Lakers look for ways to maintain their edge

Rambis and Shaw played on Lakers teams that ran out to sparkling records and found ways to stay interested during the long, winding road of the regular season.

Rambis was a sharp-elbowed power forward on teams in the 1980s that started out 25-9, 24-10, 33-9 and 45-9 on the way to winning championships. Shaw was a veteran guard earlier this decade when the Lakers started out 31-5 and 28-9 before winning titles.

For them, it was never a problem to maintain an edge.

"I loved to compete, I loved to play hard and I loved to see the faces of the players that we played against, and see the frustration, the bewilderment, the lack of confidence," Rambis said. "We didn't believe in showing any team any mercy. I don't know how you could ever get bored just playing."

Shaw said there were plenty of ways to keep things interesting, should the present-day Lakers (27-6) need any, especially in the wake of a 116-105 loss Tuesday to New Orleans.

"I think you just have to find different challenges along the way," he said. "Best record in the division, best record in your conference, best record in the league, and just kind of keep track of the teams that are close behind you or ahead of you. There's also a motivation of trying to keep a [winning] streak going. Maybe one of the things is how many can we string together, little things like that."

Shaw was in his 11th NBA season when the Lakers won the 2000 championship, the first of three in a row for the franchise.

"The first year that we had success, most of the guys had never gone that far, so it wasn't that difficult to not be bored," Shaw said. "This team's a little bit different because they went to the Finals last year, so they have this tendency to be like, 'OK, we're in the regular season, when are we going to get to the good part and get to the playoffs?' "

Lakers Coach Phil Jackson would keep the 2000, 2001 and 2002 teams occupied with non-basketball activities, Shaw said.

"We were doing tai chi, yoga, we were meditating all the time," he said. "First, everybody was like, 'What's this that he has us doing?' We won 19 in a row, then we lost, then we won 16 in a row right after that. So it was like, maybe this stuff is working. Everybody bought into it."