All that glitter isn’t close to gold for these Lakers

These are not your same Lakers.

A lack of class or an inferiority complex?

Midway through the first quarter, the Lakers announced to the crowd, “this just in from Miami,” while showing Shaq walking off the court in defeat on the overhead scoreboard and eliminated from the playoffs -- like “ha, ha, Shaq we lasted a game longer than you” means anything.

Who cares what is going on with Shaq? Get over it.

No, these are not your same Lakers -- a seventh-seeded team in need of a miracle two years in a row now to even think about hanging another banner.

When it came time for pregame introductions and the underdog Lakers needing everything the crowd had, as Phil Jackson had asked in the hopes it might energize his team, the Lakers replayed the same highlights on the sheets hanging from the scoreboard along with the same battle cry from three days ago: “Represent.”

Thanks for the effort.

How about representing the entertainment capital the way people around here would expect?

The Lakers gave away gold T-shirts for the first playoff game, giving Staples Center that decisive home-court feel. Sunday they gave each fan an empty Pepsi glass with a glitter bottom. You can just imagine how that shook up the Suns, 18,000 people waving their glittering Pepsi glasses at them.

The message to fans and players from Lakers management was unmistakable: Our hearts just aren’t in this.

The loudest cheers of the night were for Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when shown sitting in the crowd, and I might’ve handed Magic a microphone and asked him to challenge players and fans.

“I am angry,” Magic said. “You have to compete. And we’re not competing. You can just see the Lakers’ frustration. No one is welcoming anyone to the bench. Guys are sitting there, wandering off into the crowd, defeated. We’ve got to get that look off our faces and play basketball the way it’s supposed to be played. If not, the series won’t get back to Los Angeles.”

Magic said that, all right, in USA Today -- three years ago. It was the last time that the Lakers had a really good chance of winning a title, down 2-1 at the time to Detroit with both Shaq and Kobe in Lakers uniforms.

They haven’t been the same since, Magic’s words getting nowhere with Shaq and Kobe, but making one wonder now, if he talked to these Lakers in the same way, whether Brian Cook and Sasha Vujacic might break down in tears.

Where’s the grit, the camaraderie or consistent effort that allows a team to overcome the odds stacked against them? The Lakers haven’t been much of a team all season, Smush going his own way, and every one of them lacking the killer instinct of teams of old -- losing to one crummy team after another.

Now they have to try to beat a really good team in Phoenix with the kind of collective effort they make movies about. Remember the Titans?

Oh, that’s right, they weren’t professional athletes. Chris Mihm and Vladimir Radmanovic were in street clothes and sitting a row behind the Lakers’ bench. Mihm and Radmanovic joined their teammates during timeouts -- that lasting about a quarter until they apparently became too tired to stand up any longer, staying where they were and laughing it up. So much for all hands on deck.

Mihm rallied in the fourth quarter, at one point joining his team, but Radmanovic had already called it quits.

Hard to ask the paying public to give it their all when the guys who should really care don’t appear to give a rip.

The Lakers just had to have a win in Game 4, any way they could. And just like the wild-card Angels who were urged on by Thunderstix while winning the 2002 World Series, the home team needed every bit of momentum going their way.

But the Lakers, the storied franchise that it once was, treated it as if it were just another home game Sunday, and so when Lawrence Tanter, the voice of the Lakers, announced late into the afternoon, “Here we go, the fourth and final quarter,” he should have kept going and said, “the fourth and final quarter this season in Staples Center.”

“They were the better team than we were today,” Jackson said later.

There’s no question on almost any day this season the Suns were the better team, but the better team doesn’t always win -- even when staked to an 11-0 lead as the Suns were the other night here.

If it just came down to the best team winning, UCLA would never have beaten USC. It takes something extra to pull off the upset, something magical such as a raucous environment that shakes the confidence right out of the superior team.

Lamar Odom understood that, raising his arms to bring fans to their feet in the third quarter, then playing as aggressively as he has ever played in a Lakers uniform. He got a rebound, added a tip-in off his miss at the other end, the noise increasing, and then drove to the hoop to score while getting fouled.

The crowd roared, and the Suns began to become unglued. Odom added a dunk, and came right back to grab another rebound. The impossible now seemed possible.

Then Smush misfired from three-point range, and who am I kidding?

These guys were never good enough to beat Phoenix under any circumstances, with rally towels, pompoms or noisemakers.

Makes you wonder why any of us showed up Sunday, doesn’t it?

BEFORE THE game, Jackson was asked if he was going to activate Radmanovic.

“That’s what John [Black] and I were talking about coming down the hall,” Jackson said.

I asked him if he’d make the final decision, or would it be up to Black, the team’s publicity director?

“He’s the one who signs” the final sheet turned into the league, Jackson said, and just what does this guy do for his $10 million a year?

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T.J. Simers can be reached at

[email protected]. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/ simers.