THE NBA CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES : LOS ANGELES LAKERS vs. DETROIT PISTONS : Golf or Lakers? KCBS Draws a Blank at First, but It Could Have Been Worse

Some crossed signals between KCBS, Channel 2, and the CBS network caused Los Angeles viewers a few anxious moments Sunday.

The decision facing Channel 2 was whether to give its viewers the end of the Westchester golf tournament at Harrison, N.Y., or the start of the Laker-Detroit basketball game in Pontiac, Mich. What viewers got, for a very long 5 minutes, was neither.

With the golf tournament headed into a four-way, sudden-death playoff at 12:30 p.m., PDT, Channel 2, for obvious reasons, decided it should leave the golf for the start of the Laker-Piston game.

The problem was, the station found no network feed from Detroit and went searching for it on various satellites. Meanwhile, viewers got a slide of the Channel 2 insignia and a “Please stand by” recording for what seemed like an eternity.

Finally, the station, unsuccessful in its effort to obtain a feed from Detroit, went back to the golf just in time to see Seve Ballesteros win the tournament on the first extra hole.

The basketball game, scheduled to start at 12:37, was held up until 12:45 by CBS. Fortunately for the network, the golf didn’t go beyond one extra hole because it planned to leave the tournament after the first extra hole, anyway.

Under its contract with the National Basketball Assn., CBS could hold up the basketball game for only 10 minutes, or until 12:47.

About the Channel 2 mixup, station spokeswoman Andi Sporkin said: “It was a miscommunication problem. We set it up with network at 12:27 that if the golf went into sudden death, we would leave it and go to basketball.

“So, at 12:30 we went to a commercial break, but when we came back (at 12:31) the network didn’t provide us with a feed from the basketball game.”

It all turned out OK, if you didn’t mind not seeing how Ballesteros and the others got to the green. And OK if you didn’t mind watching the Channel 2 insignia for 5 minutes. There was no further golf action until 12:36.

But it could have been a lot worse had the golf tournament gone on beyond the one extra hole.

Golf tournaments running long is a problem CBS has faced many times in the past. But it still hasn’t figured out what to do about it.