Lakers Feast on Some Duck a la King at Kansas City : Los Angeles Bags 9th Straight Win; K.C. Content to Pack Its Bags, 123-117

Feathers flew Thursday night when the Lakers sat down to dine on the NBA’s lame-duck franchise.

After knocking off the Kansas City Kings, 123-117, the Lakers had their ninth consecutive victory and were well on their way to the playoffs.

The Kings, meanwhile, are a team headed only for Sacramento. They’re getting out of town after this season and play their last game April 14 at Kemper Arena.

The game the Lakers played against the Kings was rather lame itself, but it was still good enough for them to equal their longest winning streak of the season.

James Worthy scored 26 points, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored 23 before a crowd of 9,606, easily the biggest crowd the Kings have drawn since they announced Jan. 21 that they would play next season at Sacramento.

“They didn’t come to see us,” King center Joe C. Meriweather said. “They came to see the Lakers. I don’t know what it is about Kansas City, but the cheers were for the Lakers.”

Those cheers didn’t seem misplaced. The Lakers, as Coach Pat Riley later said, played only well enough to win, but he wasn’t in the mood to quibble with success.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of electricity,” he said. “It was just another game, but we ground it out and won, and that’s all that counts.”

The Lakers opened the third quarter with a 14-2 outburst and stayed well ahead until late in the fourth quarter, when the lead was cut to 116-111.

Worthy then banked in a jumper after an offensive rebound, one of a season-high 21 the Lakers collected, and Byron Scott put the game away with a corner jumper with 2:13 left.

That was it for the Kings, who had put up their best fight a little earlier. In the second quarter, Mark Olberding and Larry Spriggs traded elbows, then pushes beneath the Laker backboard.

“He gave me a cheap shot early, and I gave him a cheap shot right back,” Olberding said. “So I guess we’re even.”

Spriggs said Olberding’s elbow was intentional.

“I didn’t appreciate that,” Spriggs said. “I said, ‘No, we can’t have this.’ I didn’t really say that, but you can’t print what I really said.”

The most interesting part of the whole thing was that official Jack Nies had blown his whistle at the first sign of trouble, but the play kept right on going. Reggie Theus of K.C. and Scott scored after the whistle, but after the game was stopped to sort out the mess, both baskets were wiped out.

Theus, who finished with 28 points, was incensed.

“I can’t believe that (bleep) call, just to even things up for them,” he said.

But if there’s one thing the Kings can believe, it’s that they are no longer loved in the city where they play. They would settle for being liked, if they could get it, but they can’t.

The NBA’s Board of Governors seems poised to rubber-stamp its approval of the Kings’ move, a shift that has been rumored since a group of Sacramento businessmen bought the team before last season.

The owners had promised to tell local fans this season what attendance level would keep the team here. They never did. Instead, they handed out a one-page public relations release announcing that they were getting out of town, pending league approval.

Since then, it has been pretty tough on the Kings.

“It’s affected us, I can’t say it hasn’t,” Coach Phil Johnson said. “It’s a lame-duck situation. Everyone knows we’re moving. It’s not the best situation to be in, but it’s the only situation we’ve got.”

Johnson, who took over for Jack McKinney when McKinney asked to be let out of his job, has the security of a three-year contract and said he isn’t concerned about where he coaches.

The King players don’t seem to care either.

“It’s not the players’ fault, but some of the fans act like it is,” Theus said. “I hear the things some of them say, ‘Don’t bother to get his autograph, he’ll be in Sacramento next year.’ And ‘Sacramento deserves you.’ Those are the frustrations that come out, and the players end up being in the middle.”

In the six home games since the team owners said they intend to bail out, the Kings have averaged fewer than 5,000 fans.

Meriweather, who has been in Kansas City for five years, said it’s easy to hear the fans booing because their voices stand out when the 16,785-seat arena is about one-third full.

“Look, they had a chance to support us here and they didn’t,” he said. “We can’t control that. This is not the easiest year to be a Kansas City King.”

Laker Notes Thursday night’s victory was the Lakers’ 40th of the season, which puts them three games ahead of last year’s pace. . . . The Lakers are 13 games ahead of Phoenix, their biggest lead of the season. . . . The last time the Lakers won more than nine consecutive games was in the 1978-79 season when they won 14 in a row.