Sure, Lakers Are Still Alive, but It’s a Fight for Survival

Let us pause now and observe a moment of silence, in honor of the death of a team that seemingly was bound for glory.

Maybe the Lakers, had they brushed aside the pesky Celtics in four or five games, would not have been elevated to the pantheon of all-time great basketball teams.

But, Charley, they coulda been a contendah.

The Lakers blew their chance at immortality Thursday night as the Celtics dumped them into Boston Harbor, 123-108. A Garden variety win.

When the Lakers won the previous game and many Boston supporters expressed surprise that their Celtics could blow a huge lead, Laker Coach Pat Riley chafed.

“The Lakers,” Riley sniffed, “are not chopped liver.”

Thursday, the Lakers were chopped liver.

As I was saying last week about this time, this series is no contest. One team is too quick and too fresh, the other is worn out, staggering, injured.

The Lakers’ X-rays came back Thursday night and they were positively negative. The Lakers’ pride is fractured, their fast break is in traction, and their place in history as one of the monster teams of our times is . . . Well, are you sitting down, Mr. and Mrs. L.A.?

The heart-monitor screen has stopped blipping.

Oh, the Lakers are still alive, still up 3-2 in the series, but I think it’s safe to say the Celtics have erased the preseries sympathy factor.

Instead of fighting for a place in history, the Lakers are thinking survival.

Now, to lay the total blame for what happened at the Garden Thursday night on the Lakers would be a grave disservice to the Celtics, who taught us all a little about basketball and heart this week.

They bounced back from Game 4, a loss local hoop writer Bob Ryan termed “the single most painful and devastating loss in Celtics playoff history.”

Had they bounced back any higher, the Celtics could have chinned themselves on the Garden rafters.

It was Shamrock Showtime. Backing up headliners Bird, McHale and Johnson was the incredible Mormon tag-team trick-shot duo of Danny Ainge and Greg Kite.

Ainge hit 5 of 6 three-pointers, including a 45-foot bomb at the halftime buzzer. Kite, who has a touch like the village smithy, actually banked in a free throw in the third quarter.

For his next trick, Kite will attempt to knock the ash of Red Auerbach’s cigar.

Thursday, the Celtics were, to steal a favorite West Coast and Laker word--focused. They looked like a big, green, 10-legged Nikon.

They had incredible Celtic-style balance, everyone contributing, even badfoot Bill Walton. The Lakers also had balance. Magic Johnson balanced his scoring (29 points) with his rebounding (8) and his assists (12).

If a couple other Lakers disappeared, well, that’s what can happen in the Garden. For that, you have to credit an assist to the Boston fans, who came to play. They were focused. Boston did not give up on the Celtics. One graduate at Harvard’s commencement exercises Thursday wore a mortarboard inscribed with “BEAT L.A.”

At the Garden, the fans were highly enthusiastic. During the third quarter, security cops hastily installed portable iron fences between press row and the first row of fan trenches, er, seats.

Thus protected from the menacing media, the fans were free to root home their green heroes.

The fans, and the Celtics, took the Lakers completely out of their game. And it’s not that the Lakers came in unprepared, or took anything for granted. Far from it.

At Monday’s team practice, Riley not only barred the media, as always, but demanded that the Garden broom crew, busily distributing fresh trash in preparation for the Tuesday game, leave the Garden.

“He insisted that everyone leave,” said a perplexed Joe L’Italien, the Garden’s director of security. “Maybe he thought they had VCRs in their brooms.”

Riley was calm after Thursday’s game.

“It was just one of those things,” he said.

But it was no trip to the moon on gossamer wings, baby.

“We have two games out in L.A., and if we can’t win it in that, then we don’t deserve to win,” Riley added.

Hey, that’s right. The Lakers do lead the series, and they do play well at home, and the Celtics are not exactly the road warriors.

The Lakers will be favored, certainly, in Game 6 Sunday, and they will be favored to win the series. Unless Kevin McHale breaks another foot Sunday and goes for 47 points and 30 rebounds.

Hey, the Lakers will still savor a win. A championship is a championship is a championship.

Still, the Celtics have exacted their pound of flesh, or chopped liver. They have dented the Laker aura. Instead of bound for glory, the Lakers are bound for L.A. And they are one Magic Johnson hook shot in Game 4 away from being bound and gagged.

But as magnificently as Magic has played in each game, he’d be the first to tell you that the Lakers win together and lose together. He got run over by the same truck that flattened the other Lakers.

As the last frothing fans filed out of the Garden Thursday night, the man who has the Garden photo concession--”Pose with a player”--was walking across the ancient Garden floor. Under his arm was Magic Johnson. It was a cardboard cutout.

At least I think it was.