Hard Talk Is Heard in Denver : Nuggets Must Play Tough or Bow Out

So far, the Denver Nuggets haven’t even talked a good game against the Lakers, much less played one, in the National Basketball Assn. playoffs.

So imagine the Lakers’ surprise when they arrived here Tuesday and heard that Nugget star Alex English had said there might be “some blood on the floor” in Game 3 tonight.

What’s this? Were these the same Nuggets who had played down to Coach Doug Moe’s “why bother?” expectations in two blowouts in Los Angeles and are a game away from the first playoff sweep in their history?

Well, the Lakers figured to encounter more resistance here than the Nuggets put up in the Forum. But blood on the floor?

“Oo-oo-ooh,” Mychal Thompson said. “Look at Kurt (Rambis). He’s shaking.”

Michael Cooper tried to keep a straight face, too.

“If there’s going to be bloodshed, I wonder whose blood it’s going to be,” Cooper said.

Thompson, for one, had no desire to be a martyr.

“We’ll just put Diesel out there and wipe them all out,” Thompson said.

That’s Diesel, as in Diesel truck, the Lakers’ nickname for Mike Smrek, their 7-foot, 263-pound backup center.

“Diesel can carry the whole team,” Thompson said. “Give Pat (Riley) a chair and a whip and send Diesel out there, and I’ll guarantee you’ll see it on CNN’s Play of the Day.”

English predicted that the Nuggets will play hard and win tonight. He also complained that the officials have all but tied his hands in this series.

Moe, too, criticized Bill Saar and Hugh Evans, the officials who worked Saturday’s 139-127 Laker win.

“The first half may have been one of the worst officiated halves we had the whole year,” Moe was quoted as saying after watching a tape of the game. “They just took us totally out of the game. . . . They got caught up in the Laker aura.”

The Nuggets were called for 37 fouls (English fouled out), and the Lakers shot 55 free throws to Denver’s 32. So, how about it, Kurt Rambis? Is there an aura about the Lakers that tilts officials their way?

“I never even considered that possibility,” Rambis said, mulling over the idea.

Then Rambis remembered something. There isn’t a Laker other than Smrek who is called for more fouls per minute than Rambis. Laker-blinded officials?

“You don’t think you’re going to get that from me, do you?” Rambis said. “Now, don’t make that sound like I’m ripping the officials.”

Moe cited an unexpected ally in his outburst against the officiating: Laker broadcaster Chick Hearn.

“The funny thing is, we get the tape with Chick Hearn, and he says, ‘Another bad call. . . . These guys (the Nuggets) aren’t getting anything,”’ Moe said. “Blair (Rasmussen) gets his third foul and he says, ‘That’s the third one he ain’t touched the guy.’ ”

How often do you suppose that Johnny Most, the Boston Celtics’ counterpart to Hearn, has ever been accused of aiding and abetting the enemy?

“Chick is very objective,” Riley said. “He likes to lean on us, too.”

Rambis expects there will be some Nuggets leaning on the Lakers tonight, too.

“There were a lot of fouls called (Saturday), but that doesn’t mean it was a physical game,” Rambis said. “If Alex is trying to motivate himself and his players to get them ready, I can understand that.”

“I know it’s going to be a tougher game, that’s for sure.”

Cooper is sure of the same thing.

“They’re going to come out with both shotguns ready and loaded and pointed at our head, and we’ll just have to stick our fingers in the barrels,” said the Laker guard, who obviously has been watching too many cartoons with his son, Michael Jr.

The Lakers, meanwhile, were hoping that center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wouldn’t spend the wee hours of the morning watching TV test patterns. Abdul-Jabbar said he has trouble sleeping in the thin air of this altitude.

Mychal Thompson, who will play more if Abdul-Jabbar is tired, can’t relate to Abdul-Jabbar’s problem.

“I could sleep in Beirut on their noisiest night,” Thompson said.

But he had an idea on how the Lakers could help their captain.

“We’re all going to take turns going up to his room and singing lullabies,” Thompson said. “But I don’t know if he’ll like my reggae version, ‘Go to sleep, Grandpa Ka-re-e-em.’ ”

Riley, for one, is eager to turn the lights out on the Nuggets.

“We haven’t played for three days,” he said. “I’m bored.”