At the End, Magic Has One Double Too Many : As Lakers’ Guard Tries to Help Out on Bird, Celtics’ Johnson Hits the Winner

Magic Johnson said he could have done more. It didn’t matter to the Lakers’ star guard that he had recorded his first triple double of the National Basketball Assn. championship series Wednesday night in Game 4 or that he had made a crucial basket that tied the score with 19 seconds to play.

No, when Johnson saw Boston Celtic guard Dennis Johnson release the jump shot that gave the Celtics a 107-105 win, he knew he hadn’t contributed enough. Always with Magic Johnson, winning is the only thing that matters.

“You get a triple double and it don’t mean nothing because we didn’t win the game,” said Johnson, his head bobbing up and down to emphasize the point. “If I had scored 40 tonight, it don’t mean nothing because we lost. I’m trying to do as much as I can, but everybody feels they can contribute more.”

When the Celtics set up for a final shot in regulation, Magic Johnson was matched against Dennis Johnson because the Lakers felt that the Celtics would go to him before Danny Ainge. But when Johnson swung the ball to Larry Bird on the right side, Magic instinctively moved over toward Bird.

“He’s hit too many big buckets to ignore him,” Johnson said. “You’ve got to go over and double (team) him. You’d rather someone else beat you.”

Someone else did, and it turned out to be Magic’s man. Bird passed the ball to Johnson and, when the shot was released, there was nothing Magic could do but watch it swish through the net.

“I wasn’t thinking anything until the shot went in,” Magic Johnson said. “Then it hit me. Bam. We lose.”

Because the Lakers lost, Game 4 of this season’s championship series wasn’t any easier for Johnson to take than Game 4 of last seasons’s final. You remember--Magic sure does--that Johnson missed two crucial free throws last season that sent the fourth game to overtime, where the Celtics eventually won it to even the series.

People insinuated that Johnson cracked under pressure in that game, as well as in Game 7. But they couldn’t say that about Magic’s performance Wednesday night. He scored 20 points, grabbed 11 rebounds and had 12 assists--the best individual performance of any Laker so far in the series.

“I don’t evaluate myself until after all this is over,” Johnson said. “But I think I’m contributing.”

It looked as if Johnson was working on a sequel of his Game 4 performance of last season with 4:37 left in the fourth quarter and the Lakers trailing, 97-96. Johnson was dribbling near the top of the key and, when he started to pass the ball inside, it slipped out of his hands and was stolen by Bird. Boston called a timeout and then extended its lead to three points when Bird sank a jump shot.

At that point, was Johnson thinking that he was about to go through the same nightmare as last season?

“No,” he said calmly. “It (the turnover) just happened. You can’t sulk about what happened. It just happened. You think, ‘Hey, I made a bad play. I lost it.’ If you worry about it, you don’t play your game. What I was trying to do was fake it (a pass) and drive but it slipped.”

Perhaps to prove the ball slipped, Johnson wiped his hands across his shorts apparently to dry them off. A couple of Celtics noticed Magic’s gesture and chuckled.

“Wiping his hands off when he threw it away,” Boston forward Cedric Maxwell said. “Can you believe it?”

With 2:45 to play, exactly two minutes after his blunder, Johnson made up for it when he stole an inbound pass thrown by Bird underneath Boston’s basket and triggered a fast break that ended in a Byron Scott dunk. That gave the Lakers a 100-99 lead.

“See,” Johnson said. “I stole it back.”

Johnson may have been off the hook for his earlier turnover, but he obviously wouldn’t be satisfied until the Lakers had won. After Danny Ainge hit a jumper to give the Celtics a 105-103 lead with 33 seconds left, everyone in the Forum had to know the Lakers would go to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the potential tying basket. They did.

With 24 seconds left, Abdul-Jabbar swung to his right and let fly a sky hook. Johnson, at the free throw line, saw that Scott and James Worthy were back to protect against a Celtic break, so he glided down the lane in case of a rebound.

“I looked at B (Scott) and James, and I knew I had to crash the boards,” Johnson said. “At that point, it’s do or die.”

The rebound came right to Johnson, who came down with the ball for an instant before going right back up to sink a five-footer. That tied it at 105-105, and Johnson had forced the Celtics to either make the basket or face overtime.

Said Magic: “When D.J.’s shot went down, I thought, ‘God. We had them and now we lose.’ ”

Strangely, Johnson was smiling throughout his postgame interview. The reason, Johnson said, was because he was already looking ahead to Game 5 Friday at the Forum.

“It’s Friday night,” Johnson said. “We lost a tough game at the buzzer, but it’s Friday night now. We can’t get down in the dumps. There’s no reason to. It’s still 2-2 and there’s a long way to go yet in this series.”

As long as there is another game to look forward to, Johnson will smile.