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Magic’s 34 Points and 19 Assists Make Blazers Disappear

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Times Staff Writer

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar leading the fast break as a point guard?

Magic Johnson shooting--and making--a hook shot?

Kurt Rambis scoring even though his shot was blocked?

All these things and more happened to the Lakers Tuesday night. What will they do next? Well, they’ll play Denver in the National Basketball Assn.’s Western Conference finals, when at least the expected won’t be so unexpected, as it was in the Lakers’ goodby game with Portland.

The Lakers took the Trail Blazers out of the playoffs in five games with a 139-120 victory in front of a sellout crowd at the Forum, where the fans saw the Lakers do whatever it took to win, even if some of it was a little weird.

Everybody knows that Denver is going to run, run and run against the Lakers.

But to reach the Nuggets, the Lakers first had get past the Trail Blazers, and that did not happen without a few seldom-seen pages pulled out of the Laker playbook.

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The normal stuff was good, too, especially the Laker fast break as performed by Johnson, who finished with 34 points, 19 assists and 9 rebounds. His 85 assists in the series were an NBA five-game playoff record.

Johnson also finished with a bruised right thigh, but the rest of him felt pretty good.

“We really wanted it to end tonight,” he said.

The Lakers finally shook the Trail Blazers with a 2 1/2-minute, 14-4 run in the third quarter that helped them take a 17-point lead into the fourth. Portland, which had started off strong and trailed by only nine points at the half, just didn’t have enough left to avoid summer vacation.

“The Lakers are America’s No. 1 weapon,” said the Trail Blazers’ Mychal Thompson. “They are more powerful than the MX missile and more potent than the cruise missile. When Russia talks to Reagan, the first thing he’ll get asked is to disarm the Lakers.”

For more than a quarter, the Lakers didn’t look so overpowering. Darnell Valentine’s 13 first-quarter points kept the Trail Blazers close until halfway through the second quarter. At that point, some funny things began happening.

Abdul-Jabbar started it all. He stunned the Trail Blazer defense by dribbling the ball upcourt as a 7-2 point guard leading the fast break. Even though Abdul-Jabbar lost control of the ball, it bounced over to Michael Cooper, who scooped it up and lofted a shot into the basket just before his backside hit the floor.

“I thought it was a good shot, mainly because it went in,” Cooper said. “That’s all that counts.”

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Inspiration sometimes springs from unusual reservoirs, but after the Abdul-Jabbar and Cooper duet, the Lakers were a different team. The next trip down, Johnson threw a no-look pass to Cooper, who laid the ball in the basket without breaking stride.

The Laker lead grew from two points to six before it finally rested at nine, 68-59, at halftime.

Later, it was time for Johnson to make a shot he has not yet patented, the dreaded jump hook, and time for Rambis, who scored only two baskets all night, to get one of them after Sam Bowie blocked his shot right into the basket.

If the unusual got the Lakers the lead, the routine (for them) kept it for them. That would be the fast break. Four other Lakers scored between Cooper’s 14 points and Johnson’s 34, with Abdul-Jabbar getting 25 points on 10-of-16 shooting.

Laker Coach Pat Riley said that after they shook off their slow start, the Lakers played very well, which was certainly good enough to win the series in the five-game span he expected all along.

“Once we got the lead up to double-digits, we controlled the game,” Riley said.

Portland got no closer than 10 points in the fourth quarter, and although the final score looked as if the Trail Blazers had been blown out, they really hadn’t. It’s just that the Lakers can make it appear so.

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“I thought we played a little better in each game from the previous one,” Portland Coach Jack Ramsay said. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough.”

So the Lakers move on to another level, this one against a Nugget team that promises to dare the Lakers to run with it. This is a date that the Lakers are looking forward to.

“We didn’t want to prolong anything in this series,” James Worthy said. “We wanted to get it over with and get some rest, because if we had to play another game at Portland, Denver would be rested and waiting for us.”

Now, both teams will be rested and waiting for each other, which is exactly the way it should be. Meanwhile, Portland’s Kenny Carr figures he will be rested, too.

“Time to pull the clubs out and hit a few on the golf course,” he said.

And time for the Lakers to tee it up against the Nuggets.

“We have a date with them,” Byron Scott said. “We didn’t want to stand them up.”

Laker Notes

Besides Magic Johnson’s bruised thigh, Byron Scott twisted his left ankle slightly. Neither injury is believed serious. . . . Although it’s still not official, the first two games of the conference finals with Denver are tentatively set for Saturday afternoon and Tuesday night in the Forum. Games 3 and 4 are probably going to be played Friday night and Sunday afternoon at Denver . . . Former Celtic Bill Russell, a commentator for WTBS, said comparisons between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson are not valid. “It’s an exercise in futility,” Russell said. “They play different positions. The only thing I can tell you is that both of them are around championships a lot. To me, that’s the criteria for greatness.”

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