Ball Is in Lakers’ Court Now : L.A. Seeks to Use Home Advantage on Road to Title

After an exhausting week of homecomings, birth announcements, battle cries and, oh yes, basketball games, the men of Troy--not USC but Troy, Mich., where the Lakers were staying--flew back to their own turf Friday.

And although their odyssey has not been as long as Ulysses’--and cut us a little slack, mythology freaks, we know Ulysses was a Greek and not a Trojan--it has taken the Lakers 254 days and 112 games, counting exhibitions, to get here, where journey’s end will be marked either by celebration or mourning.

The Lakers came home burdened with the knowledge that they trail the Detroit Pistons, 3 games to 2, in the NBA Finals but heartened by the fact that the series must play out its course at the Forum. That’s a privilege that came to the Lakers not by divine right, but by the sweat of their millionaire brows for having the best regular-season record in the league. They were five games better than anyone else and eight games better than the Pistons, who finished 54-28 to the Lakers’ 62-20.

Home-court advantage: As motivational material, it may leave some people cold, but it apparently does the trick for the Lakers.

For this, they ran wind sprints in Palm Springs in October alongside Ron (the Flying Dutchman) Vanderschaaf, who may have been a seventh-round draft pick but was first-rate comic relief.

For this, James Worthy played with swollen knees, Michael Cooper hobbled on a sprained ankle, Magic Johnson risked his groin, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ignored the calendar.

For this, Magic banked his pre-Christmas miracle off the glass in Boston.

Worthy out-Dominiqued ‘Nique in Atlanta in February, Cooper fought Pat Cummings in March, and Scott played the best basketball of his life all season long.

Most of all, for this the Lakers slogged through endless nights on the road when it would have been so much easier to quit--in places such as Salt Lake City, where they outscored the Jazz, 15-0, in the last 3 1/2 minutes to win in December. Or in Houston in February, when Mychal Thompson had the flu and Cooper sprained his ankle, but the Lakers still won.

Or in San Antonio and Seattle, Phoenix and Portland, Dallas and Denver, places where the home team wins more often than not but where the Lakers’ labors were rewarded with the best road record in the game, 26-15.

For this, the Lakers get to take their chances in a clean and well-lighted place, their Forum, where this season they have lost just eight times--five in regular-season play, three in the playoffs--with Game 6 Sunday, and 7, if necessary, Tuesday night. Better there than the Pontiac Silverdome, which was about as inviting to the Lakers as a dark alley.

The question lingers, in fact, after Thursday’s 104-94 loss to the Pistons in Game 5: Is it possible that the Lakers--determined to prevent another mugging like the one they had in Tuesday’s 106-85 loss--got too caught up in flaunting their toughness and lost sight of their primary objective?

The Pistons seem to think so.

“It seemed to me they tried to come out physical and made some fouls they didn’t really need to make,” said Detroit forward Adrian Dantley, whose steady march to the free-throw line enabled the Pistons to do double-time in overcoming the Lakers’ early 15-2 lead.

“They came out and tried to show us something,” said Dantley, who was smirking as he said it, according to one reporter. “And pretty soon, they had their key people on the bench.”

Before the game, both teams had vowed to take matters into their own hands if hostilities broke out. And although the rough stuff never really materialized Thursday, Piston forward Dennis Rodman said the Lakers were lucky it hadn’t.

“If they try to start banging with us, they’re out of their league,” Rodman said.

All the Lakers succeeded in doing Thursday was to foul themselves out of the game and ruin a fast start, in which they took a 13-point lead as the Pistons were turning the ball over six times in their first eight possessions. Worthy left the game with three fouls in the first five minutes, soon to be followed by A. C. Green and Cooper.

“We were very focused at the beginning of the game,” Laker Coach Pat Riley said. “. . . But then, all hell broke loose, as usual. We had three key players on the bench in the first half, and that plays havoc with your continuity.”

The Pistons, meanwhile, realized that they couldn’t possibly continue in such a sorry fashion.

“We just said, ‘We’ve got to be patient, do it two by two, and we can’t panic,’ ” Detroit center Bill Laimbeer said. “And we didn’t panic. We kept on playing.”

And the Lakers kept fouling. Detroit scored 11 of its first-quarter points from the free-throw line to the Lakers’ 4, although the Lakers--in a pattern they continued all night--missed four foul shots in the period.

What concerned Cooper was that his foul trouble not only kept him on the bench, it prevented him from spelling Magic Johnson as he normally does.

“He had to play damn near the whole game,” said Cooper of Johnson, who played 45 minutes Thursday and looked it, scoring just a single point in the fourth quarter.

The Lakers have been challenged physically before--if you’ve forgotten, rewind your tape of Kevin McHale’s clothesline tackle of Kurt Rambis in the ’84 finals. That play, in fact, was widely credited for altering the Lakers’ style of play--and, as would follow, the outcome of the series.

Laker Coach Pat Riley denied that it had happened again Thursday. He said he thought Worthy was trying to avoid Dantley when the Piston forward drove the lane and drew Worthy’s third foul. Worthy had no trouble with that call--it was the first two fouls he objected to.

Another question, of course, is whether Riley should have taken the risk of Worthy picking up his third foul so early in the game.

In any event, Worthy finished with just 14 points, coming off a sub par 7-point, foul-plagued performance in Game 4. The Laker forward, who started the playoffs with the highest field-goal shooting percentage in league history, 59.4%, is shooting only 42.1% in this series, a low among Laker starters. He averaged 22.5 points in the first two games in the Forum, 15 in three in the Silverdome.

The change of arenas should help Worthy as much as it should Scott, another Laker who was far more effective at home--25 points in each of the first two games--than he was on the road--18, 13 and 15 points.

The Detroit defense, of course, has a way of doing that to people. Just ask Larry Bird, who got as much of the Pistons’ Rodman as Magic Johnson is getting now. Detroit has held opponents to fewer than 100 points in 15 of their 21 playoff games. They even did it to the Lakers in the Forum once, in a 105-93 victory in Game 1.

“Dennis, for a big man, has the quickest feet in the league,” Laimbeer said of the 6-8 Rodman. “And I don’t think any guard in the league, except Maurice Cheeks in his prime, has quicker feet, either.”

Rodman, of course, doesn’t even start, a lead-in to another major difference between these teams both Thursday night and in the series. The Detroit bench--which goes four-deep with Rodman, John Salley, Vinnie Johnson and James Edwards--is outplaying Laker reserves Cooper and Thompson.

Thursday night, the Piston reserves outrebounded the Laker subs, 24-4, with Salley getting 10 rebounds to Thompson’s 2. And in the series, Vinnie Johnson by himself is outscoring the Laker reserves, 62-58.

“The bench means everything to us, every game,” Laimbeer said.

Detroit may have the bench, but Sunday, the floor belongs to the Lakers. They hope that will be enough.

“We’ve worked hard for the home-court advantage,” Cooper said. “Hopefully, it will hold up.”