Magic Without Peer in Stretch as Lakers Win

The envelope, please.

Michael Jordan’s choice for the National Basketball Assn.’s Most Valuable Player this season is . . .

What’s that you say, Michael? The envelope is empty?

“I wouldn’t vote,” Jordan said Friday night after the Lakers’ 110-100 win over the Bulls before a standing-room crowd of 18,079 at Chicago Stadium.

An abstention?

“I’d vote ‘other,’ ” Jordan said.

There are two names on the top of most hypothetical MVP ballots. One is Jordan’s. The other is Magic Johnson’s.

A quick read of Friday’s box score might suggest a standoff. Jordan scored a game-high 33 points, 4 below his league-leading average, and made 5 steals. Johnson scored 28 points, almost 4 above his average, passed out 16 assists, made 5 steals and grabbed 6 rebounds.

A review of Friday’s final 106 seconds, however, suggests a different result: Magic in a landslide.

Johnson scored two baskets, one with a mini-skyhook over center Dave Corzine, the other with a spinning drive past guard John Paxson. He also grabbed a defensive rebound of a shot by Corzine.

Jordan over the same stretch? A big turnover--James Worthy knocking the ball loose for a steal just inside the midcourt line that Magic converted into a basket.

“Nobody is Magic’s main competition--everybody is his supporting cast,” said Mychal Thompson, whose own supporting role consisted of 18 points on 7-of-7 shooting and 5 rebounds despite a sore right ankle.

“With all due respect to Michael Jordan and Larry Bird,” Thompson said, “Magic is in his own little galaxy right now.”

After Jordan scored his last basket of the night--a driving, while-I’m-up-here-I-might-as-well-bank-this-shot-off-the-glass number--the Lakers held just a two-point lead, 100-98, after being ahead by nine, 96-87, with 4:38 to go.

No problem. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who wore the 6-foot 11-inch, 260-pound Corzine like a backpack all night, drew a foul from the Bull center with 1:33 to go.

What’s this, a standing ovation for an enemy player going to the line with the game on the line? Explanation: It was a 36,000-hand salute on the occasion of Abdul-Jabbar scoring his 36,000th point with a sky hook on the Lakers’ previous possession.

“It (the ovation) didn’t last long,” Abdul-Jabbar noted. “As soon as I picked up the ball for my free throws, the cheering stopped.”

Abdul-Jabbar, who had 17 points and 7 rebounds, made both free throws, and the Laker lead was four.

With Byron Scott denying Jordan the ball, Corzine was rushed into a hurried 18-footer. Rebound, Magic, who wound up getting the ball back in the left corner, broke free of Jordan and then buried his imitation-Kareem hook over Corzine.

If that wasn’t the clincher right there, Worthy’s steal followed by another Magic move to the hoop was.

“We keep finding ways to win, even when we’re finding ways to nearly give games away,” Riley said. “ . . . Earvin just took matters into his own hands, as he’s done so many times before.”

But while Magic was entitled to taking a few bows, he demurred, and not just because he was worn out by his 44 minutes of work.

“I’m out here to win games, that’s all,” Johnson said. “We (Jordan and Johnson) didn’t come out here to outduel each other. We probably would have taken 50 or 60 shots apiece if that was the case.

“People who expect us to go at each other build this thing up, but that’s more for the crowd. ‘Magic vs. Michael Jordan,’ but it never really ends up that way.”

Especially since Magic couldn’t take credit for the defensive job done on Jordan, who made just 12 of his 27 shots. Most of that legwork was done by Scott and Michael Cooper, who ran through a dizzying maze of picks and screens to stay with him.

The brainstorming was done by Riley, who decided that the best way to approach Jordan was to force him toward the ball, keeping the defense aware of where he was at all times, letting him have the first pass, then trying to contain him from there.

“He likes to catch and shoot, or catch and go,” Riley said. “By making him go toward the ball, we were trying to stop him from doing what he likes best--which is reversing and driving, or posting a man up.”

But while Riley won points for using his head, it was when he nearly lost it that the Lakers finally came to life.

That happened a minute into the second quarter, after Bull rookie Brad Sellers slipped in for an easy follow shot to give Chicago a 32-26 lead. Riley, who had watched the Bulls score 10 second-shot points in the first quarter while outrebounding the Lakers, 13-6, said he was livid.

“That’s the understatement of the year,” Thompson said. “He challenged our manhood. We either had to respond or sit on the bench.”

The Lakers responded, especially when Thompson and Kurt Rambis joined Abdul-Jabbar in the front line. The Lakers, who were badly outrebounded by the Bulls in Los Angeles (56-39), won the battle of the boards Friday, 36-33.