Brown Is a Winner in Return : Spirited Spurs Run Past Lakers for 122-107 Victory

This was the wrong night to be a Laker. Or a UCLA chancellor. Or a member of the Kansas Jayhawks basketball team that’s on probation for the next three years.

Larry Brown returned to the National Basketball Assn. as coach of the San Antonio Spurs Saturday night, and the Lakers were overwhelmed, 122-107, by a pep-rally wave of Spur emotion. But while the loss that showed up on the scoreboard belonged solely to the Lakers, it may have been felt just as sharply in Westwood--where last spring Brown told UCLA Chancellor Charles Young he’d take the coaching job, then abruptly changed his mind--and in Lawrence, Kan., which Brown said he couldn’t bear to leave before bolting to Texas.

The cheers that shook San Antonio’s Hemisfair Arena, which celebrated the stunning 30-point debut of U.S. Olympian Willie Anderson and another 30 points by Alvin Robertson, 12 in the fourth quarter, could just as easily have resounded in UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion or KU’s Allen Fieldhouse. They might have blown off the roof here if 7-foot David Robinson, who was on a weekend pass from the Navy, had been in uniform instead of street clothes on the Spurs’ bench.

“I wasn’t planning on winning,” Brown said. “I was just hopeful that with all this emotion, we’d play hard.

“I think we had everything going for us. The Lakers were coming off a great win in Dallas, they weren’t expecting much from us, and we just caught them at the perfect time.”

The Lakers, meanwhile, were ripe for some imperfection of their own, and it showed--21 turnovers, 45.9% shooting, 10 misses from the free-throw line, 14 San Antonio steals, all of which caught up with them when the Spurs ran off an 18-4 dunk-a-thon after the Lakers had pulled within 4 at 102-98 with slightly more than 5 minutes to play.

Given the circumstances, Coach Pat Riley wasn’t surprised.

“The Spurs played great,” Riley said. “They had unbridled enthusiasm for the game, for the challenge of opening night, and they have some talent on that team. I don’t know if they have to wait long for David.

“I think they were ready, because they ran right by us. Any bad shot or quick shot that we took on offense, or any turnover, they just scored on the other end. They were flying.”

The Spurs won going away even with a center combination of ex-caddies for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar--Peter Gudmundsson and Mike Smrek--and another ex-caddie, Frank Brickowski, back in L.A. because of a contract dispute.

“The last I read,” Brown said of Brickowski, “he and Charlie Sheen were going to be movie stars.”

There were plenty of Spurs that didn’t go Hollywood. Only 5 players are back from last season, and only 3 players--David Greenwood, Robertson, and Smrek--are older than 24. If they played like a college team Saturday night--and Brown kept the pressure on the Lakers by continually shuttling 11 players in and out of the lineup--there was a reason.

“They’re almost all young enough to be in college, young enough to be college seniors,” said Laker backup center Mychal Thompson.

“They’ve got a lot of young, spry legs. They’re young and excited about the new era.”

And make no mistake about it, Thompson said, with or without Lt.(j.g.) Robinson, who won’t get out of the Navy till next May, that new era has begun.

“It’s here now. The fleet is out sailing,” Thompson said. “Now they’re all just waiting for their big aircraft carrier to join them, but every carrier needs an escort--and they’ve got one now.”

It’s there in guard Johnny Dawkins--22 points, 13 assists, 4 steals--and Greg (Cadillac) Anderson--12 points, 6 rebounds, 3 steals off the bench--and Robertson, and most notably Saturday night, rookie Willie Anderson, who wasn’t shy about putting the ball up (25 shots) from anywhere on the floor.

“I was shocked,” Brown said. “As coaches we’re all fans of his, but he did a lot of things we haven’t seen him do before. He’s never been that aggressive offensively.

“I was a little mad at him in the first half--he was shooting too quick--but then I thought, heck, this was his first game, it was against the world champions, what did I expect?”

Besides, Anderson--who is 6 feet 7 inches, 190 pounds and swings easily between the backcourt and small forward--made enough of his shots to matter.

“He reminds me a lot of the kind of guys the Lakers have,” Brown said. “He can play a lot of positions, the way he can handle the ball and pass it. That’s why we wanted to draft him, because we’ve got to try and build a team like that.”

Magic Johnson, to be sure, joined in the applause for Anderson, who played his college ball at Georgia, but he added a cautionary note: Don’t judge a man’s career on the basis of one game, especially if it was his first one.

“We’ve seen it so many times before,” Johnson said. “We thought (Seattle’s Derrick) McKey was going to tear up the league after his first game against us last season, but he didn’t. You have to see if a player can maintain consistency. We have to see what happens.”

With Brown, the only thing that has ever happened is that his teams have won, no matter where he was. He won in the ABA, he won with Denver in the NBA, he won with UCLA, he won with New Jersey, he won with Kansas. And the winning may have just begun here.

“I don’t look at this as my debut,” he said. “It was the first game of the season. We’re still the San Antonio Spurs. The Lakers are still the best team in basketball.

“We have a lot of young kids. I just don’t want them to play like they’re afraid to fail. I want them to go out and compete.”

They did more than that Saturday night. And at UCLA or Kansas, they might have done the same.

Laker Notes

Mike Smrek, who has been with San Antonio for only 3 days after being traded for a second-round draft choice in 1990, had 2 points, 2 blocked shots, 3 assists and 2 rebounds against his former team Saturday night. “He didn’t breathe the whole game,” San Antonio Coach Larry Brown said, smiling. “He was so ash white. He was so scared. He has so much respect for that team.”. . . Magic Johnson led the Lakers with 21 points and 14 assists but made only 6 of 15 shots. Byron Scott was 8 of 22 for 17 points. . . . Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had 16 points and 12 rebounds. . . . The Spur bench outscored the Laker reserves, 33-21. “We’re still out of sync with the second five,” Johnson said. For the second straight game, rookie David Rivers did not play.

While the Lakers flew to San Antonio immediately after Friday night’s win in Dallas, their luggage was inadvertently shipped to Los Angeles. Trainer Gary Vitti, busy with lining up the players’ boarding passes, had left assistant coach Bill Bertka in charge of the bags. “I broke one of my own rules--’Never assume anything,” Bertka said. “I guess you know who was on duty at Pearl Harbor.” . . . Laker Coach Pat Riley said he was happy to return from Texas with a split, especially since the Lakers had to come from behind to beat Dallas Friday night. The Lakers’ next game is Tuesday night at Oakland against the Warriors.