Maybe looks can't kill. But if you're Rasheed Wallace

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of the Portland Trail Blazers, it was discovered Saturday that they can get you tossed from an NBA playoff game. It remains to be seen what other havoc Wallace can cause with his menacing glare.

Once the Los Angeles Lakers established their mental superiority over the Blazers, they physically overwhelmed their Western Conference finals foes before Shaquille O'Neal made a mockery of the Hack-a-Shaq strategy in a 109-94 victory.

Actually, by the end, Portland players merely tapped O'Neal repeatedly in the chest or patted him on either broad shoulder to send him to the line, where he snuffed out the Blazers in Game 1 of the best-of-7 series.

It was business as usual in every way Saturday at Staples Center, where the Lakers continued dominating at home and dominating the Portland Trail Blazers in a playoff series.

The Lakers are 7-0 at Staples in the postseason, and, minus a 1992 series against Portland, have beaten the Blazers in 22 of their last 28 playoff games.

And that little voice in Wallace's noggin that kept dominating his emotions and actions? He was long gone by the time the final buzzer blared.

"Rah Rah!" Bonzi Wells, dressing six feet from Wallace in the visitors' locker room, yelled at Wallace. "Stay in the (expletive) game!"

As Wallace dressed, he laughed at a media throng.

"Don't even come this way," he said. "I ain't giving you any fuel for the fire! No fuel for the fire! No comment. No commento!"

"They're trying to get you fined," Wells said.

Wallace nodded at Detlef Schrempf, as if to acknowledge he would not get himself into deeper trouble with the league office in New York, and donned a Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap.

If the Blazers had shown this much teamwork and attention to Wallace's welfare, Game 1 might have been different.

Instead, Wallace might have helped his team more if he had stayed in the locker room for all 48 minutes. It was knotted at 26-26 after 12 minutes, and the Blazers -- especially Wallace -- began wilting at the very start of the second quarter.

O'Neal pushed Arvydas Sabonis around the paint and then dunked on the 7-foot-3 Lithuanian, Scottie Pippen missed a couple of jump shots that the Lakers turned into a Kobe Bryant fade-away jumper and a 3-pointer by Robert Horry, and the end was near for Portland.

Another dunk by O'Neal and a three-point play by Horry set the stage for Wallace to enter the first stage of his breakdown, a ritual more dependable than the setting of the sun. Wallace wouldn't stop jabbering at Ron Garretson for hitting him with his third foul of the game three minutes into the second quarter.

Smacked with 38 T's in the regular season, most in the NBA, Wallace promptly was hit with his fifth in the postseason and summoned to the sideline. Sitting on the floor in front of his bench with his teammates glaring at him, Wallace just shook his head and laughed after Garretson nailed him.

Wallace has vowed that he'd never get booted out of a playoff game, and his word became as dependable as his psyche when the Lakers called a timeout midway through the third quarter.

His mouth, steaming ears and flailing arms are usually what run Wallace afoul with the law, but this time it was his eyes. He glared at Garretson as Garretson signaled for the timeout, but Wallace kept eyeballing Garretson.

"Whack!" said Garretson, catching himself from adding an "o" to the word. "Get out!"

Steve Smith tried to coax an explanation from Garretson, who said he told Wallace to stop staring at him three times. Television replays only showed Garretson raising an I've-had-enough right arm at Wallace.

Bryant missed the free throw from the technical on Wallace, but the Lakers still used the situation to light their afterburners and keep a big lead over the Blazers. One league veteran said he sees a player get T'd up for mere glaring about once every five years, a frequency that figures to increase as long as the five-year veteran Wallace is in the NBA.

"That hurt us," Wells said, looking at Wallace as he jammed his sandals into a large backpack. "Rasheed is our best player, and just because he's looking at you doesn't mean he's cursing you or cussing at you."

Only Wallace can decipher, maybe, what was going on in his mind as he glared at Garretson.

"Obviously, we cannot have an All-Star sitting in the locker room with the game under 10 points with five minutes to go," Portland coach Mike Dunleavy said. "And no matter what the circumstances are, even if he's right and if it's a bad call, that doesn't do us any good."

Rasheed Wallace tries to argue his way out of his second technical foul.(AP)

The Blazers regrouped to cut it to 91-83 in the first five minutes of the final quarter. But then Smith threw up an errant 3-point shot, O'Neal put in an easy bucket at the other end and Dunleavy resorted to fouling O'Neal at the start of every Lakers possession.

O'Neal missed six free throws in a row and Portland nudged to within 97-88, but then O'Neal canned seven in a row to thwart Dunleavy. After not attempting a free throw in the first half, Shaq was 1-for-2 in the third quarter and 12-for-25 at the line in the fourth. The 27 attempts were a playoff record for a half, and the 25 easily surpassed the mark for a single quarter.

Magic Johnson had held the previous playoff mark for free-throw attempts in a half, with 21 against Golden State on May 8, 1991. Two weeks later, Michael Jordan set the standard for playoff attempts in a quarter, with 14 against Detroit.

The sellout Staples crowd of 18,997 moaned and groaned every time Dunleavy went to the tactic. Dunleavy said he wouldn't hesitate to use his Tap-a-Shaq, or Pat-a-Shaq, again in this series, even though it means playing a fourth quarter that lasts almost one hour.

One official timed Saturday's at 57 minutes, and O'Neal finished with 41 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists. Sabonis had no points and only one board.

"I like Shaq a lot," Dunleavy said, "he just can't shoot free throws. And I can't not do what I think, from a strategic standpoint, is the right thing to do because people are going to miss their cocktail reservations."

Wallace must have been late to his early afternoon tea appointment.

Shaq now occupies two more spots in the record book, courtesy of Dunleavy.

"We had some good stretches," Schrempf said, "but we had a major breakdown."

Well, one Blazer did, and it had nothing to do with missing a box-out assignment or failing to execute a certain play. When Wallace left for the team bus, he laughed at two more reporters in his way and grimaced as he hurled a bulging backpack over his shoulder.

How much the baggage between his ears weighs, only he knows.