Where Once There Was Showtime, There Now Is Variety Hour

Call this chapter of Laker history The Death of Showtime.

You remember Showtime, don’t you?

Jump shot by Dr. J is off the rim. Rebound Chones! Outlet pass to Nixon!! To Magic in the

sgotCooperandWilkesonthewingsHERETHEYCOME,THREE-ON-TWO!!!MAGICFAKESLEFT PASSESRIGHTTOCOOPER SA-LAAAAMDUNK!!!!OHHHHH!!!!!!

(My thanks to Chick Hearn for the preceding re-enactment of a Laker fast break, circa 1980. For being my guest in today’s column, Chick, I’d like to present you with a $10 gift certificate to the L.A. Times cafeteria.)

Those were the days, my friends, when the Lakers were young and rode a chariot of fire. Chickie Babie hasn’t lost any speed in the ensuing decade, but the ballplayers have. That Laker chariot now stops at all railroad crossings.

Showtime, the philosophy that Jerry Buss demanded and Magic and the guys executed, the philosophy that got Paul Westhead fired and Pat Riley hired, the damn-the-torpedoes offense that stunned the National Basketball Assn., has quietly evolved, to put it tactfully.

The Lakers simply don’t run like they did 10 years ago, or five years ago. Isn’t that right, Magic Johnson?

“Yeah,” says Magic. “I think we mix it up a little. It depends on the whole flow and movement of the game. At that time (days of yore), we wanted to get into the transition as much as possible because that’s what we did best. That was the game then--run, run, run. Now it’s slow, run, run, slow, run, slow. . . . You never know.”

Kind of sad, isn’t it?

I mean, which would you rather see:

--One of those grind-it-out baskets where the ball somehow pops up out of a rugby scrum under the basket and six players fall down screaming and bleeding while the three officials are busy on the sidelines warning assistant coaches about frowning?

Or:

--The flowing, high-speed poetry of A.C.-to-Magic-to-Worthy-or-Scott, the most exciting three seconds in sports, unless you count the guy who keeps falling off the end of the ski-jump ramp?

When the Lakers met the Phoenix Suns in the Western Conference finals, knowledgeable basketball people were predicting that the Lakers would not try to outrun the Suns because they could not outrun the Suns.

That turned out to be at least half true. On my unofficial statistics, the Suns scored more hoops off fast breaks than did the Lakers. Fat lot of good it did the Suns, who were swept like kitchen dirt.

But did the Lakers not run because they couldn’t?

“We didn’t want to run with ‘em,” Magic says, “because we knew if we slowed it, they couldn’t play with us.”

Here’s where we get into a little semantics. Do the Lakers run less these days because they’ve become such a dynamite half-court offense that other team’s can’t handle them in a set-up situation? Or are they just too slow?

Actually it’s a little of both.

The Lakers of 10 years ago had a younger Magic and Cooper, a much younger Kareem, an off-guard (Norm Nixon) who was in reality a fast-break-style point guard, and one of the sneakiest fast-break small forwards in history (Jamaal Wilkes).

But eventually the Lakers were slowed by the chess factor. NBA coaches are not dumb, despite the way they look when they scream and whine and stomp their feet. Over the years, opposing coaches devised clever and sometimes legal ways to stop, or at least slow down, the Laker fast break.

Ergo, the Lakers had to develop a better half-court attack, which they have done.

Done fairly well, judging by their 11-0 record in the playoffs.

“Sure, we run less,” Coach Pat Riley says. “We would always have 12 fast breaks (not necessarily resulting in scores) in an average quarter, 48 to 50 a game. We used to get in the 60s a lot and if we didn’t, I’d get really (upset). Now we’ll end up in the mid 30s. We get more in the first half, and as the game progresses, we become a little more half-court.

“We’re not as explosive a team off ‘makes’ (opponents’ field goals, where the Lakers have to take the ball out of bounds) as we used to be. We used to advance the ball on a ‘make’ like we did on a miss. Teams simply won’t let you do that now.”

Riley scoffs at the theory that the Lakers are afraid to run with runners like the Suns.

“We don’t care if it’s a running team,” he scoffs. “A running team will inspire us to run more. I’ve never said we won’t run because we can’t outrun (an opponent). I would never admit that. We expect our team to be a running team.”

Paul Westphal, the Suns’ assistant coach who played against the old Showtime Lakers at the turn of the decade, sees a difference between then and now.

“That team had a more definitive style,” Westphal says. “That team was going to run, they were going to run you out of the building. This team might half-court you to death, defense you to death, or run you to death. . . . They run if they have to, they’re just not committed to being a running team. They’re not as predictable. Now they have the whole package. We have to run.”

There is a Kareem factor here, too. The Laker players, and Westphal, tell me that the Lakers run less now because Kareem is not the offensive half-court force he once was.

Although I nod sagely when they tell me this, it doesn’t make a whit of sense to me. I present it here only to show that even I am sometimes perplexed by the intricacies of sport.

What it all means, though, is this:

--The Lakers aren’t as fast as they used to be.

--They still have their moments. In Game 4 against the Suns, the Lakers scored five of their first nine hoops off the dead run.

--The Pistons are in trouble. In years past a Laker fan might worry that the Pistons, who stop the run roughly the same way Dick Butkus stopped the run, would take the Lakers out of their game. Now if you take the Lakers out of their game, they have another game to throw at you.

Sun Coach Cotton Fitzsimmons calls the present Lakers “the best half-court team in basketball.”

However, don’t get the impression the Lakers can’t crank it up once in a while, by gum, if they really feel like it.

“I didn’t say we couldn’t be a running team,” Magic says in a setting-the-record-straight tone. “We still get our dunks and layups. But it’s always better to control the tempo.”

Maybe. But those old days weren’t too bad, either.