Michael Ventre

LOS ANGELES - When you wake up from a nap, there is a period of adjustment during which the legs are still sluggish, the eyelids are still heavy and the system is revving at less than 100 percent.

How long the Lakers will need to snap back to fully alert is anyone’s guess.

“I don’t know that we can play much worse,” said coach Phil Jackson.

It would be unfair to the Houston Rockets to portray their 100-92 Game 1 upset of the Lakers in the NBA’s Western Conference semifinals Monday night at Staples Center as merely the result of a sleepwalk by the Lakers. The Rockets did everything a team should do in a playoff game when it was swept in the regular season series by the same opponent and everyone in the hemisphere predicted it would fail.

Houston was smart, aggressive and efficient.

But the Lakers were none of these, and in retrospect, it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. Yes, the Rockets were supposed to be the preferred second-round opponent, since the Lakers have been tormented of late in Portland by the young Trail Blazers. The Rockets were said to be gutsy, but not much else.

Yet there was the layoff by L.A. after it dispensed with the Utah Jazz in the first round, a series that had about as much drama as a test pattern. There were rumors that Kobe Bryant had the sniffles, the flu, the Swine Flu, the Avian Flu and Legionnaires’ Disease. There was also the nagging suggestion that the Lakers were a little soft and don’t play the kind of defense that … well, the kind the Rockets play.

“We just blew some defensive assignments in key moments,” said Bryant, who led all scorers with 32 points.

What does this mean for Wednesday night, when Game 2 of this suddenly must-watch series takes place in Los Angeles? It means the Lakers had better bring the intensity they forgot to bring Monday, plus a lot more, because Houston no doubt will be braced for a vengeful counterattack.

“That was no surprise to us. To me at least,” Jackson said. “It’s not as bad as it seems. We’re confident. We’ll come back with a good effort on Wednesday.”

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He’s probably right, but there are a few items the Lakers would probably like to discuss between now and then.

One of them will be the tag-team of Ron Artest and Shane Battier on Kobe. That was expected, but they were especially sharp Monday night. They left Bryant little wiggle room for most of the game, and they caused him to take mostly outside shots rather than drive to the hole. Bryant only shot five free throws, making three.

When Bryant was asked about the Rockets’ defense on him after the game, he gave one of those smiling but terse answers — “They did a good job” — which suggests he knows they did a good job but he’d rather not admit it.

Then there is Aaron Brooks, the scamp of a point guard who zipped around Laker defenders for 19 points on 7-of-14 shooting. He is one of those incredibly quick guards who, if the Lakers aren’t careful and devise a scheme to keep him in check, might continue to gain confidence as the series progresses and eventually transform into Chris Paul.

“He controlled the game. I was really proud of him,” Artest said of his teammate. “When he’s playing bad or in a frenzy, I get on him. When he’s playing well I praise him. He’s the reason why we won, him and Yao.”

The Lakers probably hoped for a moment Monday night that they’d seen the last of the Rockets’ 7-foot-6 center for the series when he went down with 4:54 left in the game, holding his knee and grimacing after a collision with Kobe. But it was only a knee-to-knee owee, and after he walked it off in the tunnel, he returned to the contest. Yao finished with 28 points and 10 rebounds, and he canned all 10 of his foul shots.

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