Road to Respect Gets Much Harder

The soft part of the Laker schedule -- only three games away from Staples Center in the month of December -- will disappear early in the new year, road games in San Antonio and Dallas, two-thirds of the “Texas Triangle,” beckoning Tuesday and Wednesday.

“You don’t see me jumping up clicking my heels,” Laker Coach Rudy Tomjanovich said.

The Lakers were 5-4 in games this month at Staples Center, among them a “road” game against the Clippers and eight home games. They were 1-2 in their three games away from Staples Center, losing to Chicago and Seattle, and defeating Sacramento.

The Lakers play Denver on Sunday at Staples Center before heading to San Antonio, which is 14-1 at SBC Center this season, and Dallas on consecutive nights.

“That’s your test right there,” Tomjanovich said.

*

The Lakers have four days between games, providing plenty of time for analysis and perspective between now and Sunday.

Under particular scrutiny will be the Lakers’ penchant for three-point shooting. The Lakers set a team record Saturday with 36 three-point attempts.

“That’s something over this time off I’m going to really look at,” Tomjanovich said. “I’ve got to analyze that whole situation.

“We have gone though a tape and looked at the possessions and talked about the offense and all that and said, ‘You know, hey, that was good, that was good,’ and in our notes as a staff have not come up with, ‘We took too many [three-pointers].’ But at the end, when we looked at a stat sheet, the feeling was that number sort of scares you.”

*

The Lakers are 2-4 in games decided by four or fewer points, a stat Tomjanovich has pondered “just about a thousand-million times.”

“I’ve struggled with it at times,” he said. “It could be so different. This season right now could be so different with a possession here, a possession there.

“This isn’t just about the players learning. I’m learning about our guys every day.”

*

The Lakers’ Christmas Day game against the Miami Heat delivered a final national rating of 7.3 with a 21 share of the audience, according to ABC.

That’s the highest national rating for a regular-season NBA game since March 8, 1998, when a game between the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls and the New York Knicks earned a 7.4/14.