Suns Win, and Send Lakers Back to Work

The Lakers were hit by an extreme case of the blahs and an equally severe case of the Phoenix Suns Thursday night. Both of them threw the Lakers for a loss.

Phoenix hadn’t won a game in nearly two weeks, but that was before they played the Lakers, who tumbled meekly, 117-105, at Veterans Coliseum.

“We can’t let teams like Phoenix beat us,” Bob McAdoo said. “That’s just ridiculous.”

Maybe so, but that’s just what happened. The fact remains that there just isn’t much to inspire the Lakers as they enter the dog days of the regular season, and they played like it against the Suns.

Winning their division is a foregone conclusion for the Lakers, and catching Philadelphia or Boston for the best record in the NBA is probably out of the question.

So to fill the gap, Coach Pat Riley has cooked up his own brand of inspiration for the Lakers to ensure that what happened to them against the Suns won’t become a regular thing.

Remember those days off without practice? Well, forget them. And all those short practices? They’re out, too.

“We’re going back to work,” Riley said. “If there’s anything to this blah stuff, it’s happened because I’ve been loving them too much.”

No more of that, Riley said. The reason he was so concerned about one little loss was the manner in which it occurred. The Suns outrebounded the Lakers, 50-38, and got just about any old shot they wanted in the face of a passive defense that continues to be a Laker problem.

Phoenix forward Larry Nance had 23 points and 13 rebounds and led six Suns in double figures. James Worthy, who had 22 points, and McAdoo, who had 20, carried the Laker offense, which got only 13 points from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on a 5-for-15 night.

The Laker captain smiled thinly when told that Riley was planning a new, get-tough policy.

“I don’t know about that ,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “Obviously, we do have to get some rest sometimes . We can’t play our ultimate best every time out.”

This one certainly didn’t rank with the Lakers’ ultimate bests.

The Suns led by three points at the half, seven after three quarters, then shrugged off the only Laker surge of the second half after McAdoo and Worthy shot their team to within 94-91 with 7:05 to go in the game.

A driving basket by Nance and four consecutive points from Walter Davis, who was making his first start of the season, pumped the Suns’ lead to 100-91, and the rest was a blowout.

Davis was playing in his 13th game since missing the first 47 of the season because of a knee injury. He had 16 points and nine assists, and was also a factor in another way: Magic Johnson cut his left knee when he ran into Davis’ knee brace in the first quarter. Johnson, who had a bag of ice taped to his knee afterward, finished with 18 points but only eight assists.

Yet after losing seven of their last nine, the Suns were counting even small blessings.

“We’ll be all right as long as his brace keeps cutting other people,” Phoenix forward Alvan Adams said.

Johnson said he probably won’t know until Saturday whether he can play that night against the Mavericks at Dallas.

“Right now, it’s sore as hell,” Johnson said. “If it stays swollen, I’ll have to not go.”

The Suns, meanwhile, got going right from the beginning when center James Edwards had nine points in the first quarter.

By halftime, the Suns had nine offensive rebounds to just one for the Lakers and finished with a 16-9 advantage at the offensive end.

In the three previous meetings, all of them Laker victories, the Suns had been outrebounded by an average of 18 a game.

“They’re a desperate team,” Riley said of the Suns.

The Lakers are not desperate at all. Their only reasonable goal, it would seem, is to stay ahead of Denver for the best record in the Western Conference and the home-court advantage that goes with it should the teams meet in the playoffs.

“All this game does is lessen the chance for catching Boston and Philadelphia,” Michael Cooper said. “That’s about it.”

Above all, Riley wants to keep the Lakers from coasting from here on in, so his no-frills approach and a new work ethic really isn’t that surprising.

“If we think we’ve got it made, then we’re mistaken,” he said. “We get left-hooked a couple of times and get our attitude adjusted a little. It’s the time of the year to start rationalizing, but if we do that, we’re looking for trouble.”

Sometimes, they even find it.