Lakers start off strong with taste of what they've learned

As team mantras go, it was more about cheese than championships, but it's the only way to get there.

The Lakers stormed through Staples Center in the season opener Tuesday with a forearm-shivering statement that delighted the freebie-loving crowd.

Win One for the Tacos.

Yeah, this season is about defense, which Phil Jackson preached and the Lakers played, bumping and grinding their way to a 96-76 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers.

Yeah, that means this season is also about tacos, two of which were won by every fan Tuesday as the Lakers held the Trail Blazers to under 100 points and fulfilled the popular promotional promise.

"That's the most important thing around here, right?" said Sasha Vujacic. "The tacos?"

If they keep playing defense like this, in eight months they'll be delivering the whole enchilada.

"This is the type of thing we've been trying to do," said Kobe Bryant afterward with a sweaty grin.

So now we know how they spent the fourth months since last season's final meltdown against the Boston Celtics.

They copied them.

The last time we saw them, they were suffering an embarrassing 39-point defeat in the clinching Game 6 of the NBA Finals.

If you can't beat them, well, you know the rest.

This wasn't Showtime, it was Shove-time.

This wasn't the Lake Show, it was the Take Show.

They took the career debut from Greg Oden, who looked like some immature lug from the Southern Section, stumbling and bumbling against Andrew Bynum, and this was before he sprained his foot and finished with zero points.

They took the perimeter from Brandon Roy, the Blazers' All-Star who dried up under the Kobe lamp, going 0 for 6 in the first half and finishing with just five baskets in 15 attempts.

They took the middle from everyone else, with LaMarcus Aldridge and Channing Frye combining to go four for 19, Frye getting shut out in nearly 17 minutes.

"It was amazing, it was the first thing we talked about in training camp," said Vujacic. "If we want to win a championship, we have to play a better defense."

Besides the defense, there were several other early answers, all of them positive.

How does Bynum look? A little slow to the boards, a little grounded on ally-oops, but strong defensively with as many blocked shots -- three -- as the entire Blazers team.