On Lakers, Garbage Time Is Piling High : Amid the Sweet Smell of Success Is a Danger of Boredom Setting In . . .

After a game not too long ago, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was asked why he sometimes seems to get involved, really involved, only when the Lakers are in danger of losing.

Abdul-Jabbar looked up and winked.

“See me in March,” he said.

Well, it’s not March yet. In fact, it’s not even February. So where are we right now?

Nowhere, really. The All-Star break is still three weeks away, and the playoffs are so far in the distance that you could get eyestrain looking for them.

In three months, when the Lakers begin the playoffs, nobody will remember these days of January when the games were more like exercises in yawning and you didn’t always know what day it was. Except for Pat Riley.

“It’s like Wednesday of the work week,” Riley said. “We’re not rested and revitalized like on Monday, and it’s not Friday either. It’s time for long coffee breaks and leaving the office a little early.”

What we have here are commonly referred to in the NBA as the dog days, the part of the 82-game schedule when teams tend to lose their focus. Some even lose games, although that hasn’t been the Lakers’ problem.

No, the Lakers are facing another opponent. They’re playing against boredom.

Can you imagine how boring it must be for the Lakers? They show up, put on their uniforms, clobber the other team, shower and go home. Then they do the same thing the next night.

It is routine, it is predictable, and if they don’t watch out, it is going to cost them a few victories.

Actually, it may have already. The Lakers have lost games to Cleveland, Golden State and Seattle, none of whom have anything close to a winning record.

Two of the defeats were dealt them at the Forum. How could that happen?

“Sometimes we take a look at teams we play who are in last place,” Riley said. “You think it will be a cakewalk that night. Before you know it, you get blitzed by 20 points.”

Score one for boredom.

Are the Lakers being numbed by their own success? After Thursdaynight’s 112-96 victory over theClippers, they had a 31-6 record. Can they possibly be bored with it all?

“What should we do?” Riley asked. “Go out and lose a few games?”

That may be far too drastic a measure to get the Lakers’ attention. So far this season, they’ve managed to get the attention of everyone else.

Look at what they’ve done. They lead the NBA in shooting and scoring. Their average margin of victory is more than 14 points. Nineteen of their victories have been by 10 points or more.

Few teams are even coming close to the Lakers. If this isn’t boring, it may at least be a reasonable facsimile. But Magic Johnson disagrees.

“Sometimes, we’re just a step behind in games,” he said. “Hey, it happens. You are gonna have those. It’s just the season. We’ve had some and we’ll have some more.

“It’s definitely tough on the older veterans to be up every night,” Johnson said. “We just try to keep it going and keep it fun.

“I’m never bored,” he said. “I like to play the games too much for that.

“Just give me the ball in the middle of the court, give me two teammates on the wings and I’ll be the happiest man in the world.”

Johnson is a man of simple pleasures where basketball is concerned.

Speaking of simple, consider the Laker practice session Wednesday. They started 15 minutes late, shot for a while, stretched some, ran a couple of drills, shot some more and went home.

The whole thing took about an hour.

The Lakers are considered a very good practice team, but if you’re expecting to get your kicks from working out instead of playing games, then you’ve got the whole thing wrong. Maurice Lucas, for one, and Mitch Kupchak, for another, find it kind of thrilling just to be healthy during the dog days.

“Right now, I find myself figuring out which part of me hurts the most,” said Lucas, who has tendinitis in his knees, a jammed finger and is getting over the flu.

“This is a tough period, probably the most difficult part of the season,” he said. “We’re not on the downside of the season yet. In fact, we’re far from it.”

Kupchak, who has a sore shoulder as well as a bruised larynx, said this is the part of the season when injuries start catching teams.

“We’re in that situation right now,” he said. “But the hardest thing about this part of the season is how it affects young players. Like A.C. Green. He’s not used to this thing. He can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Green, 22, is the only Laker rookie. He has already played five more games than he did all last season at Oregon State. But at the moment, Green seems to be more confused than bored.

“I got lost twice in the last two days,” he said. “Took me three hours to get places it should have taken me about 20 minutes.

“I’m not bored though,” he said. But then he admitted he can hardly wait for the All-Star break.

“I’ve never been away from home for this long,” he said. “I’m in a drought.”

There have been no long, dry spells for the Lakers as a team, though. There haven’t even been any short ones. The Lakers have not lost two straight games in exactly one year.

Is this boring?

“I look at it this way--it’s just like being a 9-to-5er,” Michael Cooper said. “You don’t go to work every day feeling like a million bucks. All I know is, I’m still enjoying it. Eighty-two games is a lot of games. We can lose some, but it’s because we’re human, not because we’re bored.”

For a long time, the Lakers have been accused of playing to the level of their competition. If that is true, it explains not only their success against the better teams but also their problems with the poorer ones.

James Worthy believes that blaming defeats on any presumed lack of interest, instead of giving credit to their opponents, is a mistake in judgment.

“Everybody gets bored sometimes, but not with the season,” Worthy said. “We’re a good team, but we can be beaten. Anybody can be beaten if you don’t come prepared, and get caught up in the longness of the season. It becomes a mental thing.”

Kupchak said the Lakers might be better able to fight off suspicions of boredom if they were involved in a close race, which they are not.

“We’re not being challenged right now,” he said. “If Portland or Houston or Denver had a better record, it might be more of an incentive for us. But still, I don’t think it’s an issue.”

So what is the issue? It’s hard to quibble with the Laker record, but Riley strongly believes he must point out what’s going wrong in order to keep things going right.

To defeat boredom, Riley wants the Lakers to concentrate on what he calls effort areas, such as rebounding, steals, taking charges and picking up loose balls.

“You have to be objective,” he said. “Sure, we’re playing well, but we’ve stopped working in some areas like rebounding because A.C. and Lucas came in and did such a good job. You can’t just gloss over those things.

“I’m not trying to find a way to criticize our team,” he said. “I’m just trying to open up their minds. I don’t want any smoke screens with this team. If we play every night like we do sometimes, we’d win all 82 games. I also know I can’t get water out of a rock. You have to be realistic with the humanness of the players.”

If the Lakers get to the championship series again, they know their season could last for five more months. That’s a long way off, but Cooper doesn’t care.

“Means more per diem checks,” he said.

Until the games become a lot more meaningful, though, the Lakers are just going to have to make do with what they have.

See you in March.