Maverick Win Is a Longshot, 110-108 : Harper Sinks 3-Pointer and Lakers in Miracle Finish

What was the worst thing that happened to the Lakers Friday night in Game 3 of their NBA playoff series with the Dallas Mavericks? It looks like a three-way tie:

--Was it the two free throws that Michael Cooper missed with 20 seconds left, the ones that could have clinched a Laker victory?

--Could it have been the ill-advised, overhead flip by James Worthy, coming out of a scramble, that sent the ball directly to Maverick guard Derek Harper with six seconds left?

--Or was it just after that, when Harper, having gotten the ball from Worthy, dropped in a three-point field goal with three seconds left for the game-winning basket?

The Lakers let the bad times roll, all right. They lost for the first time in these National Basketball Assn. playoffs, 110-108, and allowed Dallas to win a game it probably shouldn’t have won.

“I’m sure they didn’t think they would win that game,” Laker Magic Johnson said. “But they did.”

Laker Coach Pat Riley thought he had located the culprit.

“We have nobody to blame but ourselves,” he said.

Until this point in the playoffs, the Lakers had been been able to avoid the kind of blunders they committed down the stretch at Reunion Arena. The Lakers escaped with a 117-113 victory in Game 2 against the Mavericks at the Forum, but this time, their good luck deserted them.

So now, the Lakers hold only a 2-1 advantage in the best-of-seven Western Conference semifinal series. It would have been as good as over Friday night had they put the Mavericks away in the fourth quarter, but they did enough things wrong to give the Mavericks a little life.

The Lakers wasted Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 28 points and 12 rebounds, his best production in the playoffs this season, when they scored only six points in the last five minutes.

“That’s not like us at all,” guard Byron Scott said.

Then again, neither was it like the Lakers to allow the Mavericks to score eight points in the last 46 seconds and win a game that even Dallas Coach Dick Motta thought was a lost cause.

“It looked pretty bleak,” Motta said.

When Scott drilled a three-pointer from the left corner with 28 seconds to go, the Lakers were ahead, 108-105, and it seemed only a miracle would keep them from winning again.

The Mavericks did not get merely a miracle--they got three of them. It began right after Dallas’ Rolando Blackman drove the base line for a basket with 24 seconds left to cut the Laker lead to one point.

Blackman fouled Cooper four seconds later, even though Cooper wasn’t the Laker that Motta wanted to send to the line. Motta wanted Magic Johnson there instead.

“Not that Magic couldn’t hit two,” Motta said, “but he missed four in the last 12 seconds in Game 2.”

But Cooper, an 87% free-throw shooter, missed both of his attempts. Had he made them both, the Lakers would have had a three-point lead, but instead, the Mavericks called time out trailing by only one, 108-107.

“They were just two bad free throws,” Cooper said. “It wasn’t a lack of concentration. They just didn’t go in. That’s never happened to me before. If I hadn’t made two, I’d always made one.”

Not this time. But wait. There’s more.

Mark Aguirre threw up an air ball. Johnson had the ball slapped out of his hands by Jay Vincent, and Worthy dived for it in a scramble near the baseline. Had Worthy then merely controlled the ball, the Lakers would have won.

“I thought my momentum was carrying me out of bounds,” Worthy said. “So I just tried to throw it back as far as I could.”

Worthy flung the ball over his head, and it went right to Harper, who immediately let loose a rainbow jumper that dropped through the net with three seconds left.

Taped replays indicated that Harper should have gotten two points instead of three, because his feet were on the three-point line when he launched his game-winner. But it didn’t really make much of a difference.

The only difference was that the shot went in for Harper, who at last shook off his memorable playoff mistake of two seasons ago when he dribbled out the clock in Game 4 against the Lakers, thinking the Mavericks were ahead, even though the score was tied. The Lakers went on to win that game in overtime.

“I hope this puts two years ago to rest,” Harper said. “First of all, I’ve been over that situation for a long time. The important thing is to learn from it, which I have done.”

Meanwhile, the Lakers must try to learn from their own mistakes. Riley said he told his players not to get down on themselves.

“I don’t want them to get a hangover from this,” Riley said.

The Lakers probably will feel a lot better Sunday afternoon in Game 4 if they improve their rebounding, which except for the last few minutes might have been their biggest problem Friday night.

Maverick center James Donaldson had a game-high 14 rebounds, and the Dallas front line finished with nine more rebounds than their Laker counterparts.

“We’re just not rebounding the ball like we did against San Antonio,” Riley said.

Other than Abdul-Jabbar, who had 5 of his 12 rebounds in the first quarter, no other Laker had more than the 6 rebounds collected by both A.C. Green and Byron Scott.

The Lakers led, 55-50, at halftime, and when Scott scored on a breakaway after one of Johnson’s 14 assists, they were up, 83-73, with 2:05 to go in the third quarter.

But the Lakers did not get another shot in the period. They committed three consecutive turnovers, and Donaldson led an 8-0 Dallas streak that enabled the Mavericks to trail by only 83-81 entering the fourth quarter.

“We just kept them in the game,” Johnson said.

It looked as if the Mavericks were finally going to be put out of it when Cooper sank a jumper from the top of the circle. After that basket, the Lakers led, 102-98, with 5:01 left. From then on, the Lakers missed five of seven shots plus the two Cooper free throws and committed two turnovers.

The Lakers had one last shot after Harper’s three-pointer, but Johnson’s desperation three-point heave was short at the buzzer.

Johnson said the Lakers are not reeling from the effects of losing, no matter how they accomplished it.

“We came in here not to lose, but now that it’s happened, we just have to be professional about it and come back,” he said. “That’s what the playoffs are all about. It’s hard to sweep a team after you get out of the first round.”

And now, in this series, it’s impossible.

Laker Notes Pat Riley said James Worthy should never have let go of the ball on the play on which he inadvertently passed to Derek Harper for the game-winning shot. “We had the ball and the lead,” Riley said. “It would have been better to keep possession of the ball, but I’m sure that was just an aggressive play that just happened to go wrong.” . . . Mark Aguirre led the Mavericks with 27 points and also had 9 rebounds and 8 assists. Harper played his second consecutive strong game with 24 points. Laker Byron Scott limited Rolando Blackman to 6-for-21 shooting. . . . Riley said the Lakers will feel no ill effects by game-time Sunday. “We’ve got to shake it out,” he said. “It’s not very often that we don’t finish strong and close out the game. We’ve lost tough games before.”