Get Playoff Home Run

This wasn’t about speech or psychology. It was about math.

There have been a lot of questions put to the Lakers this week about what statements they wanted to make to the Sacramento Kings and Minnesota Timberwolves, as if these were debates and not games. Reporters wanted to know whether they could gain a mental edge over their two potential playoff rivals by beating them convincingly.

Leave the speechwriting to Jesse Jackson and the head games to Dr. Phil. The reality is the Lakers -- for reasons ranging from their opponents’ maturity to Kobe Bryant’s sexual assault case in Colorado -- need home-court advantage in the playoffs more than they have at any time since their 2000 championship run.

“It matters a lot,” Shaquille O’Neal said. “We know we have to stay dominant at home, but we know we have to get some games on the road.... If we play like this, we should be on the way.”

And their victories over Sacramento and now Minnesota at the crest of a seven-game winning streak have put them in a position to get it.

The Lakers (49-23) trail the Western Conference-leading Kings (51-21) by only two games with one head-to-head meeting left. And they moved a half game ahead of the Timberwolves (49-24) for the second-best record.

The Lakers need to keep this run going just to secure home-court advantage in the first round, which isn’t locked up. Bryant has a series of pretrial hearing dates scheduled for April 26-28. Game 5 of the first round would probably be played on one of those days.

He already has shown how vital he is, even when he has to travel back and forth to Colorado. He dropped 36 points on the Kings on Wednesday after spending the day in court. After another early-morning flight to Eagle County on Thursday, followed by a trip home, he still had enough in his legs to go for 35 against the Timberwolves on Friday.

Having home-court would allow Bryant to fly West from Colorado and pick up an hour as he crosses time zones. If the Lakers were playing a game in the Central time zone, he would lose an hour.

(The next set of hearings is scheduled for May 10-14; that would probably fall during the middle of the second round of the playoffs.)

Then there’s the basketball. They can’t expect to jump out to the early series lead just on merit anymore.

In 2002 and 2003, the Lakers went to Sacramento and Minnesota and won the first game of the series on the road. In both cases, the opponents didn’t look ready to handle the pressure, didn’t understand what it took to win games at this higher level. The Lakers looked like defending champions.

The Lakers aren’t the champions, and the Kings and Timberwolves aren’t novices, either. The Lakers won’t be able to swagger their way to victories.

And there’s this to remember: The Lakers are barely above .500 (20-18) on the road this season, and they’ve lost in every other Western Conference arena except Phoenix and San Antonio. Phoenix has the worst record in the conference, and the Lakers needed double-overtime to win their first game in San Antonio when the Spurs were without the injured Tim Duncan.

But it isn’t so much about the Lakers on the road as it is the home court’s boost to their potential foes.

The Timberwolves are one of six teams in the league with a winning road record, but they’re a more confident and powerful team at Target Center.

Minnesota shoots 47.3% at home, and was shooting 45.7% on the road coming into Friday’s game. They came out and connected on only 31.8% of their shots in the first quarter, 31.4% for the game. A good portion of that was due to the Lakers’ newfound attention to defense. They held the Timberwolves to 73 points, about 20 below their season average.

Defense has always been about effort, design and communication, and lately the Lakers have shown a commitment to all three.

“I think guys have been waiting all year to [turn] up the energy level and this is the time to do it,” Coach Phil Jackson said. “We talk about the opportunity, the opportunity has presented itself.”

And for the first time in more than three months, the Lakers are almost fully equipped to take advantage.

Friday, the Lakers had enough other things going right, including another impressive performance in the middle from O’Neal, to make it work out.

Only the Lakers could have so much stuff going on at once. Before the game, Jackson spent a minute and a half answering questions about a Native American drum he was beating at shoot-around before he addressed the meaty topics of the “impermanence” of this and every other sports team.

Karl Malone answered questions about his retirement ruminations and the other off-season decisions that could scatter this group in the summer.

Through it all, Gary Payton and O’Neal had a debate over the color of Shaq’s Hummer. Payton called it black, O’Neal insisted it was burgundy. It went from one corner of the locker room to the other, then on into the trainer’s room.

Then the team went out and played another impressive game, another headshaking display of their ability to play ball despite arguments large and small.

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