Lakers still growing, and it can be painful

Countdown to a title, Lakers style:

16, 15, 14 -- Oops -- 13, 12 -- Say what? -- 11, 10 -- Yawn, bummer -- 9 -- Biff! Sock! -- 8, 7 -- Et tu, Nuggets? -- 6 -- Who turned out the lights?

Yes, things have changed since last spring . . . or last month . . . ending the notion of the Lakers as The Next Big Thing and Absolute Rulers of the West.

Remember their 17-2 start when talk show hosts and other excitable people said they'd win 70?

Remember when they won the West by 11 games and everyone thought their only test in the conference playoff draw would be Portland in the second round?

Now Lakers fans want to know one thing:

What in the name of the Jell-O jiggling inside the refrigerator happened to our team?

The refrigerator door isn't just open, the Nuggets -- you remember, the former rabble the Lakers swept in last spring's first round -- are helping themselves to the Jell-O.

OK, here's the answer:

The Lakers not only had a big opinion of themselves, which we figured out a while back, they're painfully young.

Mercifully, the arrogance is gone but the growing-up process continues.

"It's a different kind of group," says Derek Fisher, who played on the Lakers' champions in 2000, 2001 and 2002 with Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant.

"A lot of stock has been placed in Andrew [Bynum] and his potential at 21 years old -- where, compared to our teams in the past, the only guy near his early 20s who was being asked to do anything of major importance to us was Kobe.

"Now we're asking that of Trevor [Ariza] and Jordan [Farmar] and Andrew and Shannon [Brown], who's been here for two months, guy after guy, who are still trying to figure out where they fit in in this league, not to mention what their specific role is on this team.

"By the time we got to this level, Kobe and I were four-year guys, Shaq had been to the Finals and lost, and then we had Rick [Fox], and Rob [Horry] and Harp [Ron Harper] and this coaching staff. I mean, you had thousands of NBA games' experience, and players who had been through everything."

The current complex of problems first surfaced in last spring's Finals, with the Lakers coming in favored after blitzing through the West draw 12-3, and going out feet first.

Their ancient foe, the Celtics, ran them over, exposed them as marshmallow-soft and sent them home with a Game 6 humiliation to remember them by, but it didn't set off alarm bells among the Lakers.