Lakers Get Rings, Then a Thumping From Cleveland

The Lakers made their home debut Tuesday and promptly closed in the second act. There are 40 more performances scheduled this season at the Forum, but the Lakers sure know how to turn a night to remember into a night to forget.

Only minutes after waiting for the Lakers to relive their championship season in a pregame ceremony, the Cleveland Cavaliers ran rings around the Lakers and dumped them, rather unceremoniously, 129-111, at the Forum.

In losing their first game after winning four straight on the road, the Lakers kept alive a tradition of getting clobbered the same night they get their championship rings.

The last time was in 1982, when the Lakers fell behind by 30 points and wound up losing by 15 to the Golden State Warriors.

This one wasn’t even that close. From now on, maybe the Lakers can schedule their ring ceremonies on an off-day.

Laker Coach Pat Riley, who said he wouldn’t use the ring ceremony as an excuse, claimed it was no distraction.

“It was over pretty quick,” Riley said, meaning the ceremony, but he could also have been referring to the game.

“But this ring thing is like an albatross around our necks,” Riley said. “It was the same kind of ordeal we went through three years ago.”

The Cavaliers, who had won only one of five games coming in, won going away.

They certainly deserved to. After leading by 18 points at the end of the first half, they watched the Lakers get no closer than 14 points the second half.

George Karl, the Cavalier coach, couldn’t quite believe his eyes.

“At the six-minute mark, I said to myself, ‘Don’t wake up. Don’t wake up.’ ”

The Lakers slumbered on. They were outshot, outrebounded and outhustled.

Magic Johnson scored 23 points and led the Lakers with eight rebounds. James Worthy came up with 20 points, four in the second half.

On the other side, Edgar Jones scored 24 points and pulled down 12 rebounds.

Karl counts on Jones more for his defense than his offense, but when Edgar feels it, Karl isn’t about to tell him to ignore the urge.

“Some nights, no matter what, it all goes right,” Jones said. “Other nights, like what happened to the Lakers tonight, it all goes wrong. That won’t happen often, but at least it happened once.”

Early on, there wasn’t any real clue of what was going to happen. For a while, everything was just fine for the Lakers. They got their championship rings from NBA Commissioner David Stern in an eight-minute ceremony and their title banner was unveiled.

So far, so good. But then the game started and things fell apart in a hurry.

After one quarter, the Lakers trailed by seven points. No sweat, right? Two minutes later, they were down by 12, and three minutes after that, they were down by 20, 55-35.

The Cavaliers did not play as though they were impressed by the Lakers’ rings. Led by Jones, who had 12 points in the second quarter, the Cavaliers were ahead by 18 at the half.

As difficult as it may be to believe, it would have been worse, except that Michael Cooper swished a three-pointer at the buzzer from 58 feet away.

For most of the first half the Lakers played as though they had 58 feet, all right, and they were tripping over every one of them.

You want fastbreaks? The Cavaliers had plenty of them, eight in the second quarter alone.

Want to talk shooting? The Cavaliers began the second quarter by making their first 13 shots. Jones was 7 for 9.

Edgar Jones?

Yes, Edgar Jones.

“I tell him all the time, that I’m the only guy in this league who thinks he can shoot,” Karl said.

The Laker rebounding wasn’t any better than the rest of their game. In the first half, when the game was actually won, Cleveland had a 27-18 lead on the backboards, and the Lakers starting front line had a total of four, including exactly one rebound by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 19 minutes.

Abdul-Jabbar wound up with four rebounds in 30 minutes, which was one more than the 5-10 point guard John Bagley had in 28 minutes.

Riley played everyone except Chuck Nevitt in the first half trying to find a combination that would do work, but he came up empty.

Byron Scott really struggled at both ends, having just as much trouble making his shots as stopping World Free from making his.

“There’s not much you can say,” Scott said. “You’ve just got to put it out of your mind. It’s over, thank goodness.”

Free matched Bagley with 20 points and gave Scott, who was only 4 for 11 himself, a world of trouble.

“Guarding him wasn’t any fun, especially when he has the jumper going,” Scott said. “It seems that no matter what we did, it was wrong.”

Laker Notes

Three Lakers who were part of last season’s championship team but are not with the club this year will get their rings later. Jamaal Wilkes, now with the Clippers, receives his ring Nov. 20 before the Lakers play the Clippers in the Forum. Former assistant coach Dave Wohl, now the head coach of New Jersey, gets his ring before a Laker-Net game Nov. 17 in the Forum. That leaves only Bob McAdoo, who has not signed with another team this season. When McAdoo will get his ring has not yet been worked out. . . . Tuesday night’s sellout was the first for a Laker home opener. . . . In Harry Weltman’s 2 1/2 years as Cavaliers’ general manager, he has filled seven roster spots and given up only one player who is still in the NBA. That was Jeff Cook, traded to San Antonio for Edgar Jones. The Cleveland players are World Free (for Ron Brewer), Lonnie Shelton (for a second-round pick, Scooter McCray), Ben Poquette (purchased), Johnny Davis (for John Garris and Stewart Granger), Mark West (free agent) and Ennis Whatley (for a second-round pick Calvin Duncan).