The Associated Press

Tuesday, May 23, 2000

Los Angeles – Shaq, Kobe and the rest of the Los Angeles Lakers won 67 regular-season games to earn homecourt advantage throughout the NBA playoffs. The Portland Trail Blazers took it away with a 20-0 third-quarter run that negated any reason for a Hack-a-Shaq repeat.

”I’ve never seen anything like that,” the Lakers’ Robert Horry said. ”You don’t know what happened, where it came from.”

With Rasheed Wallace on his best behavior, and at his best on the court, the Blazers routed the Lakers 106-77 Monday night to even the best-of-seven Western Conference finals 1-1. The series doesn’t resume until Friday in Portland.

”No one said it was going to be easy,” Shaquille O’Neal said. ”Now we’ve got our hands full.”

Wallace, thrown out of Game 1 for getting two technical fouls, had playoff career highs of 29 points and 12 rebounds. A graceful, powerful 6-foot-11 handful around the basket, he also has range. He made three 3-pointers in the decisive run.

”I think everybody realizes how much of a key he is to us,” Portland’s Steve Smith said. ”We’ve got to have him on the floor, and I think if you look at the way he played, we’re really going to struggle without him out there.”

The way the Blazers played the third quarter there was no reason for the ”Hack-a-Shaq” strategy that sent O’Neal to the line a playoff-record 25 times in the fourth quarter of Game 1. O’Neal was 5-for-17 from the line, but it was academic.

O’Neal, averaging 30.8 points in the playoffs, had 23 points and 12 rebounds, but 14 of his points came in the fourth quarter, when the Lakers never got closer than 18.

”Defensively, we did a lot of good things out there,” Portland coach Mike Dunleavy said. ”We were aggressive, much more so than we were last game.”

Kobe Bryant was the only other Los Angeles player in double figures with 12 points, but he was only 2-for-9 from the field.

The Lakers lost at home for the first time in eight playoff games and the second time in 26 games since losing to the Blazers on Jan. 22. Los Angeles is 43-6 at home.

Wallace, who drew his second technical in Game 1 for glaring at referee Ron Garretson, said he had no special motivation Monday night.

”I’m just going out there and playing,” Wallace said. ”My preparation for this game wasn’t any different than Game 1.”

Wallace had 11 points and five rebounds in the third quarter, when the Blazers outscored Los Angeles 28-8, tying the Lakers’ playoff low for that quarter and just two short of the NBA record-low for a third quarter, set by Atlanta against Boston on May 6, 1986.

”The first half was just awful and we were only down by three points,” Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. ”We certainly could play a better second half was my message to the team at halftime, and we went out and played worse.”

Scottie Pippen had 21 points and 11 rebounds for Portland. He scored 17 points in the first half as the Blazers took a tenuous 48-45 lead. Smith scored 24 for the Blazers, who are 3-3 against Los Angeles this season and the only team to win twice on the Lakers’ court.

”My mindset was to attack,” Pippen said, ”establish that we weren’t going to be a jump-shooting team.”

The Lakers made just two of 15 shots in the third quarter and were outrebounded 14-5, even though O’Neal played the entire 12 minutes. Bryant said it was the best defense, and the worst quarter, the Lakers experienced all season.

Brian Shaw’s 3-pointer cut Portland’s lead to 56-51 with six minutes left in the third, but it would be the Lakers’ last field goal of the quarter.

Smith’s inside basket started the run and Wallace’s third 3-pointer ended it, putting the Blazers ahead 76-51 with 8.5 seconds left in the quarter.

”They pressed the ball and drove to the hoop and put us in foul situations,” Jackson said. ”They had us back on our heels.”

Bryant’s two free throws with 1.3 seconds allowed the Lakers to avoid tying the NBA playoff record for lowest-scoring third quarter and made it 76-53 going into the fourth.

”We got a little desperate in the middle of the third quarter,” Jackson said, indicating he should have called timeout. ”I take credit for this. I left them to hang out to dry a little bit too long and try and find their own way back out of that morass, and they just couldn’t find their way out.”