THE NBA CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES : LOS ANGELES LAKERS vs. DETROIT PISTONS : Laimbeer Misses Practice With Injured Arch

Whew, that was close. You Laker fans who thought your club was in big trouble, relax.

Detroit’s Bill Laimbeer has strained his left arch, leading Coach Chuck Daly to conclude that not only will Laimbeer miss tonight’s game, but the Pistons are now extreme longshots.

“He’s limping rather badly,” Daly said Wednesday. “I tell ya, he’s an iron man, but I don’t know about this one.

“It could have serious ramifications because I’m not sure we can win a game without him, without his rebounding.”

You can imagine the pain Laimbeer must be in.

You can imagine how sympathetic his peers must be.

Or maybe you can’t.

“What happened to him?” an amused Laker Coach Pat Riley asked when he heard about it.

“They’ve learned a lot from the Boston Celtics. I can’t believe that disease has moved to Motown.”

If you think the quality of mercy is strained in ordinary times, a National Basketball Assn. championship series makes everything else look like Red Cross Week. An injured player hoping for as much as a get-well card had better bring X-rays showing a clean break, notes from two doctors and a notarized declaration that he’ll forfeit his German-built touring car if he plays.

On the other hand, Laimbeer has never missed a game in seven seasons as a Piston. And the other Pistons assume he’ll play--”I think they’d have to kill him before he’d get off the court,” Rick Mahorn said. And Laimbeer, himself, assumes he’ll play, so no one, except perhaps Daly, will drop over if he starts.

“I’ll be amazed (if he starts) from what I heard this morning,” Daly said. “Totally amazed.”

Well, it’s an amazing world and Daly has already seen untold wonders.

Take last spring, when the Pistons lost in the Eastern Conference finals to the Boston Celtics, despite the broken bone in Kevin McHale’s foot, Robert Parish’s badly sprained ankle and assorted other problems.

Daly, asked then for his reaction to the many Boston injuries, had a standard four-word reply: “I don’t believe it.”

Said Daly Wednesday, reminded of his position on Celtic injuries: “That’s correct.”

Any relevance to this situation?

“I don’t think so in this case,” Daly said. “But I tell ya, I’ve seen Billy come back and play. Who knows what can happen in 24 hours?”

Who indeed? But just so you know this isn’t all hype, Laimbeer does seem to be hurting. He didn’t practice Wednesday and wore an electronic device strapped to his foot, which is either necessary, or more trouble than anyone has yet gone to in the name of artifice.

Laimbeer suffered the injury in a first-half collision with James Worthy in Game 1, which forced Worthy to the dressing room with a bruised hip.

Perhaps, because Laimbeer is so stoic, or because the Pistons are so bubbly, they have found it in their hearts to joke about the situation.

“Was Worthy fined for that?” asked a laughing Daly, long accustomed to defending his own players against charges of thuggery. “He pulled him down.”

Laimbeer joked that Worthy “dove at my foot. . . . I don’t know why he jumped on my foot. Maybe he was trying to hurt me.”

But seriously folks . . .

“They said I was doubtful (after suffering a shoulder injury during Game 1 of the recent series against Boston), but I said I was probable,” Laimbeer said. “And I’m saying the same thing now. Come game time, a lot of injuries seem to disappear.”

Laimbeer started Game 2 in Boston, and all the rest of them. And even though he played only 21 minutes in Game 1, the Pistons did hold off the Celtics, in Boston Garden, to win.

“The shoulder, I was more worried about about long-term,” Laimbeer said. “From a performance standpoint, though, this concerns me more than the shoulder, because I have to run and jump.”

On the other hand . . .

“You can be hurt, but sometimes it won’t affect your play,” Laimbeer said. “When a player has an injury, he plays a lot better sometimes. He plays harder. He tries to compensate for the injury.

“Also, the other people have a tendency to pick up their games. They feel they have to make up for the injured player.

“Last year, we didn’t take any of that Boston Celtics’ stuff for real.”

Of course, after the season, McHale underwent surgery that caused him to miss the opening of this season, so you’d better think it over before you accuse anyone of actually making something up.

But heck, it’s spring, tra-la, and the road to glory is littered with the crutches of aspirants, discarded in the pursuit of the top prize.

The world has come to expect nothing less.

Limp on, stalwarts.