Lakers Reveal New Killer Instinct

Kiss the Celtics good-by.

Or am I being too wishy- washy?

In case you missed it, the Lakers sent the Boston Celtics a message Tuesday night, and it wasn’t a candygram.

Dear Celts: Having a great time. Wish you were here.

Darryl Dawkins should be brought in to do the postgame commentary on this one. The Lakers did an In Your Face Disgrace and put on the greatest show of Interplanetary Funkmanship this season.

They beat the Celtics by 13, which is the least they could have done. The Lakers had to win big, and bad. They had to smoke the Celtics, and they did.

All the talk from Coach Pat Riley and the Lakers about how they dedicated this season to making up for last season’s laydown, all the babbling about determination and desire, were on the line. They had to win big.

This was no time to look ordinary, not even Laker ordinary.

And they didn’t. The Lakers showed precisely the element they lacked last season--killer instinct.

The Lakers had to play great. All their friends were watching. Every star in Hollywood was at the Forum.

Who was there? It’s easier to list the famous superstars who didn’t show: Pat Sajak, Moose Stubing, Spuds McKenzie, Madge the Palmolive manicurist, Sha Na Na, Zsa Zsa, Rin Tin Tin and Jerry Mathers as the Beaver.

Everyone else made it. Johnny Carson showed up. He thought they wanted him to Emcee the game, do a monologue, give out some awards.

With this kind of crowd, what would you expect but Showtime?

The Lakers played it perfectly. The Celtics are battered and tattered. Kick ‘em while they’re down. The Lakers had simply their best run of the season.

Some of them tried to play it down.

“I’ve seen us run better,” Laker backup center Mychal Thompson said, casually. “I expect it to improve every game.”

Right.

Thompson said it better when he said, “The Celtics looked like they were keeping up pretty good to me, just at a different pace.”

A different time zone. The Lakers invented their own Zip Code.

The Celtics came out flat, and the Lakers jumped on them with 10 sneakers. Smokey the Bear is more polite stomping out cigarette butts.

Bill Bertka, the Laker assistant coach who keeps charts on every move the Lakers make on the court, a man not given to exaggeration, said, “We ran as well as we have at any time this year. I thought our intensity matched anything we did this year.”

This is what you call good timing.

This was no time for the Lakers to come out tentative, hesitant. So they scored the first nine points of the game.

The game plan was to run everything, everywhere. If the Lakers pushed the ball upcourt every time, full speed, the Celtics simply could not keep up. The Lakers did, and the Celtics couldn’t.

The Lakers didn’t even want to call timeouts. They didn’t want to take a break at halftime. They probably went out to the parking lot and ran wind sprints. They were like a school of sharks--keep moving, fast, or die.

James Worthy is probably still out there on the Forum court, trying to wind down. If he gets any higher, he’ll be invited to be a float in the Macy’s Parade.

They call Worthy “Clever.” Einstein was clever, too. Houdini. James simply outgrew his nickname.

Magic Johnson had 29 points, 8 rebounds, 13 assists and zero turnovers.

Afterwards, naturally, the Lakers played it down. They ho-hummed it. Oh, did we do good? Shucks.

“We had a good performance,” said Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, stifling a yawn.

Kareem only played out of his skull in the first quarter, blocking shots, attacking the boards, running the floor.

Someone asked Kareem if he was surprised the Laker win came so easy.

“It was easy?” Kareem said. “It wasn’t easy out there on the court. The Celtics came to play.”

Save it, Big Fella. The Celtics came to drag their battered bodies up and down the court, to try to hang on to the Lakers like a drowning man clings to a hunk of driftwood.

The Lakers, now they came to play.

Riley substituted like a hockey coach, sending in fresh guys every few minutes.

No lead was too big, the Lakers wanted more.

Had they lost, or won in less impressive fashion, the Lakers would have been roasted for spending last weekend in lazy, hazy Santa Barbara. Hey, this isn’t a beach volleyball tournament, guys.

But the Lakers, notoriously slow starting when coming off a layoff, showed up Tuesday night razor sharp.

Their passing and ball movement, on the fast breaks and on the halfcourt offense, was amazingly crisp and creative.

They even revived the Coop-a-Loop, the rim-high pass to Michael Cooper that most teams have learned to defend against. Magic tossed one to Cooper in the fourth quarter, when the Lakers were putting the game away, and Cooper buried it.

The Lakers looked like the best team in basketball this season, at least.

Hey, Red, can the Lakers borrow a box of cigars?