THE NBA PLAYOFFS : Lakers May Be Haunted by Inability to Bury Dallas

Remember when the Lakers were the ghostbusters?

Suppose you had a funky old gymnasium where the home team just couldn’t lose, where they always seemed to get the calls and the bounces and the breaks and the wins. Where invisible leprechauns and whatever local paranormal critters inhabited the place were always messing up the visitors?

You knew who you were gonna call. Yeah, the Lakers.

They weren’t afraid-a no ghosts. They cleaned up Boston Garden, the Spectrum, the Kingdome . . .

But this is another day, another era maybe, when the road is not so kind to the Lakers, not in big games. Nowadays even normal, modern, ventilated basketball arenas with nothing spookier than noisy fans hold great peril to the Lakers.

They struggled in the modern Salt Palace against the Utah Jazz, and now the Lakers have been handed their hats and heads in the well-lighted, air-conditioned, sanitized-for-your-protection Dallas Reunion Arena. Not exactly a pit, although ugliness is in the eye of the beholder.

Thursday night the home team Mavericks won their third straight here over the Lakers to even the Western Conference finals at 3-3.

Once again the Mavericks did it with a clutch fourth quarter. This time it was close, not like the last two times. But once again the Mavericks made the big plays. With four seconds left and the Lakers down by two, James Worthy took a pass from Byron Scott and drove the left baseline, straight to the hoop.

James Donaldson was there, waiting. Nobody is sure exactly what happened, whether Donaldson got a piece of Worthy’s shot, or a piece of Worthy, or Worthy simply missed the shot, but the ball did not go into the hoop, and that was the ballgame.

All it cost the Lakers is the ton of pride they would have gained from de-mystiqueing Reunion Arena, a few precious days rest before the Finals, and maybe some confidence in the infallibility of themselves in crunch time.

“We didn’t get blown out, and that was a plus,” said Michael Cooper. “It’s sad that we lost, but we gotta feel good about going back home now.”

They gotta, because they have no choice. Cooper was just being helpful, throwing out words to fill notebooks, but for a Laker to say it’s a plus that they didn’t get blown out is a plus for the rest of the basketball world. There is a light at the end of the tunnel that is the Laker dynasty.

Are the Lakers sinking, or is the competition rising?

“It’s not like it used to be,” said Magic Johnson, who proved that by throwing away six passes in the first half. “The competition is good. It’s gonna make the NBA better, it’s gonna be exciting, because everyone’s got a chance.”

Somehow Magic just didn’t seem real excited about that prospect. You get the feeling he could have been just as happy if the league had waited another few years to catch up to the Lakers.

The Lakers really wanted to win this one in Dallas, to make a point, to deliver a message to whatever chump team wins the Eastern Conference finals. But they couldn’t do it.

So they shrugged, and they nit-picked the final few minutes. Not that they blamed the officials. The Lakers haven’t fallen that far, that they have to whine and grovel.

“It’s a contact sport,” Worthy said when asked if he thought he should have gone to the free-throw line on his last drive.

Cooper second-guessed himself.

“I’m kicking myself . . . because I could’ve shot (a jumper on the crucial play). I probably had a shot, but I looked to pass to Byron, and he got it to Worthy. We got the shot we wanted. But I’ll lose sleep on that one, believe me.”

He’ll also lose sleep on the play with 2:50 left, Lakers down one, and Cooper’s man, Rolando Blackman slipped past Coop to get an offensive rebound, which led to a Mark Aguirre hoop.

Coop had left Blackman to help defend a driving Maverick.

“I take this loss on me,” Cooper said.

That’s high school stuff, of course, one guy taking the blame for a loss.

But maybe that’s what the Lakers need now. Rather than a mature, rational look at the series, a feeling that they gave it their best but simply got outplayed and didn’t get the breaks, the Lakers need to respond in a less rational, more emotional manner.

They need to be hurt and angry and wounded. Just being the Lakers isn’t always enough anymore.

“We played excellent defense,” Johnson said. “We played as hard as we could. We didn’t get (the key) rebounds, but it’s not a lack of boxing out. They was comin’ (bouncing) out long. We played great defense, man!”

Even Pat Riley couldn’t fault his team’s effort.

“Everyone’s asking why (we lost),” Riley said. “There’s no why to it. You just gotta give them credit. They did a good job of swarming.”

The experts figure they know what will happen Saturday in Game 7. The Mavericks, psyched out of their skulls by the Forum mystique, will flutter and fold as they did in the last three games there.

But who knows how much this sweep on the Texas end of the series did for the Mavericks’ confidence?

Maybe the Mavericks can do some ghostbusting of their own.

It was a situation the Lakers wanted to avoid, but this isn’t the old days, when they packed their mystique with them on road trips. Now they’re a team struggling to hold off the new guard, to stave off creeping NBA parity.

They’ll return home and hope the ghosts of the Forum don’t desert ‘em in their time of need.