To be honest, there's not a lot to add about this game than what you'll see in the column in Saturday's paper: That the Cavaliers outworked the Lakers, the Lakers were generally bad (the bench particularly so) and that the Lakers lost their cool in pretty spectacular fashion.

But here are a few postgame comments that didn't make it into that column:
Phil Jackson, on Shaquille O'Neal, who had 11 points and seven rebounds (and on the officiating):
"He definitely had a presence in the game. ... I do know that he was a factor on Kobe. Shaq knocked him over a few times without even a call. Whether he went straight up or right into Kobe, that's the referee's job to make that determination. But he was definitely a presence out there

O'Neal, on the Cavs' showing:
"I'm not surprised. We konw we can match up well with anybody. I felt yesterday that it was going to be a good test for us. ... Most of the games we have lost, we have beat ourselves. Today we came out, we stepped up to the challenge."

LeBron James on the defense of the Cavs, who held the Lakers to 36.5 percent shooting:
"I think it ranks up there just because of the caliber of team and the caliber of players that they have and (it's) on the road. I think you could definitely rank this up there as one of the best ones we've had this year. But that's just us. Defensively, we fly around. We help each other. Everyone did a wonderful job of communicating, trusting the system and just being aggressive."

Pau Gasol, on needing more balanced scoring (Bryant had 35 points Friday; the other four starters combined for 35 points):
"Everybody has to be conscious of what we have to do out there to have a balanced game. That's how you're supposed to do it. You can't expect it to happen. ... We can't cruise and expect things to come our way just because we have such high quality of players."

First off, to anyone who happens by the blog today, Merry Christmas.

It is, of course, a work day in the NBA, and for those of us who follow it. And so, as the Lakers and Cavaliers prepare to meet, Phil Jackson was asked about between the Shaquille O'Neal he coached and the one now in a Cavs jersey.
"Well, he could run a 10-flat 100-yard dash back then," said Jackson. "Now he's about 12. ... So he's slowed down a little bit. He still has the power. You've got to be careful around him in the lane, and he's going to get to the middle and he's going to do some things."
One of the writers asked if Jackson didn't mean that was Shaq's time in the 60, not the 100.
"I wouldn't demean Shaq's capabilities like that," Jackson said, smiling.
The Lakers coach was asked, given a roster including O'Neal and LeBron James, if the Cavs didn't have personnel suited to the triangle offense.
"They get into it a lot," he said. "You're going to notice that tonight, that they get into an overload on the sideline and they run a triangle. They don't call it a triangle. But they'll be in that format a lot tonight."
From the TV department: Jackson -- who often tweaks TV's influence over the NBA -- was asked if a five-game Christmas Day schedule wasn't watering down the product.
"Tomorrow we'll know the ratings," he said, drily. "That will tell the story. I'm sure the NBA is hoping for great ratings."

A few odds and ends from Thursday's Lakers practice:
-- Pau Gasol thinks the NBA's Christmas Day games were on TV when he was growing up in Spain, but he's not sure.
"We didn't really watch much TV on Christmas," he said. "It was a day we spent totally with the family and gifts. ... Our parents did not want the TV on. It was forbidden."
It was OK, on the other hand, to actually go out and play a little basketball
"Yeah, you can do that," he said. "That was acceptable, if it wasn't too cold."
-- Unlike a lot of players, Derek Fisher doesn't really mind playing on Christmas Day.
"I think it would be more weird to not work on Christmas," he said. "... I think for a lot of guys, you realize how special it is to be in the business and be on that stage. ...
"I think the amount of gifts my kids receive, they could care whether I'm there or not to play with them, because they have quite a lot. So I think that part is covered. Santa will do his job, and everybody will be happy."
-- Phil Jackson, on the other hand, doesn't really love the Christmas game.
"It's become part of the business," he said. "You never really want to get used to routines, but it's a routine that seems to be elevated, so it's kind of like a keynote part of the season. ...
"Fortunately for me, I have a family that will travel and come down to where we're playing, usually. So it's made the day OK."
On the other hand, he noted, it's not as if holiday games are anything new: "I think we played on every holiday there was a year ago -- Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Easter, Mother's Day, Martin Luther King Day."
-- Jackson and Kobe Bryant said the knee Bryant appeared to have injured in Tuesday's game with Oklahoma City is not a big issue. Bryant participated fully in Thursday's practice.
"I think there's some tenderness there," said Jackson. "But he says he's fine. It's remarkable."
Bryant said, "It's good. No problems. No issues."

Kobe Bryant landed in an awkward fashion, and a lot of people held their breath.
The fans at Staples Center. Coach Phil Jackson. Kobe. And, probably, people at ABC, imagining their Christmas Day Kobe-LeBron extravaganza hobbling off on crutches.
Bryant's knee-buckling landing when followed by Nick Collison midway through the fourth quarter of Tuesday's 111-108 win over Oklahoma City looked exactly like the kind of thing that spells long-term injury.
It didn't turn out that way.
Bryant played the rest of the way -- going all 12 minutes in the fourth quarter and 44 minutes for the night -- scoring 40 points as the Lakers rallied from a 12-point deficit, then held on. And afterward, he said the left knee was no big deal.
"A little sore right now, but it's OK," he said. "I just landed on it funny."
Not that there was anything humorous to the Lakers about seeing their star on the floor for a long time, assessing the state of the joint in question.
"I was very concerned," he said. "I had to do my MCL check, my ACL check. Everything was intact, so I was good to go."
The Staples Center crowd groaned when the play was shown on the arena's video boards -- with good reason.
"We're fortunate that he didn't do something disastrous," said Jackson. "That had shades of Karl Malone, you know?"
Bryant, though, said he was unconcerned the knee would stiffen up overnight.
"I'm Bruce Willis, man," he said. "I'm fine."
Saw it coming: Phil Jackson's decision to practice Monday -- when a day off might have seemed in order -- was all the more understandable in the wake of a slow start salvaged with the help of one solid quarter, the third.
"That's the only quarter we won," said Jackson. "We had a good third quarter. We played the way we anticipated we should play, defensively and offensively. ...
"You see enough of this game and how people compete, and what it's like to have a trip and come back -- Oklahoma's in L.A. longer than we were. ... Just getting ourselves back in the flow and playing the right way took some time."
Said Bryant, "That's all it is -- get back in rhythm. The first home game back is always tough, trying to find that groove again at home.
"It took us a half or so, but we were finally able to get back into it."
Defensive play in the third quarter -- when the Lakers held the Thunder to 21 points -- allowed the Lakers to find that groove.
"We trust our defense," Bryant said. "And we understand what we're capable of doing. So it was really just a matter of finding that rhythm again."
Things get tougher: From now on, the Lakers are going to have a lot fewer chances to get away with the kind of sluggish start they overcame against the Thunder -- mostly because the softest part of the schedule is definitely behind them.
Because the annual Christmas Day games are, according to tradition -- or, more accurately, the dictates of TV -- when the NBA season gears up a notch, the degree to which the Lakers have had a favorable schedule may be even greater than it seems, even with 18 home games in the first 27 contests.
The toughest opponents are, for the most part, still to come.
Before Tuesday's games, the Lakers led the group of nine teams with a winning percentage of .600 or better. To date, they've played five games against the other eight top teams -- two with Phoenix and one each with Atlanta, Dallas and Denver. (And they're just 3-2 in those games.)
That leaves 19 games still to come against those top eight foes, including both meetings with Boston, Orlando and Cleveland, and all four games against San Antonio.
Thanks to TV, those games start coming Friday, with a lot more regularity.

Even coming off a road trip that saw them play four games in six days, finishing with back-to-back wins at New Jersey and Detroit, Phil Jackson brought the Lakers in for practice on Monday. Before Tuesday's game with Oklahoma City, he acknowledged this was in recognition that Tuesday's game was something of a trap game, and not just because the Christmas Day extravaganza with Cleveland is up next.
"Yesterday we had practice because the tough game out of a road trip is the first game coming home, usually," he said. " ... I think you let down your guard a little bit when you come home, and think you can just come out and play. And you can't really do that in basketball, the NBA. You have to have an idea what you want to do. You have to have a way to get it done. You have to have that determination.
"Road games take a different mentality, there's no doubt. You have to play close to the chest, you have to limit your fouls, keep the crowd under control if you can. At home, you're more free. You can shoot 3-pointers. But you've still got to be defensively stronger."
Jackson described the Monday session as mostly "kind of a skill-drill practice, finding rhythm for an offense -- you don't stand around and shoot shots, or don't give the ball to someone and go one-on-one. How to do that, the togetherness that you have to have.
"So we did kind of that. We played four-on-four and that was kind of fun. We had one of those bristling, kind of feisty practices."
Short-term goal: Jackson -- who challenged the team to win the last four games on the trip that began with a loss at Utah -- reset the target for the next week.
"We want to win out in the month of December," he said. "That's a tough chore. We have two sets of back-to-backs -- 25th-26th, 28th-29th -- to go for it, but that's really what our goal is."
The Lakers follow the Cleveland game with a game at Sacramento, then play at Phoenix and come home to face Golden State -- the start of a four-game homestand -- to close out 2009.