Is Dallas Psyched Out? Both Teams Sweep Thought From Their Minds

Do the Lakers have the Dallas Mavericks psyched out?

The Lakers, who beat Dallas, 123-101, Wednesday night at the Forum to take a 2-0 lead in the Western Conference best-of-seven finals, have dominated the Mavericks since they entered the National Basketball Assn. eight years ago, winning 10 of 13 playoff games.

“We’d be a weak-minded people if we let someone take psychological advantage of us,” said All-Star forward Mark Aguirre, who scored 28 points as Dallas dropped its eighth consecutive playoff game at the Forum. “The Lakers are simply a very good team, and they’ve played well against us.

“I’m not going to accept defeat until they finish us off, or we finish them off.”

The Mavericks, who have been beaten by margins of 15 and 22 points in the first two games of this series, maintain that they don’t have a mental block when it comes to beating the Lakers.

Said Dallas guard Rolando Blackman, who scored 14 points: “I don’t feel we have any kind of mental block as far as beating the Lakers. We can win if we take care of business.”

The Lakers have knocked the Mavericks out of the NBA playoffs twice in the last four years. They beat Dallas, 4-1, in the second round in 1984, and they also defeated the Mavericks, 4-2, in the second round in 1986.

Rick Sund, Mavericks’ vice president of basketball operations, said Dallas’ lack of success against the Lakers in the past has no bearing on this year’s series because the Mavericks have drastically altered their personnel since they last faced the Lakers in the playoffs.

“We just haven’t played well against them this year,” Sund said. “When we played them before (in the previous two playoff series), we didn’t have the same club we have now. This is the first club we’ve had that has competed at an upper-echelon level. You can’t consider what happened four years ago.”

Said Maverick owner Donald Carter: “I don’t think the Lakers have any sort of psychological edge over us. If anything, I was looking for them to come out overconfident tonight in the second half.”

The Lakers dominated the Mavericks this season, winning four of five regular-season games. They ended the Mavericks’ club-record, 11-game winning streak with a 108-97 win in Dallas on March 6. The Mavericks’ only win over the Lakers this season came when Magic Johnson, the Lakers’ All-Star guard, was sidelined with strained right groin muscle.

“Every year is different,” said Laker General Manager Jerry West. “We held serve here, but we have to play just as well in Dallas.”

Laker center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar frowned when a reporter asked him whether the Lakers have the Mavericks psyched out.

“I don’t know if it’s a psychological edge,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “We’ve played better than them, but I don’t know if it’s going to continue.”

Said Laker forward A.C. Green: “You can throw any psychological edge out the window. What’s happened before doesn’t make any difference.”

The Lakers expect the Mavericks to play much tougher when the series shifts to Dallas this weekend.