SUNDAY DRIVE

The Lakers play tonight at Staples Center to save their season, a routinely ponderous affair threatening now to end without a championship.

It once was unthinkable.

By nearly all impressions, both educated and hysterical, there would be a championship three-peat, then a victory parade through downtown, followed immediately by the blessing of Shaquille O’Neal’s and Kobe Bryant’s gym shoes.

Instead, the Lakers play to avoid their playoff elimination at the hands of the Sacramento Kings, whose fans fancy cowbells and detest L.A. All a victory would get the Lakers is a Game 7 on Sunday in Sacramento.

“It feels strange to think that, maybe, this is the last home game, and then saying goodbye to everybody and not seeing anybody again until October,” said Jeanie Buss, a team vice president and the owner’s daughter. “I’m not ready for that yet. I look at my calendar, it’s blank for the next couple weeks. I try not to take it for granted, but we’re spoiled.”

Indeed, they will play on the edge of a city’s car flag-flapping anxiety, the Lakers two championships into what many figured would mature into a dynasty in the cast of the legendary Boston Celtic teams of 40 years ago, or at minimum the Chicago Bulls of the last decade. While that still can come, the team of O’Neal, Bryant and Phil Jackson instead appears vulnerable, given over suddenly to the rigors of enormous expectations and physical distraction.

It was only getting better, too.

Jackson regrew his soul patch going into the playoffs. O’Neal and Bryant weren’t just speaking, they were carrying on together, playing together, using nicknames. Nice nicknames. O’Neal called him “Kobe-ster” the other day, as if they’d carpooled to prep school for these past six years.

The Lakers weren’t ever going to lose again, not the big games anyway, not as long as Phil spoke and Shaq and Kobe listened and played and Staples Center sold out.

So, what, exactly, are they doing here, seemingly so near to failure? Staples Center could lose more than $100,000 per game, and the businesses around the arena would be hit as well. Parade plans were underway, rentals made.

“It starts at a toe,” one Laker observer said.

And worked its way up.

It has been a trying spring, all things considered. The Lakers did not play particularly well in earlier series against the Portland Trail Blazers and San Antonio Spurs.

Jerry West, who came to the organization four decades ago and became franchise “royalty,” according to one team official, as player, coach and management, resigned between playoff rounds to run the Memphis Grizzlies.

And a small part on the biggest man, a toe on O’Neal’s right foot, changed the way the Lakers won. O’Neal has an arthritic big toe that sapped his mobility and, in one way or another, limited him to 67 games in an 82-game season. The big wins became difficult, and the difficult wins became excruciating. And some weren’t wins at all.

They practiced at their facility on Nash Street in El Segundo on Thursday afternoon, crowded by reporters seeking explanations, many the same ones who had handed the Lakers titles as long as Jackson had Bryant and O’Neal, and vice versa.

Asked about the consequences of a loss tonight, forward Rick Fox shook his head and said, “I don’t know. I can’t bring myself to think about that.... My mind doesn’t work that way.”

It was not supposed to be this uncertain, not after Jackson fired up the Porsche one morning and drove away from his lakeside place in Montana. He found love and coaching renewal and basketball championships in Los Angeles, which hadn’t won a title in those dozen years before he arrived with his triangle offense and Zen philosophies.

He’s won eight of the last 11 NBA titles, six of them with the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan, the last two with the Lakers and their superstars. The Lakers have won 13 titles in all, only three behind the Celtics, who are playing for the Eastern Conference championship.

In the Lakers, he has a team built for the playoffs. While Bryant is a warrior on every night, O’Neal has neither the body nor the spirit for the regular season, when the games come fast and, relatively speaking, meaningless. After losing six games to last-place teams in the course of that regular season, the Lakers did not win the Pacific Division championship. The Kings did, and therefore will host Game 7, assuming it is necessary, on Sunday afternoon.

“We’re not talking about three-peat,” Jackson said Thursday. “Of all the things we have talked about since day one, though, it’s difficult to get this thing. We’re just talking about the challenge we have.”

It has not ended yet, of course. But the most dominant team of the past two seasons has played itself to the threshold of that, to a delicate place where a referee’s call or a hot shooter or an unfortunate bounce won’t be overcome.

The Lakers last played an elimination game two years ago, in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals against the Trail Blazers, when they found themselves behind by 15 points in the fourth quarter. They won that game with uncommon effort, won the championship in the next round against the Indiana Pacers, and discovered a fight within themselves they talk about still.

“It’s supposed to be decided in Game 7,” Fox said.

That assumes a Laker win tonight against the Kings, who hold a three-games-to-two lead in the best-of-seven series.

“Things are clear,” Derek Fisher said Thursday. “You have to win or your season is over. There isn’t any room for complacency or, ‘We’ll get them next time.’ It all comes down to one game at this point.

“When you’re always battling to stay focused or keep your mind on one thing, there isn’t anything clearer than the position we’re in. That kind of brings a different type of energy, where you know you have to win. You don’t have a choice.”

They say they won’t back away from that challenge.

“We’re not feeling any pressure,” O’Neal said. “I think we’re right where we want to be. We have to win two games and then we can move on and start all over. We’re capable of putting two great games together.”

They’ll have the chance to prove it. O’Neal and Bryant have lifted them to great heights against the Kings at times, but the Lakers have displayed only occasionally the sort of flawless play that led many to believe a third consecutive championship was theirs for the taking.

One reason for the Lakers’ out-of-sync appearance is the Kings, whose depth and resolve have appeared superior thus far.

“Everybody’s hungry,” King guard Mike Bibby said. “We’ve had one goal since the beginning of the season and that was to get to the finals. Now we’re one win away from the finals and [five] wins away from the championship.”

Apart from the center position, where O’Neal has been better than Vlade Divac, and shooting guard, where Bryant has trumped Doug Christie, the Kings have been winning the individual matchups.

The unavoidable conclusion to be drawn from the first five games is that the Lakers have the two best players in O’Neal and Bryant, but the Kings are getting significantly more from players three through seven.

Bibby has run rings around Fisher at point guard. Bryant muzzled him for the latter portion of Game 4, but Jackson determined that Fisher, not Bryant, should check Bibby for Game 5. It was Fisher’s failure to get past Chris Webber’s pick that freed Bibby for his game-winning 22-foot jumper from the right wing.

Hedo Turkoglu, after a slow opening, has gained the upper hand on Fox at small forward. Webber has proved to be a handful for Robert Horry.

The Lakers have had no answer for Bobby Jackson, a reserve guard who won a last-second matchup with Bryant, denying him the winning bucket in the Kings’ one-point victory Tuesday at Arco Arena.

Plus, the Lakers now have to contend with the added burden of matching up with Peja Stojakovic, who sat out the first four games because of a sprained right ankle before returning to play limited minutes in Game 5.

King Coach Rick Adelman declined to say if he would alter his starting lineup tonight, but did say Stojakovic’s ankle is much improved.

“We know the last one is going to be the toughest,” Adelman said of trying to close out the Lakers and end their championship run. “We know it’s going to be difficult. They still have those two guys [Bryant and O’Neal]. We’re not going to wait for a seventh game, but at least we have two shots at it.”

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Times staff writer Jerry Crowe contributed to this story