Trail Blazers Spring a Trap, Snare Lakers in Extended Series

The Portland Trail Blazers made some sweeping changes Sunday afternoon. You can store the brooms.

Just when it looked as if the Lakers were about to sweep Portland out of the playoffs, the Trail Blazers refused to wind up under some rug for the summer.

They beat the Lakers, 115-107, to force a fifth game in the Western Conference semifinal series, and although the Lakers still lead it, 3-1, the Trail Blazers refuse to go quietly.

“Nobody expected us to sweep them,” said Laker Coach Pat Riley, who handled the situation a lot better than his players handled the ball.

For the first time in the series, the Trail Blazers tried a half-court trapping defense that caused the Lakers an unexpected loss of memory. They suddenly forgot how to dribble and pass the ball.

Portland turned the game around with its defensive aggression, something the Lakers seemed content to allow. With reserve Jerome Kersey an unexpected leader, the Trail Blazers forced 11 turnovers in the second quarter when they outscored the Lakers, 36-19, to take a 10-point halftime lead.

They looked back only once, late in the fourth quarter, when the Lakers cut a nine-point Trail Blazer lead to three, 108-105, with 1:13 remaining.

Just then, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar poked the ball away from Clyde Drexler, but Drexler ran down Magic Johnson and stole the ball right back. Drexler said he had no choice in the matter.

“I threw the ball away, so I had to go get it back,” he said.

Just as quickly, Mychal Thompson put the game away. Thompson’s slam-dunk with 30 seconds left clinched the game for Portland, a clear victory for the power of aggression.

The Trail Blazers played as if they had just found their way out of the woods. The trapping, or double-teaming, defense was the real reason for their new sense of direction, but there were also other clues.

Portland players were even aggressive on the bench. Tom Scheffler elbowed Sam Bowie in the eye when Scheffler was taking off his warmups to get into the game.

For some reason or other, the Lakers were never quite able to match the Trail Blazers’ intensity. After the first quarter until the last few minutes of the fourth, the Lakers didn’t seem to be in the game.

Johnson finished with 31 points and 13 assists, and Abdul-Jabbar reached a personal playoff-high this season with 17 rebounds, but the Lakers could not compensate for their poor reaction to Portland’s pressure defense.

Michael Cooper, who had seven turnovers in the first half and nine overall, said the Lakers didn’t know how to attack the Trail Blazer trap.

“It really rattled us,” Cooper said. “I made some silly turnovers and we made a lot of mental errors. We haven’t trapped in a while and we didn’t do a good job handling it, but we’ll be ready next time.”

That will be Tuesday night in the Forum when Game 5 is played. The Lakers claim they weren’t actually thinking they would wrap up the series in four games, but Byron Scott said the lack of Laker intensity might have stemmed from their 3-0 lead in the series.

“They were more aggressive and we were kind of laid back and passive,” he said.

“We didn’t have the mental aggression or the physical aggression, so when we did get back into it, it was too late.”

Seven Trail Blazers scored in double figures, led by Thompson and Kiki Vandeweghe, who each had 17 points. While Portland’s offense was timely, it did not seem as important as their defense which forced 28 turnovers and turned the Laker attack into a bunch of free throws.

Bob McAdoo scored 21 points and had 11 rebounds in 27 minutes, but overall, the Lakers had just 37 field goals and scored 33 points at the free-throw line.

Riley was left with only words of praise for the Trail Blazers’ intensity and a vow that the Lakers would come back with some of their own.

“We will match their aggression on Tuesday night, I guarantee that,” he said. “If we don’t, they’ll be back in the series.”

But not even the Trail Blazers are ready to say that’s where they are right now.

“They know they can wrap it up at home,” said Jim Paxson. “There’s nobody who expects us to win that game. Nobody in Portland, nobody anywhere. I think they’ve got the feeling they know they’re going to win. Just a matter of time.”

Cooper preferred to give the Trail Blazers a little more credit than that. After all, he said, they deserved it.

“It looked like, well, not schoolyard ball, but they were having fun out there,” Cooper said. “It was like they thought there was no way in the world they would win the series, so they came out and played like there was no tomorrow. Now, there’s a tomorrow.”

Laker Notes Tipoff for Game 5 is 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Forum . . . Mychal Thompson said Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was fully prepared to play. “I think he wanted to get this over with so he could rest his 38-year-old body,” Thompson said. . . . The Lakers, who received three technical fouls for zone defenses Friday night, got two more technicals for the same offense Sunday, and Coach Pat Riley said Portland Coach Jack Ramsay is influencing the officials. “That’s Ramsay screaming ‘zone’ all the time at the referees,” Riley said. “That’s just a coach’s ploy.” Ramsay said he stopped asking the officials to call a zone early in the game. “I never said anything about a zone, except once or twice, but they (the Lakers) do that all the time.” . . . Commissioner David Stern, who was at the game Sunday, confirmed that the Clippers were assessed a $5,000 penalty in federal district court in San Diego, which is conducting a temporary hearing of the league’s $25-million lawsuit against the Clippers. A Clippers’ motion to exclude information from the team’s aborted 1982 move to Los Angeles was denied and the penalty was assessed, Stern confirmed, because the court found the motion to be irrelevant.

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 Portland 115, Los Angeles 107 Game 5 Tuesday at Los Angeles 7:30 p.m. Game 6 Thursday at Portland 8:30 p.m. Game 7 Saturday at Los Angeles 12:30 p.m. NOTE: Game 6 and Game 7 if necessary.