Sonics Have the Cosmic Name, Lakers Have the Cosmic Team

Hey, USA, can anybody else out there play this game?

Can any team on this particular planet play the Lakers a game of basketball, or a series? Or should the Lakers, instead of looking East for their next opponent, be searching the heavens?

“They’re cosmic,” said Detroit Piston assistant coach Dick Versace Monday after watching the Lakers erase the Seattle SuperSonics, 133-102 and 4 games to 0 in the Western Conference finals.

Versace had been sent to the great Pacific Northwest Monday to scout the Lakers, in case the Pistons beat the Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals. Lewis and Clark, who worked this same territory years ago, brought back a less eye-popping scouting report than Versace will.

“They’re playing better than any team I’ve ever seen,” Versace said.

The worst news he will take back to civilization is that the Lakers are playing like the Lakers.

Remember how they used to do it? Remember how pretty the Lakers used to be before playoff teams started hammering and leaning, hacking and pounding? After slugging out the first three wins of this series in Laker slo-mo, the Lakers finally broke out in Showtime.

Eat cosmic dust, earthlings.

Hey, you didn’t think the Lakers were going to play Wrestlemania forever, did you, bump and grind their way into the NBA finals?

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Lakers gotta kick it out. Their bustout was inevitable.

“You can only bounce nitro around so long before it explodes in your face,” explained Mychal Thompson, Laker backup center and designated quotesmith.

And Michael Cooper said: “It’s like a race horse that’s been in his stall for two, three weeks. You let him out in the pasture and all he wants to do is run, run, run. We’re at our best when we do that.”

Magic said it more succinctly.

“We was a step quicker than they was today.”

When the Lakers set up, grind it out, they’re tough, almost unbeatable. When they run, they’re cosmic.

For the first two quarters Monday, Laker feet barely touched hardwood. Magic Johnson kicked off a second-quarter 19-3 run with this play: sweeps a defensive power rebound, dribbles out and squeezes around the body check of Tom Chambers at midcourt, steams directly to the hoop, goes airborne and splits defenders Xavier McDaniel and Nate McMillan, double clutches and spins the ball off the glass for a spectacular layup.

It was an impressive 24-minute exhibition of power-and-speed basketball, the Lakers’ best since a 49-point quarter against the Golden State Warriors.

But Magic--who in an MVP-type first half did everything but thread a pass through the eye of the nearby Space Needle--played down the importance of the style of this particular win.

“People don’t understand,” Magic explained, almost irritated that anyone would be agog at the Lakers’ rediscovered running game. “You have to adjust. We wanna run, but we can’t run if they’re slowing the game down. It doesn’t matter which way you play. We do what we have to do. Today, they decided to run with us a little.”

Oops. The Lakers did most of the running, actually, and the Sonics did a lot of running after.

Afterward, Magic and the Lakers were fairly subdued. Just another cosmic game.

And let’s face it, a lot of experts in the basketball universe won’t get as carried away by the Lakers’ performance as did Versace. To some, the SuperSonics are merely the latest member of the Lakers’ Bum of the Week Club. Denver, Golden State and Seattle aren’t exactly hoopdom’s Murderer’s Row.

The Sonics, for instance, were only in the playoffs by the grace of a Jerry Buss Fellowship. It was Buss, the Laker owner, who years ago campaigned hardest for expansion of the playoffs, allowing sub-.500 riff raff such as the Sonics to join the fun.

Just don’t tell Magic the SuperSonics were easy.

“Seattle is the best pressing team in the NBA,” Johnson said. “They be all over you. They make you think the whole game, they don’t let you breathe. Nobody plays as hard as they do for 48 minutes. I’m so tired and sore, they bang you so much. I’m so relieved we’re done with these guys.”

So are these guys. Despite the wonderful coaching of Bernie Bickerstaff, the Sonics couldn’t even win one for the Bicker.

Still, they pushed hard, worked hard, played the role of sparring partner, preparing the Lakers for the brutal pounding they’ll take against either the Celtics or Pistons. The Seattle guys were SuperTonics.

It remains to be seen, though, whether the rest of the Western Conference did the Lakers a favor by losing 11 of 12 playoff games.

Did the other teams roll over too easily, to quickly, for the Lakers’ own good? The Lakers refuse to worry about such trivia.

“The shortest distance between two points is a straight line,” Thompson said, referring to the Lakers’ near-sweep of playoff opponents. “The Celtics are taking the scenic route.”

Why should they hurry? Whoever survives the Eastern playoffs will run into the Monsters of the Milky Way.

Maybe the Lakers won’t be able to run against the Pistons or Celtics like they did Monday against the Tonics.

But the Lakers do have a week or so to rest up, heal up, psych up and get cosmic for one more big series.