Another Win, and Lakers Will Prove Moe Right : But Nugget Players Don’t Always Take Their Coach as Seriously as Riley Does

Doug Moe has become the newest, and almost certainly the biggest, crusader for truth in advertising. At 6 feet 5 inches and 220 pounds, the Denver Nugget coach towers over Ralph Nader.

But although Moe has fearlessly written off the Nuggets’ chances against the Lakers in their Western Conference playoffs, which will resume Wednesday in Denver, his players were asked Monday to write down one good reason fans should show up for what could be the Nuggets’ elimination in the best-of-five series.

Team management, dismayed that only 10,000 tickets have been sold for the game in 17,002-seat McNichols Arena, distributed slips of paper to each player after practice, asking them to contribute ideas for a newspaper ad appealing for fan support.

Center Danny Schayes obviously is on a different page than his coach, for this is what Schayes wrote: “Now we got ‘em right where we want ‘em.”

Considering that the Nuggets have lost the first two games of the series by an average of 22 1/2 points, and that Denver’s highest-scoring player, Alex English, has been outscored by A.C. Green, who is the fifth option in the Laker offense, whom do you take more seriously: Moe or Schayes?

The evidence suggests neither. According to Nugget President Vince Boryla, Laker Coach Pat Riley was guilty of overreacting when he said that Moe’s poor-mouthing of the Nuggets was a discredit to the Lakers.

“That’s just Doug,” Boryla said by telephone Monday. “He comes out and says he feels that way, and then he does everything in his power to reverse that.

“I agree with a statement I read someplace that maybe Pat needs a little humility and should coach the Clippers for a year instead of all that talent he’s got. Take his Ouija boards and motion offense and fancy clothes and hair and spend a year in the Sports Arena instead of the Forum.”

Moe still doesn’t understand why Riley took exception to his remarks. He wondered Monday if Riley truly believed that the Lakers were in jeopardy of losing in Denver.

“If he really feels that way, I’d be very surprised,” Moe said.

“Real surprised.

“Real, real surprised.”

Deep down, Boryla said, Moe believes the Nuggets could win Wednesday--”if everything breaks right.”

It’s just that the free-spirited Moe has always been--shall we say--a little unorthodox in his methods.

In 1983, Moe was fined $3,000 for throwing a cup of water on a nonunion referee while the regular officials were on strike. Bringing in a scab, Moe said that night, “was like asking Sam Sausage to do Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s job in the pivot.”

In that same season, Moe was fined $5,000 and suspended for two games for telling his team--in the last 90 seconds of a terrible performance--to stop guarding the Portland Trail Blazers, who scored a franchise-record 156 points.

“You deserve to be embarrassed,” Moe was heard to scream at his players. “They want it so bad and you guys are playing so bad, we’ll give it to them.”

Moe yells at his players--Bill Hanzlik is his current foil--but hangs out with them, too. Moe dressed down Hanzlik in full view of a national TV audience Saturday. The night before, they went to a Dodger game together.

Moe also has been known to make an occasional appearance at the track and actually enjoys the company of reporters. He has also won 468 games in 11 seasons as an NBA coach.

His players, said Pete Babcock, the team’s director of basketball operations, know when to take him seriously.

“They pick and choose what to pay attention to and what not to when Doug talks to them--before games, during games, and after games,” Babcock said. “They know what’s constructive or not.

“If you know Doug, then you know he’s just being himself. It’s not that he isn’t a competitor. He’s a tremendous competitor, maybe too much so for his own good.

“Our practices coming into this series were harder and longer than we’ve had all year. With Doug, you have to read between the lines.”

And the bottom line, Moe has maintained, is that no team--not the Nuggets, to be sure, but also not Dallas, Houston, Boston or Atlanta--is capable of beating the Lakers this season.

“Say we would have lost two straight to Dallas and were coming home,” Moe said. “I would have felt confident. But there’s no way I’m confident against these guys.”

Boryla also indicated that the Lakers look unbeatable.

“They’re playing tremendous ball,” he said. “I’ve been watching the Boston games on TV, and Boston is playing like they’re a 39-year-old heavyweight. Very sluggish.

“Maybe they’ll pick up their tempo, but right now their tempo is much lower than L.A.’s and their intensity looks much lower, too.”

Moe has been especially impressed by Green. While English, the Nuggets’ All-Star forward, has been limited to 14 and 17 points in the first two games, these have been the numbers posted by Green, the Lakers’ second-year forward:

--Game 1: 20 points, 7 rebounds and 3 blocks in 22 minutes.

--Game 2: 16 points and 13 rebounds in 29 minutes.

“Green’s the guy that’s killing us,” Moe said. “He’s gotten every important rebound and made it easier for the other guys.”

On the other hand, Boryla wonders when his power forward, Wayne Cooper, plans to show up. In two games, Cooper has a total of eight points and five rebounds. He was scoreless in a dozen minutes Saturday.

“Totally invisible,” Boryla said with disgust. “We’d be doing OK if Cooper had played like he had the last two years.”

Cooper signed a three-year, $2-million contract before the season. That, Boryla said, may be the root of his problems. Cooper also has been troubled by tendinitis in his knee but got no sympathy from the club president.

“If he had to play, he’d play,” Boryla said. “He’d play through the pain he had. . . . I bet Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wakes up every morning with tendinitis in some part of his body.”

The Nuggets have never been swept in a playoff series in their history. Will it happen Wednesday? Ask Schayes--or Moe.

“We could play the greatest game in the world and still get beat,” Moe said.

Laker Notes If the Lakers lose Wednesday, Game 4 will be played Friday night in Denver. If the Utah-Golden State series ends Wednesday, the Laker game will begin at 8 p.m., PDT, and will be televised on Channel 9 and WTBS. If there is a Game 4 in the Utah-Golden State series, the Laker-Nugget game will begin at 6:30 and will be televised on Channel 9.