They Came to Los Angeles -- for This?

Karl Malone and Gary Payton gazed vacantly at each other across the locker room, one player eyeing another, distilling the disillusionment:

We came here for this?

They propped up franchises in Utah and Seattle for more than 10 years before coming to Los Angeles for something supposedly more gratifying. They came to the land and team of supernovas, where one June day two men pushing middle age hoped to realize a championship.

Malone and Payton knew the Lakers were short on money and shots and extremely long on egos. But teamed with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, they never figured on being two games from elimination in the second round of the NBA playoffs -- like they were after that uppity young Tony Parker quelled a late rally in Game 2, sending the San Antonio Spurs west for the weekend with a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.

“These are the cards that are dealt; it’s just the way it is,” Malone said after the Lakers fell on Wednesday night at SBC Center. “Of course it’s disappointing because you always expect perfection. It’s really typical the way it started off in mid-August. It held true to form.”

Malone was alluding to the circus of a season that enveloped the Lakers once Bryant was charged in a Colorado sexual assault case and once Malone and Payton gave up prospective millions from other teams to join what they thought was a budding dynasty. It was as if two executives at very successful start-up companies jumped ship to Microsoft in the latter stages of their careers, joining the franchise they could not beat to give themselves a more comfortable retirement.

Instead, Payton pouts about playing in a two-sided triangle offense. Malone and Bryant miscommunicate often, enough for them to exchange words in the third quarter of Game 2.

And Phil Jackson looks more like an exasperated, worn-down parent than the serene all-knowing coach with the coat-hanger shoulders from previous postseasons.

Some matching 401(k) plan, no?

“Maybe all of us are a little stubborn,” Malone said. “We need to figure this out. And I’m just stubborn enough to think we will.”

Denial might be good for the Lakers as they head home for Games 3 and 4 today and Tuesday. If they go down hard in this series, the gamble will at once be costly to the country’s most gaudy and glamorous team and to likely hall of famers. Payton and Malone had no answer for their positional counterparts, Parker and Tim Duncan. Parker has outscored Payton in the series, 50-11, and the player nicknamed “The Glove” for his defensive prowess in Seattle has been the sieve in the past two games, beaten off the dribble, scored upon, posted up by the player Payton used to be.

Malone knew at 40 he was no match for Duncan, and O’Neal and his teammates have done what they can to give him help. But beyond Parker and Duncan, the Lakers have run into a team on a 17-game winning streak, a team with a slashing Argentinean, Manu Ginobili, and a move-and-slide defender in Bruce Bowen.

O’Neal presents the only defensive matchup problem for San Antonio so far in the series. And don’t tell Magic Johnson, but the Lakers were outscored, 18-4, on the break in Game 2. Crazy to ponder, but the spice-less Spurs are suddenly a more athletic team than one featuring the levitation of Bryant.

Part of the Lakers’ problems go back to the signing of Payton and Malone. O’Neal helped recruit two of his former Western Conference rivals, believing they would give him the necessary experience and firepower to thwart San Antonio. There were always concerns about the wear and tear on their bodies and how long they would hold up. But perhaps not enough worry went into their psyches.

If both players have proven to be mentally tough over their careers, they also have had public meltdowns when it came to contract negotiations and general unhappiness with the state of their former franchises. Part of their playing genius was also part of their personal trials: Malone and Payton played with chips on their shoulders and always zeroed in on people they felt disrespected them.

They knew the Lakers were not their team and felt they could subjugate their egos for the good of a title. But they were not prepared for the physical decline in their skills -- no former all-star ever is -- and the extent of the pettiness that existed in the Lakers locker room between Bryant and O’Neal.

It’s a recurring theme: The Lakers go bad, Bryant is blamed for his selfishness. It is so palpable a feeling, conveyed through body language and words among Lakers teammates every time Bryant goes two possessions in a row without moving the ball. So as not to disturb chemistry further during the playoffs, Lakers censorship is now in vogue.

Complimentary issues of the bi-weekly “ESPN The Magazine” are distributed throughout the locker room. But, according to a club official, the Lakers decided not to hand out the current issue; an article written by Tom Friend focuses on the divide between Bryant and his teammates.

With the exception of a strong hint by O’Neal here and there that he would like to see the Lakers play more “team ball,” the majority of the Lakers have remained mum on how Bryant and his chaotic existence have affected the team.

When O’Neal, Malone and Payton boarded a flight for the team’s training camp in Hawaii last October, they made a pact that Bryant’s criminal case would not derail their season. O’Neal even hosted a backyard barbecue at his Beverly Hills home prior to the season, welcoming the new Lakers’ stars and their families. They spoke openly of giving Bryant his space and forming a protective cocoon around him during training camp -- just in case the syndicated TV show “Celebrity Justice” showed with its cameras.

But even as the plans to put the Bryant issue aside were in place, the Lakers were reminded of one intractable issue: Bryant did not want help or pity. He was off on his own island.

At the barbecue, Bryant and his wife showed long after the invite time. At a casual affair where many of the guests were clad in jeans and T-shirts, Bryant’s wife, Vanessa, wore shimmering diamonds and a resplendent gown. The couple, many guests remembered, didn’t quite fit in. When Malone’s wife, Kay, introduced herself to Bryant’s wife and offered to baby-sit the couple’s young daughter, she was almost brushed off, according to a former Lakers player who said he witnessed the exchange.

All harsh tales regarding Bryant have to be taken with some skepticism; after all, the people anonymously telling them are often intimately connected to the very players who want “Kobe to pass them the damn ball on the court,” Philip Harrison, as the surrogate father who raised O’Neal, said with a laugh before Game 2.

“Kobe is the most wonderful player in the world when he gets it right,” Harrison said. “When he doesn’t....”

Sometimes it’s open season on the most popular athlete in Los Angeles, and it becomes convenient to forget where the Lakers would be in the standings without their all-star. Other times, Malone and Payton wonder why they came, wonder if they would not have been better somewhere else, wonder when and if that Lakers’ 401(k) plan will kick in.

Championship or second-round bust, “we’re going out together,” Malone said, as stubborn as ever.