THE NBA PLAYOFFS : Lakers, Driven to the Limit, Gear Up for Mavericks

However this season ends, Pat Riley has an idea of how the Lakers should spend the summer.

“If we get through this thing, they should send us all away,” said Riley, as he scrawled away on his ever-present blue scratch pad on the Lakers’ flight from Dallas Friday morning.

A long vacation? Not quite. An extended convalescence is more like it.

“We’ll go nodding into the sunset, drooling, looking for the men in the white jackets,” said Riley, who has yet to show signs of cracking under the strain but just might, if the Lakers persist in taking it to the limit in every playoff series they play.

It’s what Riley calls ultimate game time again this afternoon in the Forum, where the Lakers will play the Dallas Mavericks in the deciding game of a Western Conference final series that is tied at three games apiece.

No other Laker team in 22 years has been taken to a Game 7 in consecutive series, but this team was pushed to the edge by Utah before silencing the Jazz two weeks ago today in the conference semifinals.

Now, it’s the Mavericks, who forced the issue by winning Game 6 Thursday night in Reunion Arena, 105-103. Both teams held service at home, winning three games apiece. The Mavericks, who have never played in a seventh game, have yet to win a playoff game in the Forum in nine tries, having lost in this series by an average of 18 points.

As theater, it doesn’t get much better than this. As a balm for the nerves, the Lakers would be better off spending the afternoon in a flotation chamber than in the Forum.

“The first team to play seventh games back-to-back?” Riley said. “Let’s have three seven-game series. Let’s make it as dramatic as hell.

“I’ve said this would be the most dramatic, or traumatic, year of our lives. It’s been both already.”

And to think that the cause of so much high anxiety is Dallas, a team of once-questionable mettle, one that Riley openly disparaged in his book published this spring.

“Dallas scares a lot of people, but we weren’t convinced,” Riley wrote in his book, “Show Time.”

” . . . They were jiving themselves into a different posture. They were so intent on reaching the top of the hill that they lost the attitude of respecting their opponents. They weren’t at the top yet. They weren’t dug in. But they started thinking and acting as if they had it made. In the words of a gospel song, they got what they wanted but they lost what they had.”

Of course, Riley is singing a different tune now. He talks of the Mavericks’ mental toughness and emotional stability, which they acquired, he said, when John MacLeod replaced Dick Motta as coach a year ago.

“John MacLeod has been a very, very positive influence in that regard,” Riley said. “He doesn’t put his team in a self-destructive mode, something they used to do before, for whatever reason.

“It shows in how he handled the (Mark) Aguirre situation. He forced them into a team balance instead of a one-man gang. He is going with a solid eight-man rotation, and said, ‘This is the way it’s going to be, fellas.’ And there were a lot of subtle touches that don’t show, but he made that team grow.”

The Mavericks never stood taller than in the fourth quarter of Game 6, when they withstood the pressure of a furious Laker comeback, with center James Donaldson making the game-saving defensive play by turning back James Worthy’s bid for a game-tying layup in the final seconds.

Riley, as is his custom at this time of year, stayed up most of the night reviewing tapes of the game. He had screamed in protest at the officials when no foul was called on Donaldson, but his voice betrayed no emotion when he discussed the play the Friday morning.

“James made two drives--one with 33 seconds, one with 7,” Riley said. “On the road, if you try to win a game in the last minute hoping to get a call, forget it in this league.

“James did not get to the backboard. Whether he was fouled is up to debate. But there’s no sense crying now.”

Rather than belaboring the officiating, Riley was mildly critical of his center--who has been Dr. Kareem-Jekyll at home and Mr. Abdul-Hyde on the road--and (so help me Detlef Schrempf) Magic Johnson.

Abdul-Jabbar’s numbers at home:

--Game 1: 17 points, 7-of-10 shooting, 5 rebounds.

--Game 2: 19 points, 8-of-15 shooting, 7 rebounds.

--Game 5: 21 points, 10-of-16 shooting, 5 rebounds.

That averages to 19 points, 61% shooting, and almost 6 rebounds a game.

Now, his numbers on the road:

--Game 3: 10 points, 4-of-12 shooting, 4 rebounds.

--Game 4: 16 points, 7-of-13 shooting, 4 rebounds.

--Game 6: 8 points, 4-of-7 shooting, 8 rebounds.

Road averages: 11.3 points, 46.9% shooting, 5.3 rebounds.

How to explain it? Only Abdul-Jabbar’s shrink knows for sure. Meanwhile, journeyman centers such as Dallas’ Donaldson are making reputations at his expense. The suspicion is growing that the 41-year-old Abdul-Jabbar may hold the key to what has been a team-wide phenomenon. At home in this series, the Lakers are averaging 118.3 points a game. In Dallas, they just barely broke 100.

Abdul-Jabbar pointed out that there was hardly a time when he touched the ball in Dallas Thursday night that he wasn’t surrounded by three Mavericks. He got no argument from Riley, but the coach raised this point:

“Kareem talked about being triple-teamed, but then he should have led this team in assists. He held the ball too long.”

Abdul-Jabbar had one assist Thursday night.

“At the same time, guys were not moving around the perimeter and cutting so he’d have someone to throw it, too,” Riley said. “On both sides, that’s a breakdown mentally.”

Johnson, meanwhile, was guilty of throwing “frivolous passes,” according to Riley, in the first half, when he committed an un-Magic-like six turnovers. He had eight for the game.

“Earvin was trying to thread the needle too much with some of his passes,” Riley said. “Sometimes you have to pull back. That takes some discipline.”

And what will it take to prevent Dallas from delivering doomsday this afternoon?

Well, there were no top-secret strategy sessions Friday, no breast-beating, no ultimatums from either Jerry, West or Buss. The Lakers watched a little film, and went home.

“No soul-searching,” Riley said. “We came hard Thursday night. We played a hard game. I don’t think we played our best game, but we played pretty hard.

“Now we have to come out with the same effort, but just play better. We’re going to the seventh game. That’s what life is all about.”

And the straitjackets can wait.