CHANGING TIMES IN NBA WEST : Laker Players Promise Only They’ll Show Up Wednesday Night

For the Lakers, the news is not good, except that their season isn’t over yet. Besides that, there isn’t much to say about a team that has not heard an encouraging word lately, even when they’re doing the talking.

After the Lakers lost Game 3 of the Western Conference final in Houston, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said there was only one direction left for the Lakers to take.

“It’s uphill from here,” he said.

Since the Lakers also lost Game 4 to the Rockets and have fallen behind, 3-1, in the best-of-seven series, Abdul-Jabbar said the climb looks much steeper.

“It’s still uphill, but it’s at a 90-degree angle,” he said.

There is also another direction available and it is the course the Lakers have been following for some time.

They’re going down and the Rockets are on their way up, probably ahead of schedule, which is a word the Lakers apparently considered only when it included the Boston Celtics.

All through the regular season and so far in the playoffs, the Lakers promised they surely weren’t getting ahead of themselves and overlooking teams.

But now that it’s going to take only one more Rocket victory to forcibly remove the Lakers from the playoffs, Magic Johnson believes the Lakers may really have been lying the whole time.

“The press has been saying it was gonna be the Lakers and the Celtics all along, to throw away the season and just get it on,” Johnson said. “Then it sinks in your mind. Maybe the players read that and said, ‘Yeah, we should do that. Don’t think about Houston.’ Maybe the guys got caught up in that. I don’t know.”

No one seems to know what’s going on with the Lakers. They are puzzled, confused, and perhaps most surprising, they seem almost tranquil about taking their lumps.

Let’s, see. About Wednesday night? Going to kick their tails, huh? There must be something encouraging to say.

“If we go down, we go down,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “But we’ll be there to suit up.”

That’s a relief, all right. The Lakers will be in uniform. But what about some Laker brashness? How about some of that swagger?

“We’ll find out a lot about our team Wednesday night,” Mitch Kupchak said.

They may find that something seems to be missing. In their recent postgame locker rooms, the Lakers are either quietly confident or else they are becoming very good losers.

Earlier in the season, when the Lakers were being compared to the greatest NBA teams of all time, they always had an attitude of such confidence that they actually believed they could not be beaten regularly, by anybody.

“It’s not like we’re not trying, but they just have that little extra edge,” Abdul-Jabbar said of the Rockets. “We don’t.”

If their edge is gone, so too will be the Lakers unless they win Wednesday night.

They talk about winning Game 5 Wednesday night in the Forum, which they say would put the pressure back on the Rockets to win the next game in Houston and avoid a Game 7 in the Forum.

Unfortunately for the Lakers, they have been the team unable to win down the stretch. Since the Rockets haven’t looked anything like they were going to fold since Game 1, the idea that the Rockets would tighten under pressure seems somewhat misdirected.

“Admittedly, it’s a cliche,” Kupchak said.

Said Johnson: “That’s only theory. But we’ve got to make it happen or else we’ll be at the beach.”

If the Lakers lose one more game, they will be free to go. Then the season will be over, one which could have been their very best would become one of their shortest instead.

For the first time since 1981, the Lakers are facing the very real possibility of not playing in the NBA championship series.

“I’m only thinking about Wednesday night,” Coach Pat Riley said.

There is much to think about. Abdul-Jabbar was asked to find answers to some difficult questions.

Why can’t the Lakers win on the road? They’re 2-4 in the playoffs and have lost four of their last five. The Celtics and Lakers tied for the best road record in the league, 27-14, in the regular season.

“Geez, I can’t answer that,” Abdul-Jabbar said.

What has happened to the Laker offense? The Rockets are holding the Lakers to 8.3 points a game less than their five-game regular season series, 114.6 to 106.3.

“We’re rarely getting second shots,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “Their defense has just been great.”

How could the Lakers beat the Rockets 4 of 5 times in the regular season and lose 3 of 4 in the playoffs?

“They are playing so much smarter now,” he said. “During the regular season, it was always close toward the end of the game and then they would make turnovers. Their guards aren’t making any turnovers.”

Before the series began, the Rocket backcourt was supposed to be an area of weakness.

“It was,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “They just turned it around at the worst possible time for us.

“The thing about it is, they’re hungry and they want it badly because they’ve never been there before,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “We’re hungry, too, but we’re just not the same type of team they are because we’ve already been there several times before.

“You get a team like Houston that has finally jelled, with Ralph (Sampson) and Akeem (Olajuwon) seasoned,” he said. “Now you put them in a situation where they really want it, and I can testify to the fact that it’s really tough on us.”

Of course, it’s always dangerous to count out the defending champions until the very end. Riley said so, in a word to the wise.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to start shoveling the dirt on us,” Riley said. And you know, he almost swaggered when he said it.

Laker Notes

So far, the Rockets have outscored the Lakers by an average of four points a game, out-rebounded them by 10 a game, committed fewer turnovers, had more steals and blocked nearly twice as many shots. . . . Maurice Lucas, the Lakers’ best rebounder during the season, has 18 in the series after playing 21 minutes without either a point or a rebound in Game 4. Lucas did, however, have five fouls defending against Akeem Olajuwon. . . . How good has Olajuwon been? His four-game averages: 31.3 points, 12.2 rebounds, 4.0 blocks, 2.3 assists. Olajuwon has 24 offensive rebounds, which are more than the total rebounds of any Laker except Magic Johnson, who has 7 offensive, 28 defensive. Olajuwon also has eight steals, more than any Rocket and more than any player in the series except for Johnson, who has nine. . . . Mitch Kupchak played 15 minutes in Game 4, his first playoff appearance since April 26. “My timing was a little covered with rust,” said Kupchak, who had two points and two rebounds.