1987 NBA PLAYOFFS : Lakers Clean Up on Celtics Again: Fans Order Broom

So, this is what it sounds like when Local 236, Custodians Union of Southern California, gathers for its monthly meetings.

“Sweep, sweep, sweep.”

That was the chant heard Thursday night at the Forum, where the Lakers once again vacuumed the floor clean of Boston Celtics, 141-122, in what might have been the last National Basketball Assn. game played in Los Angeles this spring.

Ask Coach Pat Riley what he thinks of the chances of a sweep, now that the Lakers hold a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven championship finals, and he’ll advise you to bite your tongue.

Riley, remember, is the same guy who wanted to smack some smiling faces in the Forum Club after the Lakers breezed past the Celtics in Game 1.

“The playoffs really don’t start until the home team loses a game or there’s a seventh game,” Riley said, recalling the sage counsel of a sportswriter, of all people.

“We still have three games to play in Boston.”

Three games, maybe. Two, if the Lakers pirouette on parquet the way they did here Thursday night, when Michael Cooper incinerated Boston with a record six three-point baskets, four in a 75-point first-half explosion.

Concerned about a sweep, K.C. Jones?

“No concern whatsoever,” the Boston coach said. “Why should I be concerned about that?”

A reporter ran down his short list of reasons why Jones, an amateur cafe singer, has reason to be crooning, “Melancholy Baby”:

--Two straight blowouts here.

--Few indications that it will be otherwise in Boston Garden, other than the lame hope that Cooper (21 points), Magic Johnson (22 points, 20 assists) Byron Scott (24 points on 9-of-11 shooting), James Worthy (23 points) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (23 points) will put their heads together a la Detroit’s Adrian Dantley and Vinnie Johnson.

Jones laughed.

“It never crossed my mind until you brought it up,” he said.

Other Boston brains, however, are receiving SOS signals, loud and clear.

Larry Bird, for example. The only other time he’s been down, 2-0, in a playoff series was in 1983, when the Celtics lost two to the Milwaukee Bucks.

“We got swept,” he said. “It wasn’t good then, either.”

What may trouble the Celtics most is the knowledge that they played much better than they did Tuesday night--and still had their heads handed to them.

In the first quarter, for example, they scored 34 points. Robert Parish had a dozen of those points and seven rebounds, and the team shot 63.6%.

Score at the end of the quarter: Lakers 38, Celtics 34.

In the third quarter, the Celtics scored on 12 straight trips down the court. Dennis Johnson threw in five straight jumpers.

Result: The Celtics cut all of four points off the Lakers’ 75-56 halftime lead.

That’s why, by the fourth quarter, Bird and Kevin McHale and Danny Ainge and Parish were just another bunch of semi-famous faces in the crowd, watching alongside Jack Nicholson.

“I like our chances,” Bird said of the Celtics’ return home for Game 3 Sunday afternoon. “But we have to be realistic.

“They’re playing so much better than us. . . . It’s never been this frustrating for all of us.”

Only two teams in NBA history have come back from 0-2 to win the finals: Boston, against the Lakers in 1969, and Portland against Philadelphia in 1977.

“We’ve got to win Sunday,” said forward Kevin McHale, who played 34 minutes with a fractured bone in his right foot, scored 20 points but grabbed just 2 rebounds.

“A 3-0 hole, that’s a hard thing to climb out of.”

It would help, of course, if the Celtics could find a way to keep the Lakers from blowing by them as blithely as a Maserati past a moped.

They tried Thursday, assigning Danny Ainge to dog Magic Johnson full-court. And for about six minutes that had the effect of keeping the Laker motor merely idling.

But Johnson isn’t the only Laker who can kick it into overdrive. So can Cooper and Scott and Worthy, and they took turns accelerating up the floor past the Celtics, turning them into so many traffic cones in the process.

Cooper’s three-pointers were killers, but he also carved up the Celtics with his passing, handing out eight assists in the second quarter alone.

“Cooper’s an incredible player,” Scott said. “Before the game he’s in his own little world, like most players.

“But you can tell when Coop’s ready. . . . He gets spaced out like everybody else. When I finish looking at him, I’m sort of spaced out, myself.”

As for the state of mind of the Celtics, try grim. One statistic tells all: The Lakers scored 64 fast-break points, Boston 18.

“Here’s the thing,” Bird said. “Kevin (McHale) and Robert just can’t get back like they used to get back, to clog the middle.

“At home, they get back a lot better. But they’re hurting.”

A mercy killing may be in order.