In the End, Lakers Show Little Class on Glass : Dallas’ Dominance Is Evident as It Grabs 13 Straight Rebounds

No one would expect Rick Mears to spin out on the last turn of Indy, Secretariat to pull up lame down the stretch at the Derby, or Greg Louganis to bellyflop on his final dive in the Olympics.

And the Lakers to fall apart in the fourth quarter? Unthinkable. Before that day comes, Nevada will be beachfront property.

On second thought, you might want to call your local Century 21 office this morning--after you look out the window and make sure your Beemer isn’t floating away--because for the second straight time in these National Basketball Assn. Western Conference finals, the Lakers stepped into the fourth quarter and disappeared through a trap door.

In the end, it didn’t matter that the Lakers showed up for work Sunday afternoon in hard hats and rolled-up T-shirts, with “Rebound” tattooed on their biceps. By punching out early in a 118-104 loss to Dallas here in Reunion Arena, the Lakers once again forfeited Miller Time to the Mavericks, who now can dare to babble about a little bubbly after tying this best-of-seven series at two games apiece.

“It’s a shame, it’s a crime, we should all be locked up,” said guard Michael Cooper, pronouncing sentence on the Lakers for playing as if they were shackled to the floor in the fourth quarter, when the Mavericks outrebounded them by a whopping 22-5, including one 8-minute stretch when Dallas grabbed 13 straight rebounds at either end of the floor.

The Lakers were behind by just four, 89-85, when James Worthy rebounded a miss by Roy Tarpley with about 11 minutes to play. They were out of sight, 108-98, when Cooper grabbed their next rebound with just under 3 minutes to go.

“We were right there, fighting for our lives, when all of a sudden we lost everything we had worked hard for for three quarters,” Laker Coach Pat Riley said.

“It was the equivalent of a guy who works hard every day, 10 to 12 hours a day for his money, getting on a plane to Las Vegas, throwing it all down on the crap table, and with one roll of the dice losing it all.”

For three quarters, the Lakers had been rebounding demons, rolling up a 37-23 advantage. Byron Scott had sneaked inside for five fast boards in the first quarter alone. A.C. Green had 8 rebounds in the first half, 5 on the offensive boards, to only 3 rebounds for Tarpley. Such tenacity enabled the Lakers to overcome unconscious shooting by the Mavericks, who squeezed the trigger at a 70% rate in the second quarter and still trailed by a point, 57-56, at the half.

But then, just as they had in a 12-point loss in Game 3 Friday, the Lakers approached the glass as if it were covered with pigeon droppings. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had no rebounds in the second half, a duplicate of his 4-rebound performance Friday night. Mychal Thompson finished with 5 rebounds, one fewer than he had in Game 3. Johnson also had 5, three fewer than his team-leading 8 on Friday.

“We just lost it,” Worthy said. “We collapsed, and allowed them to get the second shots they hadn’t been getting all game.

“We were right there, in the thick of things, and then we had a mental breakdown.”

Tarpley, meanwhile, responded like a begoggled 7-foot octopus, planting his tentacles on every missed shot in sight. He didn’t come close to his 21-point 20-rebound performance in Game 3--he finished with 16 points and 13 rebounds, while blocking 5 shots--but once again he grabbed more rebounds (7) in the fourth quarter than all of the Lakers combined.

“He didn’t go berserk like he did the other night,” said Cooper, who for the second straight time had more rebounds (4) in the final period than his bigger playmates, “but he still killed us with the big rebounds.

“Tarpley had a couple of offensive rebounds, Detlef Schrempf one, and Donaldson played volleyball with a couple others,” Cooper said. “That’s what broke our backs.”

The Lakers might have survived the pyrotechnics of Derek Harper and Mark Aguirre, who cranked up the volume on the Dallas Shout Party here by scoring 35 and 26 points, respectively, most of them on shots taken from normal field-goal range--if your name is Max Zendejas or Ali-Haji Sheikh.

“I thought everything I put up would go in,” said Harper, who had put up nothing of note in the first three games, averaging just a shade more than 11 points while shooting just 44.1%.

Sunday, Harper buried 3 three-pointers and Aguirre 2. But even with the Mavericks’ point guard and pouting forward combining to score 26 of the Mavericks’ 33 points in the third quarter, the Lakers still were within six, at 89-83, entering the final period. And Magic Johnson, who answered Harper’s volley by putting his head down to score 9 points in a 3-minute highlight reel, looked primed to take this game over as he had so many in the past.

“We felt it,” said Maverick owner Donald Carter, who could get up close and personal to Johnson from his front-row seat at midcourt. “He tried, and he would have done it by himself if he could have.

“If he had been on his home court and could have gotten some of that fan adrenaline, I wouldn’t have wanted to place very big odds on what he could have done then.”

Here, whatever Johnson did--and he had only 2 of his team-high 28 points in the last period--Dallas had an answer for.

“How much more can you ask from a guy?” said his close friend Aguirre. “They’ve already got him playing power forward and point guard. He’s supposed to run the break and get the rebounds. That’s asking quite a bit.”

It was still only a three-point game, 97-94, when Magic returned to the Laker lineup with 6:56 to play. But at that stage, the Mavericks had grabbed the last 6 rebounds, and it was clear that the Lakers were running on low octane.

Aguirre tossed in a 20-footer and the Dallas lead was 5. Thompson missed an open jumper, Donaldson collared the rebound, and Tarpley scored from the top of the circle. Cooper missed a three-pointer, Harper snaked in for the rebound, and Blackman’s jumper spun around the rim a half-dozen times before dropping in. It was 103-94, and they were making plans for Thursday’s Game 6 in the Big D. Game 5 will be at the Forum Tuesday night.

“When you play that hard and up to that level, sometimes you’re going to flatten out,” Aguirre said charitably. “They hit a standstill.”

The Mavericks, meanwhile, were at the summit of Everest.

“We could feel them wearing down,” said Tarpley, who flashed elbows with Cooper several times Sunday. “Harper had been carrying us, Mark had been carrying us, but then we ran them down.

“Everything was happening for us. All our shots were going in, and we were getting every rebound.”

In the fourth quarter, Thompson said, the Mavericks put the Lakers under siege.

“They kept sending everyone to the front lines like the Iranian army attacking Iraq,” Thompson said. “A lot of times it was 5 against 2 or 5 against 3.”

And now, it’s 2-2 and heading back to the Forum, where the Mavericks have never won in eight postseason tries.

“From the standpoint of this series, the pressure is on us,” said Carter, noting that the Mavericks must win at least one game at the Forum to take the series. “But there isn’t as much pressure on us as there is on (the Lakers).

“We’re stepping in virgin territory. They’re old hats.”

The old hats are supposed to know better. But there isn’t anything Carter would like better than to toss his 10-gallon Stetson in the championship ring.