Super Cooper of the Nuggets Strikes Again : Laker-Beater’s 32 Points Lead 124-120 Denver Win

The Lakers lost a game Friday night to the Denver Nuggets, but it did no good to round up the usual suspects.

No, Alex English didn’t do it. Neither did Calvin Natt. Give up? Yes, once again it was Wayne Cooper, the culprit in the last Laker loss three weeks ago. Cooper, the one-time vagabond center, repeated his Laker-killer role in a 124-120 Nugget victory at McNichols Arena.

The same Wayne Cooper who drilled a 22-foot jumper to beat the Lakers by a point here Nov. 21 scored a career-high 32 points this time and dominated his matchup with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Cooper sank 13 of 22 shots and finished with 10 rebounds and 4 blocked shots in a performance that nearly left the loquacious Denver Caoch, Doug Moe, at a rare loss for words.

“Coop wasn’t good, he wasn’t great, he was sensational,” said Moe, who insisted he had no prior knowledge of what Cooper was going to do.

“Who do I look like, Karnak?” Moe asked.

Maybe not, but Cooper sure looked like, well, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Certainly, Kareem didn’t look like himself.

One night after making all 11 shots he tried in a victory over Phoenix, Abdul-Jabbar missed 13 of 23 field-goals attempts, missed 3 of 7 free throws and was constantly swamped by the Nugget defense the second he touched the ball.

“Personally, I missed a whole lot of shots,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “I missed enough of them that would have won the game.”

So the Lakers’ eight-game winning streak is history. They do have a 19-3 record, but two of those losses have been to the Nuggets. And the Lakers did enough little things wrong to cost them the game, like being outrebounded (48-43) for only the second time this season.

James Worthy led the offense with 37 points, his best game of the season, but 25 came in the first half, which ended in a 60-60 tie. By that time, it had already become apparent that the Lakers were not moving or passing the ball very well.

Trailing, 91-90, entering the fourth quarter, the Lakers quickly fell behind by eight points before Abdul-Jabbar made a couple of turnaround jumpers, about the only shot that was dropping for him.

English scored 30 points, but only 5 in the fourth quarter. Cooper had 12 in the final quarter, including an offensive rebound basket over Abdul-Jabbar that pretty much broke the Lakers’ backs with 1:29 left.

That basket gave the Nuggets a 121-115 lead. Even though Michael Cooper’s three-pointer with six seconds left got the Lakers within 122-120, the Lakers had run out of time to make up for earlier mistakes.

The Lakers made only 11 turnovers, but two costly ones came in a one-minute stretch late in the fourth quarter after two free throws by Worthy had cut the Denver lead to 115-111.

T.R. Dunn sank a corner jumper against a trapping Laker defense for his only basket of the game. Then, Worthy had the ball stripped away beneath the basket. Worthy came back with two more free throws after a Denver turnover, only to have Lafayette Lever steal the ball from him at the two-minute mark.

English missed twice, but Cooper grabbed the second rebound, got fouled and sank two free throws for a six-point Nugget lead. That was it for the Lakers, who finished with only 20 assists, as compared to their 37 Thursday night.

The Lakers’ assist total was indicative of the problems they had on offense. Denver didn’t allow them to run much, which kept Magic Johnson’s assists to a season-low of five. Abdul-Jabbar led with seven. He might have had more had the other Lakers either moved to the basket better without the ball or driven there themselves.

“We were into that thing where we were forcing the ball, trying to get it into Kareem,” said Riley.

When that happens too often, the offense stagnates, and that’s what caught the Lakers. Abdul-Jabbar was often left with nothing else to do except fire up a shot with Nuggets hanging all over him.

“They had a whole lot of people coming at me,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “The other guys have got to move, because I always seemed to get caught with the shot clock running down and I had the only thing close to any kind of shot.”

Riley said the Nuggets pressured the Laker offense into setting up a bit farther out than normal, and that tactic inhibited what they could accomplish.

Wayne Cooper was another story. A 13.2-point-a-game scorer this season, Cooper said he thought it was tough for Abdul-Jabbar to come out from beneath the basket and defend him, but he refused to say he won the matchup with the Laker center.

“We won the game, that’s the only thing that’s important to me,” he said. “Actually, I like to think I play like that every night. I like to think I do, even though I don’t always.”

Only when he plays the Lakers, it seems.

Laker Notes Even though his assists were down, Magic Johnson finished with 21 points and a game-high 11 rebounds. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored 24 points in spite of his offensive troubles . . . Laker Coach Pat Riley wanted to win this one badly. He basically used only seven players. Maurice Lucas worked just eight minutes and Mitch Kupchak just five minutes. . . . The Lakers didn’t get to their hotel until 1 p.m. because of a travel problem. About 10 minutes after taking off Friday morning in Los Angeles, their plane had to return to the airport because of a problem with the pressure inside the cabin. They had to take another flight, two hours after their first departure.