It’s the Rockets Who Blast Off With a Victory : Lakers Downplay Meaning of 112-102 Loss in Opener

Redemption, the Lakers insisted, was not what they sought here Saturday. To them, all the heightened interest in their nationally televised season-opening rematch with the Houston Rockets far exceeded the actual significance.

Perhaps not surprisingly, those beliefs were expressed after the Rockets reinforced their position as the Western Conference dominator with a 112-102 win over the Lakers before a sellout crowd 16,016 at the Summit.

“It doesn’t mean squat,” said the eloquent Kurt Rambis, looking up from a statistics sheet.

Even if Rambis is right and this was nothing more than the first of 82 NBA regular-season games, the loss nonetheless showed that something will have to change if the Lakers ever do plan to redeem last spring’s playoff failure.

Circumstances were somewhat different for both teams Saturday, but the Lakers could not change the result.

Ralph Sampson, the taller half of Houston’s Twin Towers, was not a factor because he was sidelined with an ankle injury. But Akeem Olajuwon, the better half, was a towering presence. He scored 26 points, had 16 rebounds and blocked 6 shots in what he considered to be a routine performance.

The Lakers, meanwhile, promised to be a different team than the one that lost to the Rockets in the Western Conference final, four games to one. They were, and it wasn’t an improvement.

Not only did the Lakers fail to harness Olajuwon, no easy task for any team, but they also fell victim to one of the best games of Rodney McCray’s burgeoning career. McCray tied his career high with 28 points, making 12 of 15 shots in 47 exhaustive minutes.

They might have been able to endure Olajuwon and McCray and still win if not for 20 turnovers, 47.5% shooting from the field and very little help from a bench that was without the services of A.C. Green (torn ligaments in his left thumb) and Petur Gudmundsson (back spasms). Despite all that, the Lakers stayed close until lapses at the end of the third quarter and midway through the fourth quarter let the Rockets build comfortable leads.

Laker players seemed more defensive in the locker room while answering the media’s questions than they were on the court. At the very least, you can’t accuse the Lakers of overreacting to the loss.

“It’s one game,” said Magic Johnson, who had 21 points and 10 assists. “You can’t go on anything by one game. It’s going to be a long season. Now, January or February, you look it at little closer if we’re still like this.

“(The Rockets) know we’ll still be here. We’re not going anywhere. We just didn’t get the job done today. That’s all you can say.”

Laker Coach Pat Riley expressed relief more than concern.

“This one’s out of the way,” he said. “I make no excuses, except that we got beat by a very good team. But it’s only one game. Now, we can go play basketball.”

That’s what the Lakers were playing Saturday, though at times it did seem that they were confused about which sport they were playing.

One of those times happened late in the third quarter, and it resulted in a 12-4 Rocket surge and an 84-77 lead entering the fourth quarter.

In a 3-minute 35-second span, the Lakers committed five turnovers and seemed lost offensively. The only Laker points came on a dunk by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who finished with 27 points, and a Johnson drive.

On the other end of the court, the Lakers’ defense couldn’t stop light-scoring but rugged Jim Petersen, Sampson’s replacement at power forward. Petersen scored 6 of his 13 points in the final minute of the third quarter, making a 13-foot jump shot, dropping in a hook shot and adding a layup.

The Lakers’ sluggishness carried over to the fourth quarter. After Olajuwon blocked James Worthy’s shot, Houston opened an 88-77 lead on a three-point play by McCray and Robert Reid’s free throw following a technical foul called on Laker guard Wes Matthews.

After that, the Lakers pulled no closer than four points, even though they held Olajuwon to only one point in the fourth quarter. Reid, playing with a sore right knee, scored 8 of his 12 points in the fourth quarter, while McCray added 7.

“(Akeem) didn’t go in for one of those real killer nights where he’s up in the 30s,” Johnson said. “You can’t stop him all game, and we did a good job in the fourth quarter. (But) they had other players who came on and did it for him.”

The Rockets’ reserves, at least at this early stage, are clearly superior to the Lakers’. Both Green and Gudmundsson dressed, but neither played.

Riley called on only three reserves, and they did not contribute a point through three quarters. Reserve forward Frank Brickowski finished with 2 points, 2 rebounds and 6 fouls, while Michael Cooper had 4 points and 7 assists, and Matthews had no points and 3 assists. Highly-prasied rookie Billy Thompson never took off his warmups.

“Let our bench get a little longer with A.C. and Petur back, and then we’ll see,” Riley said. “It wasn’t a laboratory experiment today. I wasn’t going to play everyone. Basically, against Houston, it was the guys who played last year.”

Cooper, who played 31 minutes off the bench, said the Lakers’ mistakes, not necessarily the Rockets’ play, greatly contributed to the loss.

“We’ve got to learn from our own mistakes,” Cooper said. “We turned the ball over way too much and took shots we shouldn’t have. I don’t think it was anything Houston did to us.”

Worthy, despite scoring 21 points, had an especially rough time guarding McCray and shot 38% and had 4 turnovers. Rambis had 13 rebounds but committed 5 turnovers.

Afterward, Rambis came as close as any Laker to admitting that the coup is complete and that Houston is the dominant team in the Western Conference.

“Any time a team beats you, you have to concede that they are better than you--that night,” Rambis said. “You can’t go back the next time thinking that they are better, period.”