Lakers Don’t Bury the Blazers but Put Them in a 3-0 Hole

Well, it wasn’t a Laker blowout. That may be small consolation for the Portland Trail Blazers, who woke up this morning only to find themselves staring out of a very big hole.

No team has pulled itself out of a 3-0 ditch in a playoff series, but that’s what the Trail Blazers must do if they want to win this conference semifinal playoff with the Lakers.

“If we do come back and win this series, it would be the eighth wonder of the world,” Portland’s Mychal Thompson said.

No wonder he feels that way. The Lakers moved one game closer to a sweep by slipping past the Trail Blazers, 130-126, Friday night at Memorial Coliseum.

First a slip but then a sweep? Byron Scott said the Lakers wouldn’t want to trade places with Portland right now. He said the Trail Blazers are in an impossible situation.

“No, make that a very impossible situation,” he said.

It was the rarest of Laker games to date in the playoffs, simply because it was close.

No one had come within 16 points of the Lakers in their five previous games, but Portland took care of that small piece of trivia. James Worthy said the Lakers actually are relieved to have finally played a close game.

“All the others we won big,” he said. “What happened tonight wasn’t new--it just hadn’t happened in the playoffs. I think that was good for us.”

The good feeling didn’t come easily. The Trail Blazers scissored a 116-104 Laker lead to five points in just over a minute of the fourth quarter, only to watch the Lakers pull away again on consecutive sky hooks by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who finished with 26 points.

Portland again cut a 10-point Laker lead in the last two minutes and got within 126-122 before Abdul-Jabbar and Scott put the game away on free throws.

Magic Johnson, who had 23 assists, believes the latest Trail Blazer loss will have a lasting effect on them. If Portland doesn’t win Game 4 Sunday afternoon, it could last all summer.

“It’s got to be tough,” he said. “We took their best challenge and still won.”

Only the final buzzer restored a sense of calm, maybe even resignation on the part of both teams, after a Game 3 punctuated by four technical fouls, several angry pushes and even an ejection of a fan who stepped on the court when he shouldn’t have.

“They’ve got to be down,” Laker Coach Pat Riley said of the Trail Blazers.

“To get them down 3-0 has to take some steam out of them.”

Thompson said the Trail Blazers can still come back, even though he admitted it would take something very like a miracle.

“There’s a first time for everything,” he said. “But then, I’m an optimist. It’ll take a monumental effort for us to come back and win the series. Come to think of it, it will take a monumental effort for us to win a game.”

Worthy worked over Kiki Vandeweghe for a game-high 28 points, but Vandeweghe kept Worthy just as busy and scored 27 himself. The Trail Blazers had nothing to match either Abdul-Jabbar or Bob McAdoo, who finished with 23 points and 9 rebounds in 30 minutes.

“I was sure glad to see those two sweeping sky hooks by Kareem when we needed them,” Riley said.

Besides producing a 72-56 Laker lead, the first half was noteworthy for several sporadic acts of aggression, one of which resulted in a bloody lower lip for Portland center Sam Bowie.

Bowie took an accidental elbow from Worthy in the opening minutes of the first quarter, but Bowie stayed around long enough to pick up three fouls.

So did Abdul-Jabbar, who played just 10 minutes in the half. If that appeared to be a turning point, it wasn’t nearly so crucial as the seven free throws the Trail Blazers missed in the first half or the 13 they missed overall.

In any event, the foul problems of Abdul-Jabbar and Bowie weren’t as interesting as the two separate run-ins--Kenny Carr trading shoves with Kurt Rambis and Scott and Jim Paxson lowering their shoulders into each other.

There was also a four-player pileup in the lane that featured Bowie, Vandeweghe, Mitch Kupchak and Johnson. First down, Lakers. By that time, the Lakers were putting some distance between themselves and the Trail Blazers.

A 35-32 first-quarter Laker lead had grown, but not much, to 41-35 when Abdul-Jabbar picked up his third foul and sat down. McAdoo was pressed into duty, and after a slow start, he scored 13 points in 15 first-half minutes, and Kupchak had seven points in only eight minutes.

Vandeweghe scored 16 points in the half but had trouble matching up defensively with first Worthy and then McAdoo.

Johnson, whose 23 assists were one short of his own playoff record for a game, did set an NBA playoff record with 15 assists in the first half. Many wound up in the hands of Worthy, who quickly shot the Lakers from a six-point lead to 56-42 with 5:49 left in the second quarter.

Portland had a couple of comebacks left in the second half, and Clyde Drexler thinks the Trail Blazers still have another one to pull on the Lakers.

“We’re down,” he said. “But we’re not out.’

Not yet, anyway.

NBA PLAYOFFS

AT A GLANCE

LAKERS VS. PORTLAND

BEST-OF-SEVEN SERIES

Game 1 Los Angeles 125, Portland 101 Game 2 Los Angeles 134, Portland 118 Game 3 Los Angeles 130, Portland 126 Game 4 Sunday at Portland 12:30 p.m. Game 5 Tuesday at Los Angeles 7:30 p.m. Game 6 Thursday at Portland 8:30 p.m. Game 7 May 11 at Los Angeles 12:30 p.m. NOTE: Game 5, Game 6, and Game 7 if necessary.