Lakers Win War With SuperSonics When Game Is No Longer a Game

The Seattle SuperSonics hardly make a love match for the Lakers.

Xavier McDaniel, for one, makes no secret of the fact that he hates the Lakers--and not just Wes Matthews, the Laker reserve whose windpipe still constricts at the sight of the X man.

Hate the Lakers? The SuperSonics have trouble loving one another, as player wives Bobbie Jo Lister and Monique Ellis proved in graphic fashion when they went toe-to-toe in a postgame brawl earlier this winter.

So it should have been no surprise that things got down and dirty Tuesday night at the Forum, when the Lakers and SuperSonics threw off enough sparks to light up a playoff game--the kind these two may stage in a month or so with a Western Conference championship on the line.

The Lakers, parading to the foul line a season-high 54 times, scored their last 10 points on free throws to hold off the SuperSonics, 94-90, before a sellout crowd of 17,505. The win was the Lakers’ 55th of the season; they can match last season’s 65-17 record by winning their last 10 games of the season.

Unlikely? Sure. But maybe not as outlandish as it sounds, especially since Michael Cooper--who had missed 20 of the last 22 games with a sprained left ankle--played 35 minutes Tuesday, and Magic Johnson, who hasn’t played in the last five games, plans to return to practice today.

Cooper only scored five points. But it’s hardly a coincidence that with Cooper on the floor, this game turned intense. Anything less, and Seattle--which had a 14-point lead in the first half--might have won going away.

“I think you can’t play basketball versus them,” said Laker Coach Pat Riley, who added to the spirit of the occasion by drawing a technical foul.

“If you come in with that idea, you’ll get beat. They’re very physical and aggressive. They’ll bump and bang. Until we decided to stop playing basketball, things weren’t going to turn around. There was no execution on either side.

” . . . They frustrated us--they’re good at it. It wasn’t a basketball game, it was a war. It brought out the best in us.”

Maybe not in artistry, but in hand-to-hand combat.

“The Lakers played great defensively,” said Seattle Coach Bernie Bickerstaff, whose team needed a last-second 3-pointer by Nate McMillan to reach 90 after scoring a franchise-record 151 points in its last game, Saturday night against Phoenix.

“It was great playoff intensity between the two teams,” Bickerstaff said. “The Lakers created a lot with their defense. They earned their shots, they got what they worked for. They took us out of our game, but it worked both ways because we took them out of theirs.”

That they did, unless you consider it normal that the only Laker starters to score a basket through three quarters were James Worthy--who led the Lakers with 28 points after going 2 for 10 from the floor in the first quarter--and Byron Scott, who was close behind with 27, 12 of which came on free throws.

The Lakers wound up shooting 38.8% from the floor, but that was sharpshooting compared with Seattle, which shot 17.4% (4 of 23) in the third quarter, 36.7% overall.

The SuperSonics were missing Dale Ellis, out with a sore right arch; and Tom Chambers, who led Seattle with 21 points, spent a good deal of the second half on the bench because of foul trouble. And McDaniel, who had burned the Lakers for an average of 27 points a game in five previous meetings, scored just 16 points before fouling out.

“Their defense was great in the second half when it counted,” Chambers said.

It counted most in the fourth quarter, which began with the teams tied, 64-64, and was still tied, 73-73, with 6:08 to play.

Worthy’s reverse layup gave the Lakers a lead they would not give back, and after Chambers made one of two free throws, Worthy’s jumper from the free-throw line made it 77-74.

McDaniel drove the lane to make it a 1-point game, but Kareem Abdul-Jabbar--who had 5 fouls and 8 points in 26 minutes--escaped a double-team, cut across the lane and hit a tough sky hook to make it 79-76.

A.C. Green, the busiest of the Lakers’ foul shooters as he went to the line 15 times and made 12, followed with three free throws, and after a basket by Kevin Williams, Abdul-Jabbar drilled another sky hook for an 84-78 Laker lead.

The Lakers made 41 free throws. The SuperSonics were 31 of 40.

“We haven’t played with that intensity in a long time,” Worthy said.

There may be a few dates of the same variety down the playoff road.