L.A. Finds One More Way to Win--Without Magic

OK, break up the Lakers. I’ve seen enough. Tell the Detroit Pistons or the Chicago Bulls to mail in the loss.

Oh, sure, Phoenix was not so easy. Phoenix almost phooled them.

That’s not the point. The point is, the Lakers win playoff games when they are down, 41-12. And, then, they win playoff games with Magic Johnson on the bench for the critical part of the game.

I mean, it’s considered an act of faith the Lakers cannot win anything without Magic. Magic has to have the ball, not a seat, for the Lakers to be champions.

Giving Magic the basketball is like giving Hitler an army, Jesse James a gang, or Genghis Khan a horse. Devastation. Havoc. He’s one of the more demoralizing forces in sports, Dempsey with a hook, an Unser with a car, Henry Aaron on a slow curve.

Magic Johnson without a basketball is an offense against nature.

You have to bear in mind Magic hasn’t fouled out of a playoff game since Reagan’s first term in office. In fact, the first year. He hasn’t fouled out of any kind of game in five years.

Magic is usually too smooth to draw a whistle. He has this guileless face of a kid playing an angel in a school play. He has practiced the art of looking incredulous till he’s better at it than a New York pickpocket. Magic’s “Who me?!” look is as good as the rest of his game. Injured innocence is as big a part of his arsenal as the full-court pass. Magic could get his gun back after a holdup. Al Capone would have been freed if he could feign the reproachful, pained look Magic musters up right after he has knocked somebody out of bounds or charged to the basket like a runaway freight as he did twice in a little over a minute Saturday.

NBA protocol calls for the official to look for the nearest part-time player to deal off the foul call in these situations. Wilt Chamberlain, for example, never fouled out of a game in his life. In those days, they were afraid customers would call for their money back.

But Magic got too reckless in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals Saturday. He roughed up more guys on his way to the basket than a Mafia loan collector. Magic came through the key like a fullback on the one-yard line. They either had to give Phoenix a foul or the last rites.

Magic, of course, acted as if he couldn’t believe it. It was a case of mistaken identity. Persecution. He grimaced, rolled his eyes heavenward, tried to look the way you imagined Joan of Arc or the prisoner of Shark Island looked.

It didn’t work. Magic had to sit out almost the whole third quarter and there were only seven minutes left in the game when he came back in the fourth period. The Lakers had squandered a 16-point lead in the course of the action. He soaked up his final, disqualifying foul with 2:23 to play, and the Lakers in front, 116-111.

When you can still win a game with your best player (and maybe the world’s) playing spectator for most of the last half of it, you might be the basketball equivalent of the 1927 Yankees or the Lombardi Packers or Rockne Notre Dames. You might have a better bench than Custer’s Indians.

Phoenix did not go gently into that good night. They proved to be persistent, dogged and determined.

They completely misunderstood their role. This wasn’t supposed to be a game, it was supposed to be a festival. They were supposed to be the scenery. The Lakers were to give an exhibition of championship basketball, the Suns were props. It was supposed to be Tyson-Spinks. It turned out more Dempsey-Firpo.

The subs, in a sense, won it. While Magic was out, instead of just staging a delaying action, just trying to keep the game in sight till their leader returned, they carried the fight to Phoenix.

“Sometimes in that situation, the team just kind of stands around and waits for Magic to come back,” Coach Pat Riley would concede later. “But here they knew they had to play. And they did.”

The Phoenix Suns are mystery guests in the tournament this year. A funny little team of anonymous nobodies, as unknown as a bunch of stagecoach robbers, they proved to be young, fast and not at all in awe of the two-time world champions. They were on the Lakers like a posse after a rustler.

Magic wasn’t even the No. 1 Johnson on the floor Saturday. Phoenix’s Kevin was the one-man Johnson team Saturday--27 points, 18 assists, three rebounds in 46 minutes. He does all this with the kind of calm, almost bored, look on his face of a guy painting a fence.

But if the Lakers can win with Magic on the bench and the Phoenix Johnson dishing off Hall of Fame stats--if they can win spotting playoff opponents 29 points--they may have to get them their own league. If 31 minutes out of Magic Johnson is enough for the Lakers, they’re not a team, they’re a dynasty. If Chicago had to do without Michael Jordan for 17 minutes, would they be a lot of Bull? And the Boston Celtics without Larry Bird, anybody notice what happened to them?

Of course, when Magic came back with five fouls Saturday, the team was behind, 99-100. When he finally left the game for good, five minutes later, the team was ahead, 116-111. As Phoenix Coach Cotton Fitzsimmons was to say after the game, “I’d a whole lot rather see Magic sitting than playing.”

But it may not be enough. The league may have to experiment to see whether it will have to sit James Worthy down with Magic for 17 minutes a game. I mean, they handicap horses, don’t they?