MacLEOD IN CLOUDS : Mavericks’ First-Year Coach, Fired by Suns Last Season, Riding High Now

John MacLeod was hired as coach of the Dallas Mavericks exactly one year ago today.

MacLeod will celebrate his anniversary with the Mavericks today at the Forum, where the Mavericks play the Lakers for the Western Conference championship. “I don’t think anybody expected us to be here,” MacLeod said. “We’re going to need a Laker-like effort to beat the Lakers. If we’re soft, we’ll be in trouble. We’re going up against a great team. They didn’t win 60 games this year by accord.”

MacLeod was fired by the beleaguered Phoenix Suns with 26 games left last season after having coached the Suns for nearly 14 seasons. He was hired by the Mavericks after Dick Motta, who had coached the club since its inception in 1980, resigned abruptly last May.

“I was lucky,” MacLeod said. “A year ago, I was out of work and was happy to get a job. And a year later, I’m coaching one of the four teams left in the NBA playoffs.

“I didn’t expect Dick (Motta) to leave, and I didn’t expect to come here. But I said to myself every day that something good was going to happen.

“Nobody likes to be canned, and I didn’t like to get fired. But I lasted almost 14 years in Phoenix, and that’s a long time to be with one franchise.

“I had a great run in Phoenix. We had a lot of excitement, and we saw the franchise grow.”

MacLeod guided the Suns into the 1976 National Basketball Assn. finals, losing to the Boston Celtics. “Right now, what I’d like to do is to bring an NBA championship to Dallas,” he said.

Donald Carter, the Mavericks’ owner, gave his team a big send-off to the most important game in the franchise’s eight-year history.

When the Dallas players arrived for a light workout Friday morning at their practice facility in north Dallas, they found a three-layer double chocolate cake supplied by Carter.

“I know you like chocolate cakes,” Carter told forward Sam Perkins, who eats chocolate cake after almost every home game. “This should really make you want to play well.”

Carter also wrote a new Maverick fight song for today’s game: “Look Out L.A., We’re Going to Put It to Ya.”

Maverick rookies Jim Farmer and Steve Alford, assistant Coach Clifford Ray and Ronnie Carter, the owner’s son, sang Carter’s song for the team before practice.

“I’m nervous, excited and anxious,” Carter said. “I’m looking forward to going back to the Forum and seeing the Laker fans I’ve gotten to know. Each time I’ve left, I’ve told them that I would return. And they’re beginning to call me Gen. MacArthur.”

Carter, who predicted before Game 6 that the Mavericks would take the series to the limit, would not predict today’s game. The Mavericks, however, have never won a playoff game at the Forum, where they have lost nine straight to the Lakers.

Center James Donaldson, who made a superb defensive play against Laker forward James Worthy with three seconds left to preserve the Mavericks’ 105-103 win over the Lakers Thursday night, said Dallas is overdue for a win at the Forum.

“But we’re not going to sit back and wait for Mother Nature to bless us with a win,” Donaldson said. “We earned our way here. A lot of people didn’t expect us to be here. But everyone expected the Lakers to beat us. The pressure is on the Lakers because they said they want to repeat.

“I always knew we had the potential to do this. I think we can do even better. We’re not satisfied with just taking the series to seven games. We want to beat them.”

The Mavericks have looked like two different teams in this series. They have been awesome at home and awful on the road.

“We have to take a different mental approach,” said swing man Roy Tarpley, the Mavericks’ sixth man. “Even though we lost the first three, we feel we can win in L.A. because we’ve done it before.”

Dallas has averaged 100.3 points against the Lakers at the Forum in this series and has lost by margins of 15, 22 and 17 points. It’s been a different story at home, however, where the Mavericks have averaged 109.7 points in beating the Lakers by margins of 12, 14 and 2 points.

Point guard Derek Harper said that the Mavericks tend to rush their shots at the Forum.

“We don’t make the extra pass like we do (in Dallas). We play right into their hands.

“We have to stay confident and believe in ourselves. I don’t think anybody expected a seven-game series. If the game is close, we have a chance to win at the end.”

Mark Aguirre, the Mavericks’ All-Star forward, thinks Dallas will have to play better defense to beat the Lakers.

“We’re aggressive, but we have to get overly aggressive,” he said. “We have to play with reckless abandon.

“I don’t know how anyone else thinks, but we didn’t take it to a seventh game just to lose. We could have done it earlier and let the Lakers sleep. I don’t think we’re satisfied.”

Aguirre, who has averaged 24.8 points in the series, said he isn’t satisfied with his performance. He scored just 4 points in the first half of Thursday night’s game but exploded for 19 in the second half and finished with 23 points and a season-high 13 rebounds.

“I haven’t put two good halves together yet,” Aguirre said. “I’m hoping that I can do it Saturday.”

Aguirre, who had said earlier that he would leave predictions to Nancy Reagan, stood by his earlier statement when asked to predict the outcome of today’s game.

“I don’t make predictions. I’m not a fortune teller,” he said. “I’m a strong believer in God, and actually I believe the outcome is already predetermined for what’s going to happen and we’re just going through the motions. We just have to make it look good.”