After Rockets, Lakers Talking About a Face Lift : Player Changes Can Be Expected--Not Just a Big Body, but a Big, <i> Young </i> Body

One day after the end came for the Lakers, they were already talking about a new beginning. Don’t expect the same old Lakers next season. Apparently, some changes will be made.

Last year’s champions met briefly at the Forum Thursday morning to clear out their lockers and divide their playoff shares. Then they went their separate ways.

Some of them won’t be back.

Maybe that’s what the Lakers need, James Worthy said.

“I think we’ve peaked,” he said. “We’ve played the very best we could play. Maybe the way we are now isn’t good enough any longer. It’s like going to the bank, using your automatic teller card and there’s no money in there.”

Magic Johnson agrees.

“We need something to wake us up, to make us better,” Johnson said. “Of course, you always have to make some moves if what you have don’t work.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to coach, but we need somebody big, that’s all. Sometimes you need some youth. Maybe that’s it.”

Not just a big body, but a big, young body.

Whatever direction the Lakers take, their first step is Tuesday. That’s when General Manager Jerry West meets with Coach Pat Riley and President Bill Sharman.

The first matter they will discuss is the the season that concluded for them Wednesday night when the Houston Rockets eliminated the Lakers from the playoffs, 114-112, in Game 5 of the Western Conference final.

Even though West said that the Lakers still had a very good season despite not making it to the NBA title series, he has questions about the path that the team followed this season.

“We tried to get the job done by using veteran players and bringing them to a good team, but we can’t continue to keep borrowing time with people who have played a long time in this league,” West said.

Said Riley: “Do we keep the same car and come back and drive it again next season, or do we need an injection of new fuel to make it go?”

So what’s in store for the Lakers next fall? Will this be a minor tuneup or a major overhaul? You might be surprised.

West and Riley can be expected to spend the summer shopping for a young and big power forward, which is exactly what they’ve wanted for two seasons now and is also what they are going to need if they are to prevent the Rockets from dominating the Western Conference.

“Obviously, what the Rockets have must be matched so we can get size and fresh young legs to support Kareem,” Riley said. “We’ve been one step ahead of the posse. Now it’s even.”

The Lakers do not draft in the first round until the 23rd selection, the same position they’ve been in for the last two years, so the kind of impact player they seek may not be available at that time.

However, the Lakers believe that the No. 7 and No. 8 teams in the draft, Dallas and Cleveland, are willing to trade their first-round spots. In either of those positions, the Lakers think they can come up with the player they are searching for.

All they have to do is trade somebody, and who that player might be is purely speculative, although Byron Scott’s name has drawn some interest.

If the Lakers do make a trade, it would be their first major deal since they traded Norm Nixon to the San Diego Clippers before the 1983-84 season. In that trade, the Lakers sent Nixon, Eddie Jordan and two second-round draft choices to the Clippers in exchange for Swen Nater and the rights to Scott, who is 25.

The Lakers also made an important personnel decision after last season when they let Bob McAdoo go and traded two second-round draft choices to Phoenix for Maurice Lucas.

Although the Lakers clearly missed McAdoo’s outside shooting in the playoffs, Lucas led the Lakers in rebounding during the regular season and played consistently well, even though his role was probably the most difficult one he has had in his 12-year professional career.

Lucas, whose moves have always kept him close to the basket, not only had to move outside to play more on the perimeter but also was assigned to defend against Dallas’ Mark Aguirre in one series and against Houston’s Akeem Olajuwon in the next.

Next season, the 34-year-old Lucas has a $625,000 guaranteed contract. He said he does not know what direction the Lakers are planning to take with personnel.

“That isn’t up to me,” he said. “That’s out of my area.”

At the same time, Mitch Kupchak’s status for next season is entirely his own decision. Kupchak, 30, has two seasons left on his contract at $1.15 million each season, but he has hinted that he might retire if the Lakers don’t want him back.

“My intention is to play again next year unless something happens over the summer,” Kupchak said.

Under the NBA’s salary-cap rules, should Kupchak choose to call it quits, the Lakers would be free to use half of his salary, $575,000, for another player.

“Mitch is the only one who can evaluate whether he should hang it up,” Riley said. “But should he retire or whatever, it would open up the coffers.”

The Lakers also have to make some decisions about what to do with their four free agents. Michael Cooper, Petur Gudmundsson, Larry Spriggs and Ronnie Lester become free agents as soon as the NBA championship series ends.

Neither Spriggs nor Lester is likely to return, but the Lakers want both Cooper and Gudmundsson. However, Cooper has been advised to test the free-agent market and bring back an offer sheet, which the Lakers promise to match.

Fred Slaughter, Cooper’s agent, thinks that some teams won’t bother coming up with an offer sheet if the Lakers say they plan to match one, anyway.

“It has a chilling effect,” Slaughter said. “They say ‘How can we compete with Jerry Buss’ millions?’ ”

Said West: “I feel confident Michael Cooper will sign.”

There is even more for the Lakers to consider besides personnel. They have to worry about competing with the new force in the conference, the Rockets, who knocked the defending champions out of the playoffs in a five-game series.

Besides changing players, the Lakers are also considering a change in style to prepare themselves for life after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who plans to retire following next season’s playoffs, when he will be 40.

Abdul-Jabbar, who in training camp left open the door to retiring after this season, changed his mind in early spring and said he definitely intends to return for an 18th season.

“I’m sure he will,” West said. “He had a hell of a year. It’s hard to retire off an All-Pro season. He’s done more than we could ever expect.”

Riley thinks that Gudmundsson has a chance to develop into a first-rate backup center and said he has plans to play both Gudmundsson and Abdul-Jabbar together on the same front line at times next season.

In the same area, for the past several seasons the Lakers have treated the power forward-position that Kurt Rambis plays as a non-scoring job with emphasis on passing, rebounding and defense. But Riley said that, too, has to change.

“We can’t have the novelty of that anymore,” he said. “The non-scoring power forward who just rebounds and plays defense against Ralph Sampson won’t get it done.”

Then, to save wear and tear on Johnson, Riley said that the Lakers are going to develop a new look in which Johnson doesn’t always handle the ball himself.

Johnson finished the series against the Rockets averaging a near triple double (22.2 points, 8.0 rebounds, 16.2 assists).

“It will be an interesting summer, all right, but what I’m really kicking myself about is that we won’t see how good Boston really is,” Johnson said. “Now, I got to look at television and find out.

“We had a great season, the regular season, but we fell short in the playoffs,” he said. “This is worse than losing in the championship series. I’ve never been on vacation this early in a long time. If I lose, I want to lose in a championship.”

There was only one problem, Johnson said: “We just played bad at a bad time.”

Laker Notes The Lakers divided their playoff pool of $155,000 into 14 shares. Each player except Petur Gudmundsson gets $11,497.25. Trainer Gary Vitti also receives a full share, whereas Gudmundsson, a late-season addition, receives a one-quarter share. Another one-quarter share is divided among other team personnel. . . . Kurt Rambis said he believes that the games with the Rockets were just an off-series for the Lakers. “We got to look at it as one bad series,” Rambis said. “You know, at the start of the year, we were compared to the best Laker teams of all-time and the NBA’s best of all-time. Things can change quickly in the NBA.” . . . James Worthy said he noticed a subtle difference in this season’s Laker appetite from last season. “It was a different kind of hunger,” he said. “We were hungry last year because we wanted to beat Boston. This year, we were hungry because we wanted to repeat. But there are a lot of hungry teams out there.”