Jazz Drums Lakers Out of Utah : A 108-80 Thrashing in Game 6 Sets Up Saturday Finale at Forum

Utah Coach Frank Layden could have done without Karl Malone’s guarantee of a Jazz win in Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals.

“I chastened him for that,” Layden said. “When you walk by the lion, you do it softly. You don’t wake him up.”

Not to worry, Frank. Whatever lion is left in the Lakers was not apparent Thursday night, when the Jazz pulled out the tranquilizer guns and anesthetized the defending NBA champions, 108-80, beginning with a 26-2 first-quarter run that may have been the worst stretch of Showtime ever seen in the 1980s.

And now the Lakers are left to do something they’ve never done in this decade--win the seventh game of a playoff series. They’ve gone the distance only once before in the ‘80s, losing to the Boston Celtics, 111-102, in Game 7 of the 1984 finals at Boston.

The Jazz isn’t guaranteeing anything now. But after administering the sixth-worst loss in Laker playoff history, Utah isn’t conceding anything in Saturday afternoon’s series finale at the Forum.

“We know they know we can win down there,” Utah forward Thurl Bailey said. “We converted well, stripped them of their inside game.

“This was the best game in the club’s history. We’re putting Utah on the map . . . (and) we’re going to win.”

The Lakers, obviously, gave the Jazz no reason to feel otherwise Thursday night, suffering a collective breakdown as complete as any seen since the notorious Boston Massacre in 1985, when the Lakers lost Game 1 of the finals to the Celtics by 34 points, 148-114. Utah led by as many as 33 points, 103-70, with 2:56 to go in the game.

James Worthy scored just four points in his worst playoff game as a professional. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar again had as many turnovers as baskets (four) and was totally neutralized by Utah’s Mark Eaton, who until this season was never more than a 7-foot 4-inch caddie for the Laker center.

Magic Johnson made just 3 of 12 baskets and once again deferred to Utah’s John Stockton, who had 14 points, 17 assists and 3 steals. The man who spent the night guarding Johnson, Utah’s Bobby Hansen, missed only 1 shot of 11, scoring 25 points, and triggered an 18-5 run at the top of the third quarter that erased any chance of a Laker comeback, as remote as that was.

Hansen also got in a brief shoving match with Johnson with 7 1/2 minutes left in the game, before Layden put his considerable frame between the two players.

“He said, ‘You owe me one,’ ” Hansen said of the flareup with Johnson. “He hit me hard in the stomach.

“He teed me off and sent me into a frenzy. I’ve been in worse fights with my wife. He’s set up for life and I’m just playing year to year, trying to pay the bills.”

The Lakers have had worse offensive games in their playoff history: In 1972, the team that won a record 33 straight games scored just 72 points and shot 27.2% in a game against the Milwaukee Bucks. The Lakers came back to win the championship that season, just as they did in ’85.

But even after watching his team shoot just 37.5% Thursday night--23.8% in the third quarter, when the Jazz put them away for good--Laker Coach Pat Riley figures his own guarantee of repeat titles can be kept alive Saturday.

“It all comes down to one game, a seventh game,” Riley said. “You work hard all year for an edge. Frank (Layden) and I have done everything we can do. It basically comes down to five guys out there doing a job.”

Johnson, asked if he cared to make a prediction of his own in response to Malone’s prophecy-come-true, shook his head.

“That’s not me,” said Johnson, who hardly resembled himself on the court, either. “I’ll come out and play Saturday. We’ve never, not any of our players, have ever talked like that. We’ll come out and be ready.”

But ready or not, the Jazz will be there, too.

“Let’s take a poll, all right?” Layden said to reporters in a postgame press conference.

“The poll will cost you 100 bucks each. Who’s going to win (Game 7)?”

No one replied.

“How about if I make it 5 bucks?” Layden said. “I haven’t changed my story--they (the Lakers) may be the best team in history. I have enough trouble keeping my concentration (at the Forum). Dyan Cannon sits right across from me.”

Ms. Cannon could have been sitting on the Utah bench Thursday night and gone unnoticed, so intent were the Jazz on the task at hand. Imagine the Lakers, who once scored 29 straight points to start a game against lowly Sacramento, having a similar humiliation inflicted on them Thursday night.

It came without warning, too, as the Lakers got off to a decent enough start. They led, 7-2, after Scott’s three-pointer with 2:41 gone in the first quarter. Who could tell at that point that Scott would shoot 5 for 16?

The Jazz then ran off eight straight points, beginning with Mark Iavaroni’s jumper. Stockton stole a pass from Johnson, and Malone scored on a left-handed drive at the other end. Malone rebounded a miss by Worthy, was fouled at the other end, and gave the Jazz a lead that soon expanded as rapidly as Layden’s waistline.

Abdul-Jabbar, who had just four points in the first half, missed a left-handed shot, and Iavaroni buried another jumper. Johnson scored on a baseline drive at 6:52 to make it 10-9, but the Lakers would go the next 5:18 without scoring.

For a while, they threatened to duplicate Utah’s Game 1 feat of failing to break double figures in the first quarter (the Jazz had 8, tying a playoff record).

Seven times, the Lakers turned the ball over in the first quarter. Johnson lost his dribble out of bounds. Eaton knocked a pass away from Abdul-Jabbar. Worthy traveled in the lane. Michael Cooper couldn’t handle a pass and gave up the ball to Utah rookie Bart Kofoed. Mychal Thompson lost a pass out of bounds. And so on.

Meanwhile, Malone scored 10 points in the first quarter, 3 fewer than the Lakers had in the period. The Jazz ran off four straight fast breaks--beginning with Stockton feeding Hansen for a two-handed jam. It was then Stockton to Hansen, Hansen to Stockton, before Malone was fouled by Johnson.

The Jazz opened their biggest lead of the quarter, 28-9, on another drive by Malone. The lead was 31-13 at the end of the period and reached 20 for the first time, 38-18, on a jumper by Hansen.

“I went back to playing the way I did in Games 2 and 3; I lost my aggressiveness,” said Worthy, who played just 19 minutes as a frustrated Riley opted to go with Tony Campbell. “The first time I got the ball, I was very hesitant. I was looking for their defense, instead of taking what was available.”

Meanwhile, the Jazz took everything away from the Lakers except Chick Hearn’s microphone. At halftime, security men at the Salt Palace received a phone call from a man who identified himself as Laker owner Jerry Buss, insisting that he be allowed to talk to Riley. The man was so persistent that Riley was finally summoned, but when the coach picked up the phone, the line was dead.

Asked what they should do if the man called back, Riley said, “Tell him to go . . .”

Forum publicist Bob Steiner, reached by phone, said he was certain Buss was not the caller. Riley undoubtedly was, too.

“No way,” Steiner said. “He’s never done anything like that, ever.”

Besides, what could Buss have possibly said: “Show some heart, guys,” a message that Riley had personally delivered earlier in the series?

“I’ve been disappointed before,” Johnson said somberly afterward. “I’m no more disappointed tonight than when Boston did it to us in ‘85, and when other teams blew us out.

“This game is over with now. The best team will win on Saturday.”

Any doubt in Johnson’s mind who that will be?

“No . . . no,” Johnson said. “Ummm-umm.”

Michael Cooper, who had to make the first game-winning shot of his pro career to keep the Lakers from losing Game 5 at the Forum, echoed the same sentiment.

“They (the Jazz) better come to play,” Cooper said, “because we’ll be there, ready to play basketball.”

If not, the Lakers will be playing with beach balls a lot sooner than anyone ever dreamed.

Laker Notes

A limited number of tickets for Game 7 Saturday will go on sale at 10 a.m. this morning at the Forum box office. . . . History would seem to have favored the Lakers Thursday night. They’d been in a similar situation five times in this decade--leading a series, 3 games to 2, and each time they’d won the series on the road. It started in Philadelphia in the 1980 finals, then San Antonio in the ’83 Western finals; Phoenix in the ’84 Western finals; Boston in the ’85 finals; Dallas in the ’86 Western semifinals. . . . Columnists in both Salt Lake City newspapers ripped Jazz Coach Frank Layden for keeping the Utah dressing room closed after Game 5 in Los Angeles. Lee Benson, sports editor of the Deseret News, wrote that Layden had “begged the laws of logic and decency, not to mention deadlines” by his action. “The Jazz had lost,” Benson wrote, “and Layden, upset by the officiating and other cruelties of life, was pouting.” . . . Wrote Lex Hemphill of the Salt Lake Tribune: “In Frank Layden’s world of mirth, he has now created the ultimate chuckle: Two months ago, he drew a fine for his team for talking too much and now he’ll draw one for not talking at all. Too bad he’s the only one to appreciate the humor in it. The butt of Frank’s joke, the NBA, doesn’t laugh at much of anything he says anymore. And the media people, whom he usually leaves laughing in the aisles, didn’t get the joke, either.” . . . The Jazz was fined $1,000 by the league because of Layden’s actions. Jazz officials feared it would be a much stiffer penalty.