MINNEAPOLIS — It could have been just another basket.
The applause was no louder, and the game went on. No one mentioned it at the end of the night.
With 4:52 remaining in the second quarter of the Lakers' 106-101 win over the Timberwolves, Kobe Bryant sunk his 9,936th field goal as a Laker, surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the franchise record. And though no one in the Lakers' locker treated it as momentous, or even as an event, the record speaks volumes about this year's team and Bryant himself.
The record marks the Lakers as a team with a superstar, perhaps the best player in the NBA today. But at the same time, it hints at age, at years of chipping away at history and a career that any other player would consider close to full.
In some ways, that's been the Lakers' dilemma this season. They're not yet old, but growing older, while at the same time redefining themselves around a star's evolving game. These are challenges a team that's been to the NBA finals in three of the past four years is unaccustomed to dealing with, and finding a measure of consistency has at times been difficult.
"We just building some consistency," Metta World Peace said. "We haven't really . . . we've been experimenting with lineups, trying to see who's going to play. Coach (Mike Brown) is trying to experiment and see how he wants to attack the rest of the season."
World Peace added that the way last season ended -- the team's loss in the second round of the 2011 playoffs to the Mavericks and the retirement of head coach Phil Jackson -- may have left fans and outsiders with the belief that massive changes were necessary. That's not the case, he said, and right now the team just needs a bit of rejuvenation.
For a young Timberwolves team that hasn't yet reached .500 this season, the atmosphere in Los Angeles surrounding the Lakers is almost laughable. With the win tonight, the team improved to 12-9, a record of which the Timberwolves can only be envious.
"They lose a couple games in a row, it's like the world ends," said Derrick Williams, who grew up a Lakers fan. "They're still a top contender. They might not have the best record they've had the past five, six season before that, but any given night they have Bynum, Gasol, Kobe."
The Lakers are a team accustomed to winning, but that doesn't make them immune to problems. Not every season is a championship season, and not every game is played at the same caliber as the playoffs. A team like the Lakers can't really be measured in terms of wins and losses.
"They're going to be a handful for us," Timberwolves' coach Rick Adelman said before Sunday's game. "I don't care when their record is, I just know the players they have."
Most alarming to the Lakers' critics this year has been their 2-7 road record, but even that would be easy to rationalize for most teams. Five of those seven losses came against teams that should contend for playoff spots, though Saturday night's loss to Milwaukee might was a rightful cause for consternation.
So was Sunday's game in Minnesota a must-win? Perhaps, but that's almost a foreign concept to the Lakers. They're not accustomed to feeling backed into a corner, and because of that, such designations are almost hard to fathom.
"I don't know," Bryant said when asked whether the victory was an important win. "I have no idea. I would assume so. We needed to get a win on the road."
It was a game that was hard to have clear feelings about. Despite shooting 50.6 percent from the field to the Timberwolves' 38.5 percent, the Lakers blew an 18-point lead in the fourth quarter. They gave up 24 offensive rebounds to Minnesota, and the Timberwolves had 32 second-chance points to the Lakers' 10. Looking the numbers, it was a win that should be difficult to feel proud of. And though Bryant said his team was irresponsible in blowing its lead, he added that it still felt good to come away with as winners.
In the end, the Lakers won in the way that anyone could have predicted: strong play from Bryant, Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol, who combined for 84 of the team's 106 points. They're the names that Adelman had mentioned for days before the game, players whom he knew his team could only adjust to and never stop. With a distinct size disadvantage, the Timberwolves were often overmatched.
"They started two point guards," World Peace said. "I don't know how that really works . . . I mean, they put a guy (Luke Ridnour) who was 100 pounds on me, or 150 pounds, I don't know how many pounds. That's so crazy. I don't understand."
Matchups like that one, Ridnour guarding World Peace, magnify the differences between the Lakers and the Timberwolves, but Minnesota found other ways to keep itself in the game, however mismatched its players often were. And though the Lakers emphasized that they blew it, that they gave points away, the Timberwolves went a long way in earning their comeback. That might be a hard thing for the Lakers to stomach -- the narrowing gap between them and a perennial loser -- but it's hard not to give the Timberwolves some credit for what they did Sunday night.
The Lakers that took the court in Minnesota aren't the disintegrating time bomb that they've been painted as, but nor are they the team that won back-to-back rings in 2009 and 2010. They're not the players that Williams grew up watching at the Forum and the Staples Center, nor are they the ones whose games were broadcast in Spain to an awe-struck Ricky Rubio. But they're still a team that knows how to win, a team for whom a victory is just another day.
The Lakers locker room is still a place where records and history don't even warrant mention. There aren't the highs and the lows that Timberwolves have experienced this season, jubilant scenes contrasted with silence and injuries.
Yes, Sunday's win snapped a long road losing streak. But for the first time in years, the Lakers cannot take winning for granted, and that in and of itself marks a turning point greater than any one game can provide.
Follow Joan Niesen on Twitter @FSN_JoanNiesen.
