Coach Tries to Get Lakers Riled Up : Riley Claims They Were Beaten to the Punch by Pistons

This is how it is on the Lakers: One moment they’re on top and everyone is oh-ing and ah-ing and wishing they had flash and dash and Jack and Dyan at courtside . . .

. . . and the next moment, they lose and everyone puts them down as California sprouts-eating psychobabblers.

“Where are they?” asked a Texas writer as the Lakers met in their dressing room Wednesday, 12 hours after their 111-86 loss to the Detroit Pistons in Game 4 of the National Basketball Assn. finals.

“They’re focusing,” a Midwest writer said. “They’re taking all their hidden agendas and putting them out of the way.”

Well, there are worse things that could be said, and were Wednesday, when the wimp factor raised its nerdy head in yet another campaign.

And who was it suggesting the the Lakers had been, uh, not as manly as possible in response to Piston violence?

How about Pat Riley?

And Magic Johnson?

Riley accused Detroit’s Adrian Dantley of “head-hunting,” and Rick Mahorn of a forearm smashing to the back of A.C. Green’s head. But he saved the brunt of his scorn for his own players, whose response he called “weak,” producing a reaction in him that was nothing less than “disgusted.”

“You’ve got to know going in exactly what’s on the table,” Riley said. “But then we waited to see if they were going to be exactly what we thought they would, and it was too late.

“You can’t get into a street fight with somebody 18 minutes after you got your . . . kicked. You got nothing left.

“When Rick Mahorn forearm-smashed the back of A.C. Green’s head three minutes into the game, that should have let us know how the game was going to be played.

“I mean, you got to watch this on tape to see it. It’s not like I’m making it up. It was a fast break. A.C. was trailing the play. So it was a very definitive message.”

Riley also held a pre-practice meeting with his players Wednesday to give them a few definitive messages of his own. Aside from that, Riley didn’t seem too upset.

Then there was Magic Johnson, the Last Angry Laker, who unburdened himself of this one:

“We didn’t respond. We didn’t take people out. We didn’t slam ‘em back.

“I wasn’t as angry at them as I was toward my teammates--as well as toward myself.”

Was Magic saying the Lakers were wimps?

“Maybe we were,” Johnson said. “Maybe that’s the word for us.”

Maybe that’s the word Riley used in his team meeting?

Riley said he hadn’t called his players wimps, but he seems to have at least gotten close to it in spirit.

“He started off in a kind of Clint Eastwood-intense style,” Mychal Thompson said. “You know, real quiet but getting his point across.

“And then, as the talk went along, it started getting more into like a General Patton-type speech.”

What’s the next level? Attila the Hun? Rick Mahorn?

“That would be Jack Ramsay,” Thompson said.

What did Riley say?

“That’s too embarrassing,” Thompson said. “I don’t want that to get in the papers.”

Aw, c’mon Mychal.

“He did accuse us of being George Bush clones in Laker uniforms,” Thompson admitted.

So the W-word actually was used?

“Right,” Thompson said.

Wrong, Riley said, but everyone seemed to have gotten the thrust of his remarks, and they weren’t congratulatory.

“I’m not disappointed and irritated,” Riley said. “I’m beyond that. The nature of some of our key players’ personalities is to play basketball. Usually the truly great players in this league are like that. They play the game and have to deal with the abuse.

“Adrian Dantley is a great player and I saw him do two things last night I never thought I’d see him do, just go head-hunting on both (James) Worthy and Earvin. But obviously that’s how he’s going to play the game now. It’s very rare for great players to do that. It’s usually the soldiers.”

So what else is new? Has there ever been a series that didn’t have bad feeling, accusations of foul play, illegal zone defenses, favoritism by the officials? Remember Larry Bird, calling his teammates sissies to fire them up in the ’84 finals against the Lakers?

So now everyone on both teams has been forewarned and re-warned about the fire next time.

Of course, NBA officials will see all these comments and tell the referees to call the game as tightly as possibly, there may be minimal mayhem.

Of course, if things do get ugly, Thompson, one of the biggest Lakers, will have to turn enforcer, right?

“That’s right,” he said, brightly. “Boy, are we in trouble.”