Lakers Keep Backs to the Wall

They must win Game 4 if they want to survive, or so their coach tells them, imploring them to play like the desperate team they are.

The Phoenix Suns? Not quite. They’re irritated by the Lakers’ physical play and lamenting the fact they don’t have more size, but nothing more dramatic than that.

It’s on the Laker side, surprisingly, that desperation is being thrown around as the buzzword, the importance of today’s playoff game hammered into psyches not by movie clips but by Phil Jackson’s words.

“Coach said it’s a must-win game for us,” Kwame Brown said. “It’s a desperation game for us. I was thinking like it’s got to be a desperation game for them, but he said if they win, they get back home-court advantage.”

It’s all in the Zen, once again.

Jackson has kept a step ahead of the run-and-fun Suns by developing a game plan of strength and a slow-down pace, a blueprint that has carried the Lakers to a 2-1 edge in the best-of-seven series.

There have been skirmishes, elbows and shoves, a very un-Laker attitude throughout a mostly polite season. There has been ball-sharing and balanced scoring to offset the speed of the Suns, who seem to have slowed overnight, held to an average of 92.5 points over the last two games, almost 16 below their regular-season average. The Lakers appear to know when and where the double teams are coming, as Kobe Bryant and Lamar Odom take turns hitting open teammates.

“He pretty much gave us the answers to all the tests,” Brown said of Jackson.

Said Bryant: “You don’t get nine championships by accident. He’s extremely well-prepared. He studies the game more than any coach I’ve ever seen. We just go out there and do what we’re told.”

The winning has led to new monikers, with Sasha Vujacic now being called “Big Shot Sasha” by some teammates for his sudden three-point acumen. He led the league through three playoff games with his .750 accuracy (six for eight) from beyond the arc.

It has led to youth being served, with Brown, Luke Walton, Smush Parker and the 26-year-old Odom becoming difference-makers.

It has created a fire that hasn’t been stoked in a while, even overshadowing that of the 2004 playoff team that lost in the Finals to Detroit, Bryant said.

“This group here is hungrier than the group that we had before for the simple fact that we have so many guys individually who have a lot to prove,” Bryant said. “Then you add that into a collective effort and that’s why you see a lot of energy and you see a lot of tenaciousness.”

Tenacity, indeed.

Very few Laker starters practiced Saturday, the series already taking a toll.

Bryant had a big bag of ice wrapped around his right knee. Odom received electro-stimulation therapy on his right ankle for what he called a tweak. Brown and Parker rested minor aches.

All of them will play today, but, as Brown said, “We’re a little sore.”

So are the Suns, but not as much in the physical sense.

Sun guard Steve Nash was critical of Brown because he glowered over a fallen Boris Diaw after toppling him during a loose ball.

“It wasn’t necessarily worthy of a sportsmanship award,” Nash said.

There’s also a size difference that has made the Suns wonder if things would be different with injured Kurt Thomas (stress fracture in foot) and Amare Stoudemire (knee surgery).

“We are who we are,” Sun Coach Mike D’Antoni said. “We became very small after Kurt and Amare went down. I don’t think all of a sudden we’re going to get bigger and stronger in the next few days.

“So what do we do? We have to be more efficient offensively. We have to keep running. We have to hit big shots. We have to just calm down a little bit and when the opportunity presents itself, strike at them and hit them and then get away with a win.”

Exactly what Jackson realizes. There’s a reason he’s trying to make the team with a 2-1 edge the desperate one.

“Phoenix only has to come in here and win one game and they’re right back exactly where they want to be,” Jackson said. “That’s all they came to L.A. to do is win a game, put themselves back in home-court advantage. We’ve really done nothing yet to be that proud of ourselves.”