THE ROLE PLAYER : MIKE McGEE : Whether at Small Forward or Shooting Guard, He’s Gained Bargaining Position

These are important days for the Lakers’ Mike McGee, a player in search of a place to play. The problem is where. Will it be in the backcourt as a shooting guard, or in the frontcourt as a small forward?

How well he performs at either position could answer another question about where McGee plays next season: Will it be with the Lakers?

A lot of money is at stake. McGee, 25, is in the final year of his Laker contract. The Lakers want to keep him, and his adviser wants him to re-sign with the Lakers before the season is over.

“I think the organization would be fair to him without him going the free-agent route,” said Dr. Charles Tucker, who represents McGee.

But McGee hasn’t made up his mind. He said he isn’t sure he can resist testing his value on the free-agent market.

“I don’t think that much about it, but if I do become a free agent, I could get a fair amount of money out of it,” McGee said.

This season, McGee is making $200,000. Last season, he made $145,000. At those figures, McGee represents one of the NBA’s biggest bargains.

“I want Mike to get all he can get, and I want to see him stay with the Lakers,” Laker Coach Pat Riley said.

McGee’s value to the Lakers is becoming more apparent since Jamaal Wilkes was lost for the season because of knee surgery. With McGee getting more of Wilkes’ playing time at small forward, the Lakers are 8-0 since Wilkes went down with a torn knee ligament.

McGee is a role player, like Michael Cooper, but with more emphasis on offense.

“You take it as it comes,” McGee said. “Whatever is needed, I just do it.”

McGee, 6-5 and 190 pounds, rebounds and shoots well enough to play small forward on offense, and he is quick enough to match up with the point guard on defense.

“Now that’s real versatility,” Riley said.

McGee has averaged 9.5 points in 15 minutes a game, but if his statistics were projected over a 48-minute game, he would be averaging 30.0 points. Only one other Laker, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, has a higher 48-minute projection, 31.3 points.

Scoring is not a problem for McGee, nor has it ever been. When General Manager Jerry West picked McGee in the first round of the 1981 draft, McGee had just broken Big Ten scoring records at Michigan.

He signed a four-year contract with the Lakers and sat down for two seasons.

McGee played in only 78 games his first two seasons but nearly equaled that total last season, when he played in 77.

Riley started McGee in 45 games last season, and McGee responded by shooting 59.4%, an NBA record for shooting accuracy by a guard. He scored in double figures in 12 playoff games and three times had more than 20 points.

So where was McGee those first two seasons?

There was speculation that McGee was coasting the first two seasons, buoyed by a no-cut clause in his contract. Last season, with no such clause, he was forced to produce or lose his job.

McGee, who disagrees, said there was little he could achieve as a benchwarmer.

“I just didn’t get a chance to play,” he said. “I just sat. I didn’t complain or anything because that’s not like me, but I just didn’t play until my third year, which was the first time I even got a chance.

“All I know is that I’m still here,” he said.

This season, he has been in a lot of places. Riley has used McGee as a sixth man, a spot starter, and has even gone several games without playing him. But Wilkes’ injury forced a change in Riley’s thinking.

Riley was suddenly faced with the problem of how to get points out of the small-forward position, a spot that seemed overcrowded in training camp.

Rookie Earl Jones was lost for the season with a broken foot, and the loss of Wilkes further thinned the ranks. Cooper had already been assigned the jobs of backup point guard and defensive small forward, and Riley did not want to overload him.

So Riley turned to McGee.

“He is one of the greatest sixth men in the league,” Riley said. “He’s becoming more and more valuable to this team. He has been a victim of numbers, people ahead of him on this team, but now he’s finding a spot.”

Like Riley, Tucker believes McGee has more value to the Lakers than he would to other teams because McGee’s run-and-shoot capabilities blend well with the fast-breaking Lakers.

Abdul-Jabbar said that it’s up to the Lakers to use McGee correctly.

“Find a space for him and make a space for him,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “He’s such a consistent scorer. They know he can score. He’s proven that.”

McGee knows he can score, too. Although normally a quiet person, he is confident and outspoken when it comes to his production.

“I’ve always been a great offensive player,” he said. “Now that Jamaal has gone down, well, it’s not the first time a guy like me has gotten some playing time after another guy got hurt.

“I think I’m pretty valuable to this team. Whether I have as much value to somebody else, I don’t know. But I may find out.”

Laker Notes Winners of eight in a row, the Lakers will play the Kansas City Kings tonight in the second game of this four-game trip. It’s the first of three matchups against last-place teams. The Kings are last in the Midwest Division; Indiana, Friday night’s opponent, is last in the Central, and New York, Sunday’s opponent, is last in the Atlantic. . . . The Kings drew only 3,424 to Kemper Arena for a game against Portland Tuesday night, their smallest crowd of the season. . . . Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who scored 27 points in the Lakers’ 127-117 victory at Chicago, has scored more than 20 points 35 times this season, more than 30 points nine times and has led Laker scoring in 30 of their 55 games.