In a Bind, With Magic Out, Lakers Were Bound to Win

Add to the Lakers’ dazzling repertoire of moves and grooves this new one:

Bonding.

It’s like what happens in the hip TV beer commercials, where a yuppie outdoorsman discovers the meaning of life while trout-fishing or rock-climbing with his male-model buddies in the only wilderness spot in the world not infested by mosquitoes.

That’s male-model bonding, that heartwarming mountain-top camaraderie. The Lakers now have a variation of it. Laker Coach Pat Riley explained it when talking about what happened when Magic Johnson fouled out with 2:23 left in the game Saturday.

“When Magic went out,” Riley said, “I really sensed the collective bonding of the guys on the floor. They were determined not to let that (Magic’s untimely rest) deflate them.”

The deflatees, instead, were the Phoenix Suns, who lost the series opener, 127-119.

“We just got out-bonded,” Sun Coach Cotton Fitzsimmons said. Actually, Cotton didn’t say that, but he should have.

The scouting report on the Lakers now is: Cut off the outlet pass, don’t let James Worthy post up low and don’t let the Lakers bond.

In fact, the Lakers’ bonding could use a little work. Magic picked up his fifth foul when the Lakers were up by five points, and when he returned with 7:22 left in the game, the Lakers were down by a point.

Johnson immediately hit a long set shot for another Laker lead. After Magic fouled out, the Lakers held their own without their leader. There’s bonding and then there’s bonding .

In reality, the Lakers have been bonding for years. We take you back briefly to Magic Johnson’s first NBA game, 1979, against the then-San Diego Clippers. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hits a long sky hook to win the game at the buzzer, and Magic wraps Kareem in a huge bear hug, whirling him around midcourt like a waltzin’ fool.

“Hey, Big Fella,” Magic probably told Kareem, “it doesn’t get any better than this.”

To which Kareem replied, “If it doesn’t, son, we’ll both be out on the street soon, looking for real jobs.”

It did get better of course (although not for the Clippers). The last decade for the Lakers has been one long bond-a-thon.

It’s almost embarrassing. Other teams go through cycles, highs and lows, good seasons and bad. Remember the Boston Celtics? Remember the Utah Jazz?

The Lakers continue to roll along at an alarmingly high level of performance. This was to be the season they would fade, with Kareem phasing out and everyone else getting too old or too jaded by success.

So, guess which team has won 13 consecutive games, eight straight in the playoffs, and seems a good bet to advance to the NBA Finals again.

Certainly, there’s no overpowering indication that the Suns will be the team to un-bond the Lakers.

For one thing, the Suns play Game 2 right back at the Forum, where they haven’t won since, I believe, 1922, when Kareem was a gleam in his grandfather’s eye.

The Suns must play Game 2 under Coach Cotton Fitzsimmons, who is 0-for-Inglewood. He has brought various NBA teams to this city, played 34 games in this building, and lost each and every game.

Cotton’s record at the Forum is one that only Red Klotz could truly appreciate, Klotz being the lovable coach of the Washington Generals, who lost 9 zillion straight heartbreaking games to the Harlem Globetrotters.

Cotton has done a near-miraculous job of building a basketball team out of the ruins of the Phoenix Suns, but when he comes to the Forum, he may as well try to outdance the Laker Girls.

These are the Lakers, bond you very much, playing in their very own First Western Trust & Loan Forum, or whatever it’s called. They are very tough on their own floor. Home or away, they are bonding up a storm.

Take Orlando Woolridge. Every basketball scouting report has a standard line that goes, “Don’t let (fill in the blank) beat you.” On the Lakers, the blank is Orlando Woolridge.

So Saturday, the Suns have cut the Laker lead to five with two minutes left and Magic has fouled out. Orlando misses a shot, Mychal Thompson rebounds, feeds to Orlando alertly cutting through the key, and Woolridge slams home a lefty dunk over Tom Chambers, gets fouled, hits the free throw, and the crowd goes wild as the Suns go back to the drawing board.

Now, that’s Laker bonding, what Thompson and Woolridge did on that play. Woolridge, in fact, has finally become Lakerized. Six weeks ago, he couldn’t get off the bench. He was all style and no substance. He was a candidate for NBA Disappointment of the Year, along with the Forum popcorn. Now he’s a key guy off the bench.

“He went from being a home-run hitter to a guy who will take a walk, go for the single,” Riley said. “He’s not out there just worrying about awesome dunks.”

In other words, like a stray particle needed to accomplish table-top fusion, Woolridge has been sucked into the Laker chemistry. He has bonded onto the big purple molecule.

And it’s a molecule with momentum. Before Saturday’s game, Riley pointed out that due to the nature of the Suns’ spread-out offense, it was vital that the Lakers challenge any Suns driving to the hoop. So the Lakers swatted eight shots.

Most of those blocks were on switch-offs, help-out situations where a Laker defender gets beat and his buddy slides over and smacks the ball away.

The Suns can only pray that for the Lakers, it doesn’t get any better than this.