This arduous season has taken the Lakers to the halfway mark and has left them bewildered.

Coach Phil Jackson doesn't sound worried about his team's flat play. Rather, Jackson looks at his Lakers' 27-15 record and says they are in a day-to-day building process.

"I don't care if Shaq (Shaquille O'Neal) is out 10 games and we go 2-8. It doesn't bother me one way or the other," Jackson said. "Records are not anything that you can hang your hat on in the playoffs, except that you get homecourt advantage. So in that regards, what we have to do is build some kind of team unity, and team esprit de corps is the word I've been using."

Jackson, whose team meets the Cavaliers tonight at Gund Arena, has found fault in the play of O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. But he also isn't pleased with the play of his role players.

"The energy is just not there," Jackson said. "They are not playing with the kind of energy that I'm pleased about, the tenacity that's a requirement to playing good basketball."

Jackson's team was 33-9 after 42 games last season but is in what he calls a midseason slump this season.

"We're not youthful, we're not quick, we're not athletic," Jackson said.

" . . . Our dominant players have not played (in a) way (that) we expect them to make our good players better. And that's the mark of a star. A star makes his teammates better than they'd normally be, so they appear to be very good basketball players all of a sudden."

Even Jackson wonders when the Lakers will get it, when they'll start to execute the offense and play defense.

"At this point, it doesn't look like it's going to turn around right now the way it is," Jackson said.

Jackson was asked if he should prod O'Neal and Bryant to make them solve their differences.

"What I'm getting across to them is that whenever an individual puts himself ahead of the team, he runs aground of what I'm trying to do, and that's my territory," Jackson said. "That's where they've run afoul of our basketball club. I don't even know if they've fouled it up."

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O'Neal said he doesn't think he'll be able to play tonight against the Cavaliers because of his injured right arch, which forced him to miss Sunday's game. O'Neal, who has plantar faciaitis, got treatment Monday and didn't practice . . . Rick Fox, who suffered a right shoulder contusion late in the fourth quarter of Sunday's game, practiced Monday and will play tonight.

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Lakers trainer Gary Vitti has a court date set for March 5 after his ex-fiancee, Wendy Newton, claimed in a three-page complaint that he allegedly choked her unconscious and that he was getting preferential treatment from the Manhattan Beach Police because he worked for the Lakers. Vitti was arrested in June for the alleged incident. Vitti's attorney, Tony Capozzola, said his client is innocent and that they will fight the allegations in court.