SCENE OF CRIME : Lakers’ Biggest Obstacle Came Early in Day, When Cooper Crashed the Board

Evidence was everywhere at the scene. The small clump of hair wedged in the wood, bent itself from the collision. The several drops of blood a few feet away in the hall, left behind as the wounded victim staggered for help.

And there it was. The outline of Michael Cooper’s body, or at least something that was supposed to pass for it, in chalk on the cement floor. For dramatic effect, “OUCH!” had been drawn inside the balloon-like drawing of the head.

“I’m an usher not an artist,” Gary Kass said, reluctantly taking credit for the police-style sketch while guarding a door that leads to the locker rooms at the Forum.

Cooper is a Laker guard, not a ’69 Chevy. So when he went mano-a-mano with a plywood-and-metal railing inside a tunnel that leads off the court, some damage could be expected.

“A serious headache,” he said.

That may be the short-term effects. More serious are the 21 stitches he took in the front of his scalp.

The Coop-a-Bloop that resulted in a pair of cuts on the front of his head and a trip to Centinela Hospital Medical Center occurred just after the Lakers’ morning shoot-around at the Forum. He sprinted off the court, bound for the locker room, and, with the structure partially hidden by curtains, collided with it, head first.

That he came back to get eight assists, four rebounds and three points in the Lakers’ 128-108 victory over Portland in Game 1 of the Western Conference quarterfinals made him a candidate for some sort of Purple Heart.

That he survived the accident also made him a target for teammate abuse.

“We call him Scarface now,” backup center Mychal Thompson said.

Added Coach Pat Riley: “He did that on purpose. He wanted to let the guys know he was ready. He wanted some battle scars.”

He got them.

“It was a little bit hard to concentrate on the court,” said Cooper, who made one of two three-point shots to raise his National Basketball Assn. all-time playoff high from that range to 251 attempts and 101 baskets. “That hurt my head.

“It was kind of a gruesome hit, but I had to do it. I had to shake the fear of charging into that end of the Forum, in case I had to go for a loose ball or something.”

Forget that the area in question was halfway down Century Boulevard toward LAX.

“Coop feels a lot more comfortable when he’s battered and bruised,” said Thompson, who did some hard-hat work inside for 20 points, on eight-of-11 shooting, and six rebounds in 27 minutes off the bench. “It gets him ornery and mean. He came to the Forum in a bad mood and took it out on the court. That’s the way you have to be in the playoffs.”

Cooper, in his 10th year of postseason play, only wishes the accident could have been staged for motivational purposes. Then he wouldn’t have had those headaches and that awful feeling inside his gangly 6-foot-7 body.

Oh, if only it could have been an arranged stunt.

“I was kind of queasy for a while,” said Cooper, who revisited the scene later and saw the hair he had left behind. “But I’m over it now. It’s good to get the pain out of the way.”

And, for some people, Game 1. The Portland Trail Blazers knew all along who their competition was.

But Michael Cooper, who found out the hard way what was behind curtain No. 2?

He has met the enemy, and it is he.