Lakers Win One for Road : Minus Abdul-Jabbar, They Take the Last Away Game, 117-112

It hasn’t always been the San Diego Freeway at 3 a.m. in the middle of the week. There have been a few breakdowns, a couple of tire changes and one or two wrong turns.

But at no point on a seemingly endless trip that began in November and ended here Friday night--did the Lakers ever run out of gas. And now, with the green flag about to drop for the beginning of the playoffs, the Lakers appear to have the pedal on the metal in their quest for successive National Basketball Assn. titles.

The Lakers, despite the absence of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who returned home a day early to avoid a potential run-in with the law, concluded their regular-season wanderings with a 117-112 win over the Phoenix Suns before a crowd of 14,077 at Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

That gave them their third straight victory on the road, on the heels of a five-game road losing streak, and enabled them to finish with a record of 26-15 away from home, best in the league. Only Boston (21-19) joined them above .500 on the road.

The Lakers, who are 61-20, will wind up their schedule Sunday with a game at the Forum against Golden State, then leave for a three-day retreat to Santa Barbara, their sanctuary last season in the week before taking on the Celtics in the NBA finals.

“If we aren’t ready now, we will be after Santa Barbara,” said Mychal Thompson, whose game-high 24 points, 8 rebounds and 4 steals more than compensated for Abdul-Jabbar’s no-show.

“Knowing (Pat) Riley, he’ll have that boot camp, training-camp mentality. But we can head into the playoffs full of our selves, our chests puffed out. We’ve got a lot of confidence.”

And for good reason. The Lakers, who had about as much reason to muster incentive for this game as the Clippers on any given night, still came out and shot a sizzling 68.2% in the first quarter and led by as many as 17 points in the first half before tapering off to a 65-52 lead at halftime.

The Suns, with guard Jeff Hornacek making all six of his shots in the third quarter, briefly overtook the Lakers, but the Lakers’ trapping defense sparked a 14-1 run to close the third quarter with the Lakers ahead by nine, 91-82.

The Suns rallied one last time to close within one, 97-96, on a basket by rookie Kevin Johnson, who had a team-high 22 points and 16 assists, with 6:57 to go.

But Thompson made two straight shots, a turnaround from the baseline and a leaner in the lane, and James Worthy--who had 23 points and 7 assists--then helped to account for all of the Lakers’ next 10 points.

Worthy threw in a jumper from the left wing as the 24-second clock was expiring, reached over two players for a rebound and follow shot, dished off a drive to A. C. Green for a short jumper, squared up for a 20-foot jumper from the left corner, then whipped a quick pass to Magic Johnson, who directed one of his 17 assists to Scott.

“It’s over with,” Riley said of the end of the regular-season road. “That’s the big picture.

“This was a great trip. If we had played anything at all against Akeem (Olajuwon) in Houston, we probably could have gone 4-0 and been all the way back.”

Riley, of course, was less than thrilled that Abdul-Jabbar--who was involved in an altercation with a tourist in a shopping mall Thursday--wasn’t here for this one. But despite the threat of possible criminal charges against the Laker captain, Riley wasn’t especially concerned that the incident would have lingering effects.

“I don’t think it will distract us more, unless something happens and there’s a court case that would require (Abdul-Jabbar) to come back here,” Riley said. “ . . . Other than the videotape (of the incident) and the (media) exposure, I think it will be a dead issue until the case comes up.

“(Charles) Barkley just went through it. I think Kareem will take it well. I hope it ends quickly.”

Riley said the Lakers, disappointed by their inability to overtake the Rockets in the fourth quarter last Sunday in Houston, approached these last three games--San Antonio, Dallas and Phoenix--with a sharpened sense of purpose.

“There was an urgency, that this thing has got to end,” Riley said. “And they made it happen themselves. We’ve got the game Sunday against Golden State, but this is a nice way to finish on a positive note. Now we want to solidify that unity in Santa Barbara.”

If the Suns should show up in Santa Barbara next week, it would only be for one reason: a vacation. With one game left, they’re 28-53. It will be the first time since their expansion season--when they went 16-66--that they’ve failed to win 30 games.

Small wonder, then, that the most poignant moment for the Suns Friday night was when they bade farewell to the Gorilla, one of the league’s most creative mascots, who is retiring after eight seasons. Phoenix fans also showed their capacity for forgiveness when they voted Walter Davis--the central figure in last season’s drug scandal that gutted their team--as the team’s most popular player.

The Lakers, meanwhile, spoke up for Abdul-Jabbar.

“It’s unfortunate that it happened,” Thompson said, “but there are a lot of jerks out there who don’t respect people’s privacy. People try to take advantage of that by harassing him, and Kareem has the right to protect his privacy. He has the right to stand up for himself. And that’s all he did.

“I’m sure he’ll be exonerated, once he goes up before Judge Wapner.”