NBA PLAYOFFS : This Game Really Had Him Yo-Yoing

What a comeback!

The Lakers? Yes, them too.

But I’m referring to Chick Hearn, who was plunged into such a deep, smoldering funk by the Lakers’ play Sunday against Seattle that it sounded like it might take the veteran play-by-play man a week to elevate his mood back up to merely despondent.

When the SuperSonics take a 9-0 lead, Hearn thinks he spots a trend.

“If you want to go out and water mother’s new flowers, this is a good time,” Chick counsels crisply.

Sure enough, the Lakers keep fading and fading. Suddenly they’re down by 15.

“They’re no more ready to play this game than I am!” Chick clucks condescendingly.

Suddenly, the Lakers are down by an incredible, insurmountable 20 points.

“They’re lined up against the brick wall,” Chick champs chafingly. “The rifle squad is ready. They are armed and ready to fire.”

Suddenly, a series that the Lakers lead, three games to none, has taken on somber overtones. Don’t the Lakers at least get a last cigarette before the comandant raises his sword?

Now the SuperSonics are getting serious, their lead is 41-12! A 29-point lead over the two-time world champions. Surely there must be a mistake in the point tabulation. Who’s working the scoreboard? Noriega’s henchmen? Where’s Jimmy Carter when you need him?

It suddenly occurs to Hearn that in weird games like these, some fans will nod knowingly and tell you that NBA teams and referees throw playoff games in order to extend a series and earn everyone more money.

“Don’t let any of your silly neighbors tell you that,” Chick chides chillingly.

It’s obvious that the very thought that anyone would conceive such a misconception makes Hearn want to reach right through your neighbors’ radio sets and tweak their silly noses.

Forget about Camille and Romeo, nobody dies more theatrically than the Chickster.

At the close of the third quarter, the Lakers work for the last shot, passing around the perimeter. Three seconds . . . two . . . it’s obvious they’re not even going to look for a shot.

“They don’t know the clock at all!” Chick castigates callously. “They don’t know the clock at all!”

What Chick doesn’t tell us is that the game is going exactly as the Lakers planned, following Pat Riley’s clever psychological gamesmanship.

“The Sonics are going to come out extra loose today,” Riley probably warned the Lakers before the game. “They have nothing to lose. We must tighten up their looseness. What we need to do is let them run up an early lead, about 29 points should be good, then suddenly they’ll be under intense pressure to not blow this huge lead, and they’ll crumble like stale cookies.”

As Hearn’s sidekick, Stu Lantz, said on the pregame radio show: “We don’t know if the SuperSonics have the discipline or the mental fatigue or the attitude (to fight back from three games down).”

One out of three ain’t bad, and the SuperSonics are showing that they do have the mental fatigue.

Not that the SuperSonics have a prayer, once the Lakers lull Seattle into that 29-point trap.

Suddenly, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is crashing the offensive boards. A.C. Green is sticking the 20-foot baseline jumper and dribbling through the press. And Big Game James Worthy is working the three-point arc.

The key shot in the Lakers’ late surge is a three-point bomb by Big Game James with 3:07 left, giving the Lakers a five-point lead. The shot is only about 15 feet beyond Worthy’s normal shooting range. During the regular season, James was two for 23 from behind the arc, a nifty .087.

Again, this must be the Riley take-’em-by-surprise strategy.

Worthy also knocks in a 20-foot jumper, a chip shot.

“If there’s a better forward in the country,” Chick crows challengingly, “show him to me!”

An extravagant statement, but worth examining. There’s Dominique, and the Mailman, and Barkley and Chambers. But when has Worthy been anything but brilliant in the clutch?

Down the stretch Sunday, Worthy takes eight shots and makes all eight.

Makes you stop and think. If Worthy is playing at least as well as any forward in the game right now, which he is, and if Magic is either the league’s most valuable player or the runner-up, which he is, and if A.C. Green is a better rebounder and shooter than he was last year at this time, and if the Big Fella is showing signs of life, why shouldn’t the Lakers be storming back from a mere 29-point deficit to sweep yet another playoff series on their way to yet another National Basketball Assn. crown?

With a minute left, Seattle forward Xavier McDaniel misses a key free throw.

“McDaniel’s second one looked like he was holding a medicine ball,” Chick carps cuttingly.

The comeback of the century is complete, the Sonics are dead, and the Lakers and mother’s new flowers are in full bloom.