Lakers, Mavericks End Up Even--a Fall Apiece

The Lakers and Dallas Mavericks played a pickup game Tuesday night at the Forum. If they were sending messages to each other, they were writing with their elbows.

First, the Lakers picked Byron Scott up off the floor like a ball of lint after Dallas forward Sam Perkins caught with a forearm in midair. Then the Mavericks picked Derek Harper off the floor after Michael Cooper slung him there with a thud like a rock landing in some mud.

Yes, the Western Conference finals are finally getting serious. It’s knock down whomever you can and drag out the playoffs as long as possible, which may not be very much longer if the Mavericks don’t win Thursday night.

The Lakers beat the Mavericks, 119-102, to take a 3-2 lead in the series even though the latest game was tied at one fall apiece.

It may not have been real rough out there, but apparently Rick Mahorn has already asked for wallet-sized photos of the two takedowns to carry around with him.

No one was hurt in the two incidents, although Scott’s sense of fairness got shaken up a bit.

“I don’t really know what happened,” Scott said. “All I know is I went up and then I went down.”

Perkins caught Scott as the Laker guard tried to get off a layup in the first quarter in the midst of a 15-0 Laker rally. Scott said he was struck on the left side of his face and jaw.

Actually, it wasn’t exactly a blow, he said.

“It was a whack,” he said.

Scott landed heavily on his upper body, but soon felt well enough to share his thoughts on his experience with Perkins.

“I don’t really know where I fell,” Scott said. “A lot of places hurt.”

Perkins said he never intended to do anything except block Scott’s shot.

“I was just going for the ball,” he said. “That was it. You just have to do things like that. You can’t let anyone have easy layups. They fouled Derek, too.”

The message? “You are going to have to go to the line and make free throws.”

Scott was in no mood to hear Perkins’s explanation.

“That what Sam said?” Scott asked. “Maybe so, but it didn’t look that way to me. I’m going to try to forget about it until Thursday. That type of thing you don’t forget. I don’t think it was basketball at all.”

Maybe not, but it was clearly the best takedown since the Celtics’ Kevin McHale laid out Kurt Rambis with a clothesline tackle in the 1985 championship series.

It took awhile, but the Lakers retaliated. Just before the half, Cooper caught Harper from behind on a breakaway, fouled him hard and knocked him to the floor.

Harper reacted philosophically to getting a floor burn on his chin.

“I expected it to happen sooner or later,” Harper said. “It was an honest foul. I got two free throws.”

Cooper’s reaction was to spend a lot of time after the game in the training room, singing the Michael Jackson song, ‘I’m Bad.”

Actually, the two takedowns was kind of an even exchange. Like a good trade should be, it was the kind that helped both teams. For the Mavericks, it showed the Lakers they would not just roll over and allow sneaker prints on their backs. And the Lakers showed the Mavericks they can match nasty for nasty.

So there is only one way to grade what happened. Ask Mychal Thompson.

“I gave Perkins a 9.5 and Cooper about an 8.5,” Thompson said. “I gave Coop a lower score because it wasn’t as aggressive and wasn’t as pretty.

“You know. He didn’t give him the Hulk Hogan clothesline that Perkins gave Byron,” Thompson said.