Eddie Jones

Having too long lingered at the outer edges of an NBA title run, the Lakers took their shot at a championship on Wednesday, lined it up from deep distance and pulled the trigger. It will now be up to Glen Rice and the rest of this tossed-about team to see if the long fling swishes through--or bounds away wildly.

He has a low voice, and he mumbles all the time. Funny thing, though, when Shaquille O'Neal wants to be heard--across a continent, chest to chest with another 7-footer, under a roof shared by a host of roaring enemies--the man is heard. That's when the Lakers' centerpiece player roars.

Everybody goes through shooting slumps--it so happens that guard Eddie Jones has started this season in a serious shooting funk after hearing his name in trade rumors for the better part of a month. After a two-for-12 outing in the season-opener, Jones made only one of his 10 shot attempts against Utah on Sunday, and scored three points.

You hate to say it, they don't deserve it, in a perfect world it would have been a perfect bust. But evidently, we needed this. We needed to cheer a Shaquille O'Neal dunk, gasp at a Kobe Bryant layup, whoop at Eddie Jones, hoot at Charles Barkley, holler for the blindfolded guy trying to find the giant airplane boarding pass at halftime. We needed to clap like cornball tourists when Jack Nicholson showed up on the video scoreboard.

Coming when it did, and considering the participants involved, it was an intriguing, if brief, sideline chat Saturday during the Lakers' morning practice. About the time the Lakers learned their pursuit of free-agent forward Tom Gugliotta had not succeeded, Executive Vice President Jerry West pulled aside guard Eddie Jones, whom West offered to Minnesota in a sign-and-trade scenario. West spoke for a couple of minutes, Jones nodded, and then West smiled and tapped Jones on the rear.

A thousand rumors are running from agent to executive to player to reporter this tense weekend, and only 900 of them involve the Lakers, Scottie Pippen, Jerry West and Elden Campbell. The other 100 involve Eddie Jones, of course.

A look at the factors that made the difference in the Jazz's 99-95 victory over the Lakers: AT THE LINE The Lakers were the NBA's worst free-throw shooting team (making 67 percent of their shots) during the regular season, and the Jazz (71 percent) was the best.

If the playoffs are about "stepping up," then Eddie Jones has been on the Stairmaster the past couple of weeks. He has set career playoff highs in three of the Lakers' seven postseason games, capped by Friday night's 29-point performance in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals against Seattle. "I was just aggressive," Jones said. "Sometimes I'm not aggressive, but tonight I was just aggressive, coming out trying to get to the basket, trying to get open.

Eddie Jones accomplished one of his season-long goals, and the Lakers gained what they felt was a long-overdue measure of respect, as the NBA on Wednesday announced the all-defensive teams. Jones got the fourth-most votes at guard in balloting among head coaches, earning a spot on the second team with Mookie Blaylock as Michael Jordan and Gary Payton were again the top vote getters in the backcourt.

In this reader's poll, Bill Plaschke is way ahead in his election bid for village idiot. He tries to cite statistics in claiming Eddie Jones didn't show up for the Lakers' first playoff game against the Trail Blazers, a game he couldn't have watched. The only stats that Plaschke finds important are that Rider beat Jones in scoring, 25-14, and assists, 3-0. He claims that Rider "outhustled Jones for position." Eddie outrebounded Rider, 7-2. "Jones played like a man haunted." Really?