Knicks Clear Boards, Clean Up on the Lakers

The Lakers set a couple of records Sunday evening. One was for the quickest emptying of the locker room. The other was for the worst impression of attempted rebounding.

Less than 48 hours after beating the Philadelphia 76ers by 34 points, the Lakers took a deep breath and lost, 103-96, to the New York Knicks.

The Lakers, it seems, are a little schizophrenic.

“You just have to come to play every night,” Laker Coach Pat Riley said. “I don’t take anybody lightly.”

Last in the Atlantic Division and last in the entire NBA in rebounding, the Knicks certainly didn’t play like lightweights against the Lakers, who came into the game with the second best rebounding team in the league and left with no good explanation for what went wrong.

“I don’t even feel like discussing this bleep,” said Maurice Lucas.

Yes, the Lakers were a team of few words, fewer rebounds and a great deal of just standing around. It was a perfect vantage point to watch the Knicks jerk a game right out of their hands.

With a little extra effort by the Lakers, maybe the Knicks wouldn’t have had 52 rebounds and 24 offensive rebounds. Maybe Kareem Abdul-Jabbar might have been able to do a little better than three rebounds in 40 minutes.

Abdul-Jabbar was outrebounded by both Laker guards, which is pretty much the reverse of what the center on your team should do.

But when Abdul-Jabbar had the ball and was looking for his shot, he had no such problems. Abdul-Jabbar finished with 40 points and 4 assists and he also blocked 6 shots.

While Abdul-Jabbar certainly wasn’t the only Laker who had trouble getting rebounds, he was also clearly the only Laker who had any offense at all.

Why not credit the Knick defense? The Knicks’ Gerald Wilkins felt that is a pretty good place to start.

“They (the Lakers) are used to playing West Coast basketball where nobody ever plays defense,” he said. “Kareem was the only one doing all the scoring and no one else did anything.”

The way the Lakers played Sunday, they gave West Coast basketball a bad name. They never led after the opening minutes of the second quarter and managed to lose a game in which Patrick Ewing was barely a factor.

Limited to just 24 minutes because of foul trouble, Ewing made only 3 of 17 shots, but he hit the one that counted in the fourth quarter when the Lakers were trying to salvage a game that the Knicks didn’t deserve to lose.

Ewing dropped a 19-foot jumper with two seconds left on the 24-second clock and 1:38 on the game clock to put the Knicks ahead, 96-89. The Lakers couldn’t get any closer than four points the rest of the way.

Knick Coach Hubie Brown said Ewing’s shot showed the type of player he is.

“I know that, statistics-wise, this was probably Patrick Ewing’s toughest game,” he said. “But he came back and hit that big jumper with the pressure on. I’ll tell you, it took a hell of a lot of guts to take that shot.”

Since the Lakers shot only 45%, they had numerous opportunities to retrieve their own missed shots, yet they collected only seven. Kurt Rambis finished with 10 rebounds, nearly one-fourth of the Laker total of 41.

“When that happens, we’re not making much of an effort going after it,” Riley said. “Rebounding was our real breakdown. We had a lot of guys standing around.”

Rebound baskets by guard Darrell Walker, guard Trent Tucker and 6-9 backup center Ken Bannister closed out the first quarter and gave the Knicks a 31-28 lead. The Lakers managed only one field goal the last 3:20.

The Knicks got out front for good in the third quarter, opening a one-point halftime lead to 81-73 even though they did it without Ewing. He went to the bench with the Lakers ahead, 56-54.

“We’re not quitters,” said the Knicks’ Ernie Grunfeld. “We play hard every night. Things don’t always work out every night, you understand, but we always play hard.”

The same cannot always be said of the Lakers, who often seem to play down to their opposition. Neither Mitch Kupchak nor Magic Johnson were available because of injuries, but the Knicks went without Bernard King, Bill Cartwright and Pat Cummings for the same reason, so the physical situation was pretty even.

“We’ve also lost to Golden State, Seattle and Cleveland,” Riley said. “You just can’t play the record of the other team. You take a look at the record and you wind up getting beat.”

Maybe this game showed how much the Lakers miss Johnson, whose sore right knee forced him out of his sixth consecutive game. He is listed as game to game. The Lakers are 3-3 in that span.

Johnson may not have turned the rebounding in favor of the Lakers, but he may have been able to improve the offense in the type of plodding game the Knicks force their opponent to play.

“We definitely take a running team out of their rhythm,” Grunfeld said.

But who could have foreseen the Knicks take a rebounding team out of its rhythm, too?

“I can’t explain it,” Grunfeld said. “If there was an explanation for it, we’d do it every night.”

So would the Lakers.