Lakers’ Win Is in the Nick of (Over)time

HOUSTON — There goes the neighborhood.

Nick Van Exel, the Houston resident, brought the Rockets, the Houston basketball team, to their knees Friday, if they weren’t there already, doing serious damage to his chances of getting an invitation to the next block party in the process.

So maybe this will have to do as a substitute, showing his Laker teammates a good time inside the Compaq Center, about 25 miles from his new home, with 35 points and six three-point baskets to guide them to a 113-103 double-overtime victory before 16,285.

A 7-0 record came with it, putting the Lakers in position to tie the best start in team history with a victory Sunday over the Vancouver Grizzlies at the Forum. As it is, they are 4-0 on the road for the first time since 1985-86 and have already bettered the best winning streak from last season, six.

The gut-check victory came after the Lakers wasted an 18-point lead in the third quarter and withstood Charles Barkley’s 16-foot fall-away at the buzzer that forced the second overtime.

Van Exel scored seven of the Lakers’ 12 points in the second overtime. He led them in the first five-minute extra period too, scoring five of their 10. And in the fourth quarter, with nine points, none as big as the 26-foot three-point basket with 6.9 seconds left that made the score 91-91 after the big lead had completely eroded. None as big all night.

His 35 points was his personal best for the young season and tied Clyde Drexler of the Rockets for game-high honors. His six three-pointers, in 11 tries, marked the second time this season he has done that well from behind the arc, though it’s still two behind his club record. His 44 minutes came a night after playing 38 with a bothersome back injury at San Antonio. His six assists came against only one turnover.

“He delivered,” Coach Del Harris said. “And delivered. And delivered. And delivered. He was fantastic.”

He also wasn’t alone.

Shaquille O’Neal may have aggravated his abdominal muscle, but he still played 50 minutes and came within two assists of a triple-double, finishing with 24 points and 13 rebounds while helping to hold Hakeem Olajuwon to four points on two-of-11 shooting, tying the second-worst offensive output of a dream career.

Eddie Jones played 48 minutes for his second consecutive long night and contributed 19 points and four steals. Robert Horry, the former Rocket, made only two of 10 shots but grabbed 12 rebounds.

The Lakers as a whole? Forty-eight minutes of regulation, 10 minutes of overtime . . . and 13 turnovers. The only place where they really struggled was the defensive boards in the second half--Houston got back in the game thanks to a 20-2 charge that included eight second-chance points--but the outcome could wash away much of that tarnish.

“Back-to-back overtime wins,” Harris said after the Lakers became the first team to beat all three Texas teams in the same trip since the Golden State Warriors in December 1992. “You’ve got to love that. That is going to help the maturity process of our team. That’s great.

“We could have excused it [a loss] away. We could have said this was our fourth game in six nights. Houston’s a great team. We’re young. Two out of three ain’t bad for Texas. That’s what we could have said.

“We had the trap door, the back door. But we didn’t take it. We didn’t take the easy way out.”

Added Horry, the ex-Rocket who also still makes his permanent residence in Houston: “Even though we came in with back-to-back games, we had fresher legs. And it came down to Nick having fresher legs than anybody.”

Van Exel, of course, is only the latest problem for the Rockets. They publicly bickered over shot selection in the final possessions of a recent game, had the kiss-and-make-up session in which no one retracted any of the statements but only regretted that they were not made behind closed doors. That crisis having allegedly been resolved, they then got run out Compaq Center, the new name of the Summit, by the Philadelphia 76ers.

By late Friday night, even after 22 rebounds and 15 points by Barkley, they were 3-4, marking the worst start of the Olajuwon era and the first time the Rockets had been below .500 since Jan. 10, 1992. At least the latest difficulty came with a consolation.

They’ll know where to find Van Exel in the off-season.