Ted Green: To win or not to win, it’s fate, er, fait accompli for the Lakers

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C’mon, admit it: If you’ve followed the Lakers all season, you’re thinking the same thing I am. They don’t need to defend better, box out harder or focus more intently. They all need SAG cards.

Kobe, talk to Jack. Lamar, see Denzel. Pau, meet Penny. I’m sure they can hook you up.

Because for Utah and the two other Western series that follow, what the Lakers are going to need most are acting lessons so they can convincingly pretend that something or someone is actually standing between them and LeBron James in the NBA Finals.

I’m not sure Pacino, DeNiro or Brando invoking The Method could win an Oscar for this role. The script just isn’t believable.

In other words, even if the Lakers have no acting chops, nothing is going to help Utah in this series. Not the ghost of Larry Miller, not Mehmet Okur and his Turkish cigarettes, not the three refs who’ll try to help them in Salt Lake City. Not even Karl Malone and John Stockton, suiting up in his short shorts, could save Jerry Sloan, who needs a cigarette and blindfold more than he does a whistle and clipboard.

Jerry Sloan, meet Sean Penn. Dead Men Walking.

In less than a week, Sloan is going to be back on his John Deere tractor, plowing the back 40. Personally, working where I do, I don’t see anything so terribly bleak about a five-month paid vacation.

So once the Lakers finish this exercise in selling TV ad time called Lakers-Jazz, whether it’s Houston with Yao playoff games that look remarkably like Game 1 against Utah. Which is to say, flashes of Lakers brilliance, featuring patchy but spectacular glimpses of the Lake Show in full effect, followed by stretches of apathy, vulnerability and even palpable disinterest as 20-point leads get whittled all the way down to, gasp!, 7 or 9.

It’s the Western Conference Playoffs, also known as Groundhog Day. Phil Jackson, meet Bill Murray and your namesake, Punxsutawney Phil.

Like all the rest of us, the Lakers have been so conditioned to believe it’s going to be Kobe vs. LeBron in the Finals (making Commissioner David Stern kvell like he hasn’t since MJ was in his heyday), they’re going to spend the next six weeks fighting the same thing their fans are.

And that is, plain old ennui. No, it’s not a hockey player from Saskatchewan, it’s defined as ‘listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest; boredom.’

Because they’re human and these are the playoffs and a certain three letter cable network knows drama, I’m sure there’ll be a moment or three when it’s nervous time. We’ll all fondly remember Chick and for every one of us spoiled Lakers fans, both operators and paramedics will be standing by.

But here’s the only other French expression I am familiar with. Fait accompli. We all know one when we see one.

-- Ted Green

Ted Green formerly covered the Lakers for the L.A. Times. He is currently senior sports producer for KTLA Prime News.