Laker Dynasty? Just Repeat After Me, Says Riley

There’s only one player left in the National Basketball Assn. who was around the last time a team won consecutive championships.

So when he hears the word dynasty, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar assumes you must be talking about the Mings or the Carringtons.

“Dynasty? I don’t think they can spell that word in the NBA,” said Abdul-Jabbar, even before the bubbly had dried on the Lakers’ fourth championship in the last eight seasons, third in the last six.

Coach Pat Riley, meanwhile, has decided that the best way to deal with the question of whether the Lakers can become the first team in 19 seasons to repeat as champions is to sound like “a lunatic” and guarantee that the Lakers will win again.

The irony, of course, isn’t lost on Abdul-Jabbar and Riley. Or Magic Johnson and Jerry West, James Worthy and Michael Cooper, Byron Scott and Kurt Rambis.

It wouldn’t be lost on Mychal Thompson, either, except that:

--He wasn’t around at this time last season.

--He’s too into reggae, the Bahamas, and just laughing at life in general to be worried about something so dripping in importance as irony.

Yet, the fact remains that last spring, the Lakers were discussed not in terms of dynasty but dismantling. To many outside observers--and at least one owner who shall remain anonymous but whose initials are J.B.--the Lakers needed an injection of new, and preferably taller, life to remain competitive.

And they weren’t talking about a new partner for Dancing Barry, either. The Lakers, lost in the shadows of Houston’s Twin Towers and nearly unnerved before that by the young Mavericks from Dallas, were contemplating major changes.

Twelve months later, and virtually the same cast that was vilified as passe is now being called the team of the ‘80s, and the best Laker team since the Chamberlain-West-Goodrich team that won a record 69 regular-season games in 1971-72.

“This team right now is the best ever (of the ‘80s teams) because of its maturity, experience, and the sense of settlement right to the core of the club,” Riley said Monday while sitting in his backyard and watching his wife, Chris, cut the grass.

Remember Abdul-Jabbar, who was supposed to yield center stage to Akeem Olajuwon, put on a pair of headphones, and while away the rest of his days cooling out to the sounds of his beloved jazz?

At 40, Abdul-Jabbar proved he still likes it hot. How worn out was the league’s oldest player Sunday, eight months after the season started? You must not have seen him wheezing and gasping his way to 32 points against the Celtics, the most points he scored in a game this season.

No one can stick a fork into Abdul-Jabbar yet. He’ll be done when he says he’s done, which won’t be for at least another two years. Any day now, the Laker captain will announce that he has signed to come back for two more seasons.

“I think the Lakers did a real good job of resting him,” said Boston’s Larry Bird, who didn’t know what rest was with the benchless Celtics.

“They went to him when they needed him. It seems like he didn’t use as much energy--not that he paced himself, but you’ve got to protect him.

“They need him to be a great, great basketball team.”

Abdul-Jabbar might have relinquished the baton--not to mention the ball--to Magic Johnson this season. But put Alton Lister in his place, or James Donaldson, or Steve Johnson or Mark Eaton or Joe Barry Carroll, and the Lakers would be just another Seattle or Dallas or Utah or Golden State.

On Sunday, General Manager West called this a perfect season for the Lakers. And it was, in so many ways, beginning with Magic, who levitated from superstar status to whatever transcendent level exists beyond.

Magic said he just went back to the way he played at Everett High in Lansing, but Boston guard Dennis Johnson thinks it was much, much more than that.

“Evidently, he’s the best,” DJ said. “And that’s not for doing nothing.

“Every game he’s been in, those we played against him and those I saw on TV, he’s been there, down to the end.

“When he started off (Sunday), you could see he was going to get Worthy hot and Byron Scott on his game. He left his own game out for the first seven, eight minutes.

“But in the second half, it was almost do or die for him. He was going to get everybody going. And when he hits his shots and gets going, he brings everybody else around.

“There’s no question he’s the MVP of this league.”

West was under considerable pressure to tinker with the supporting cast: Worthy was trade bait, Scott still unproven. Instead, he stood pat--until February, when he pulled out his atlas and made what is believed to be the first NBA trade involving Iceland (Petur Gudmundsson) and the Bahamas (Mychal Thompson).

Thompson barely had time to get in from the streets of San Antonio before being thrust into his first game--against Boston in the Forum. The Lakers, down by 17, came back to win.

The team was complete. And it stayed healthy and focused and hungry and on Sunday, it became a champion.

Dynasty? Puh-leeze.

On the other hand, in two years, David Robinson should be returning from sea and maybe Petur Gudmundsson has a brother that Jerry West could offer to San Antonio.