Lakers fans seem to be nervous. Which is understandable. The team couldn’t hold leads in the Utah series and is tied 2-2 with Houston in the second round, including that hideous blowout defeat in Game 4 on Sunday.

Which leads me to wonder … do their ticket-buying fans treat them as they always do — like heroes — when they take the floor tonight for Game 5, here at Staples?

Or do they hold back a little, see if the Lakes are planning to show up and play hard and intelligently?

Clearly, a serious effort is not something Lakers fans can count on.

Los Angeles sports fans are notoriously dim. (I’m going to do something soon on how Dodgers fans may be the dumbest in baseball.) And apologists for the home team even beyond what you would normally expect. Certainly, more than you would expect from a big city. They will accept mediocrity like almost no other fans in the country.

But the Lakers have to be approaching the point where they lose the homecourt-fan advantage. They have been too uneven, too hot and cold to give any sort of impression they are playing hard.

A really good team doesn’t blow 20-point leads over and again, as the Lakers did against Utah. A really good team doesn’t trail by 29 to a Houston team missing its two best players, which is what happened to the Lakers on Sunday.

The Lakers went 65-17 during the regular season. So they apparently are better than most everyone else in the league.

Yet here they are, 6-3 in the postseason, with maybe one really good game out of nine — Game 4 of the Utah series. They seem uninspired, disinterested. I mean, how else do you explain such modest results after such an impressive regular season? Can you blame fans for wondering how committed they are to turning up their game for the playoffs?

I will be listening to the fans during the pregame introductions, and in the opening minutes. If Utah jumps ahead by 10 … I do believe Lakers fans will be tempted to begin booing.

Maybe it will take that sort of shock to shake these guys from this lethargy.